Emma Woodthorpe

▶0:01HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Emma to the Built by People podcast. Emma, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:56GuestYeah, thanks, Dave. So yeah, my name is Emma Woodthorpe. I'm the Chief People Officer of Brooks Automation, based just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. As you can tell, I've got a really good Boston accent. I actually moved to the States to start my HR career in 2000. Before that, actually, I was a headhunter, but I moved to Silicon Valley and I started my HR career in Silicon Valley with a startup. I've had the honor to work for very small companies. I've had the honor to be the HR leader at very big companies, both in the electronics space, the water space, and the display space. I actually started in the OLED space, which at the time was a very new technology. And I had the privilege through all that experience of being an HR business partner, director of HR, VP of HR. To become a chief HR officer in 2016 of Mercury Systems, which is an electronics company that supports the defense industry. And so that was my first foray into this role. I was there for about 6 years leading a company from $200 million to $1 billion in revenue with 15 acquisitions along the way. So, quite the journey over a 5 or 6-year period, which then brought me to be the Chief People Officer of Brooks. A little different, we're private equity owned, and so we're on a journey of growth and value creation. And I've been here for about now, about 3 years, and we're in a really exciting time in the company and what we do for the semiconductor industry.

▶2:30HostExcellent. Thank you for that introduction, Emma. My first question is related to building high-performance culture. Can you share some of the key strategies you use at Brooks Automation to foster a high-performance culture and how do you measure success in that area?

▶2:46GuestYeah, so it's interesting. So we've been on a journey of accelerating our culture and high performance over the last year. And interestingly enough, I was just actually talking to all our employees on our global town hall this morning about this very topic. And one of the things that, as we've been on this journey, we realized that we needed to get really, really crisp on what this actually meant for us. The Kaikou performance culture means a ton of different things. And so for Brooks, what was it meant for us as a company? And so we defined what the outcomes from a business standpoint we're looking at, what we needed in this culture to get the, what was most important to us. And by doing that, what that then honed into was, okay, if we think about this is where we are going to go, what are the most important things we need to reflect change? Because you can boil the ocean with culture. Obviously culture is nebulous. You can do lots and lots of things. And so we really honed in on 3 or 4 things over 2025 that we are really doubling down on as a company. To really drive our culture in the way we needed to. You know, I would say for us, some things that are really important are making sure we have clear alignment to the, what the company objectives all the way down the company. We are an objectives and key results company. And so we've actually implemented technology. We spent a lot of time on OKRs in our company, making sure that they're truly aligned and everybody is very clear because in the end it's about the success of the company. So that's one. We're spending a lot of time with our leaders, our executive leaders, our senior leaders on their role and accountability on driving performance in the company. How do they behave? How do we, how do they lead? Because this is a company that scaled so quickly. A lot of them haven't been through that journey of, you know, they became the leaders of a billion-dollar company quite quickly. So, so helping them understand their role in it and really developing them where they haven't been before. We're always constantly looking at our values and saying, do our values make sense? And actually, we've decided that we are going to relook at our values in '25 to say, do they drive the behavior that we really, really need? And so those are just a couple of examples of what we've decided for our culture is really important for us to drive to a high performance. Performance, but it's different for every company. So every company has to go through that journey and say, what does that look like? When do you need to get there? What are the outcomes you're looking for? And then what are those 2 or 3 things you need to do to really drive it?

▶5:36HostI want to switch gears and talk about leadership development. It's my understanding that you are the board chair of the HR Leadership Forum in Boston. You've helped design an executive development program for future CHROs. You are overqualified to answer this question, and that is, what are some of the critical lessons or skills you believe are essential for upcoming HR leaders?

▶6:01GuestYeah, so when we started thinking about this program, and we started thinking about this program 4 years ago for HRLF, one of the questions that we asked ourselves is, what is it we wish we had known before we became CHROs? And there were a number of things that we realized that we wanted to make sure the next generation of CHROs were really prepared for. You know, one of the things was really about making sure they were really prepared for how a board works, how the compensation committee works. You know, one of the things that often surprises people coming into this role is how much executive compensation you need to do. And guess what? Most CHROs don't come from the compensation and benefits world, and it may be the first time they're touching it. So we teach them around what that is and how a compensation committee works. We spend a lot of time, and the skills that we think, and I think are needed in this role around learning the business. So financial acumen, business acumen, go see customers. So one of the things I encourage people who want to, you know, up and coming CHROs, and to be honest, current CHROs, if you're not out there seeing the customer, go see the customer with a salesperson. Go understand how they see your company. And how you are perceived, because the perception of the company is going to be different from internal. And it tells you a lot about then either what you need to do in the company, the messaging in the company. So that's something I don't see a lot of CHROs doing. And it's something I think is a skill that you need in this job is to really be able to go talk to customers and seek out what they're doing and how your product impacts them. I would also say in this time, the ability to pivot quickly. We are in a time of uncertainty. It's a volatility. And I do hear a lot of, well, when this time is over, when we get through this. And I think as a CHRO, you have to be able to bring reality of, look, this is our reality and the world is a messy place and there's a lot of change going on and you'll, in the end, what you have to be able to do as CHRO is help executive leaders and company navigate that world. So you have to have that skill to do it as well and adapt and change as your environment, your market inside your company is changing. So being able to adapt quickly, see around corners, see what's coming is a skill that every CHRO needs more than ever. And it's a skill a lot of CHROs had to learn, obviously, during the pandemic.

▶8:38HostThat brings me to my next question, and that's on the topic of post-COVID and some of the cultural changes that Brooks Automation may have encountered. Curious, what are some of the challenges and opportunities you've encountered in redefining company culture at Brooks Automation? In a post-COVID world?

▶9:02GuestYeah, you know, it's interesting. I think everybody's still wrestling with some of the same things around, you know, and you see the whole hybrid, everyone's saying remote. We're still wrestling with this, you know, like through, you know, kind of, gosh, 2, 3 years after obviously the pandemic, you know, has been over and still wrestling with what the right thing to do is. And I think one of the things we are challenged with, and I think others, are the balance between needing collaboration, that face-to-face time, that connection. Though what we're finding is, although our employees are very hardworking and very productive, we've lost something along the way in that connection to each other that is quite hard to get when you're completely remote. And I only know of one company that has really made this work, and they are a fully remote company. That's how they started. And so they have made it work and we try and learn from them, but we have found that we do need more face-to-face time. And so getting our people to understand that face-to-face time is important, coming back into the office to be with your colleagues, talk to your colleagues, connect is really important to us. But it's a balance between trying to still give that flexibility we know our employees are looking for, as well as this need that we have for that more collaboration, that more connectivity that we think we may have lost over the last couple of years. Just after the pandemic. And I know we're not the only company feeling it. I think this is why you're seeing more and more companies actually mandate being back in the office 5 days a week, because I think companies are struggling with this in general. It's just not innate in our cultures. And so I think that's been a challenge for us.

▶10:46HostEmma, you operate under an OKR system. And I think you mentioned to my colleague how you took that system out of your HRIS tool for a more tailored approach. Curious to understand what prompted that decision and what have been the outcomes so far for you and Brooks Automation.

▶11:10GuestYeah, so I think whenever, you know, as a CHRO, you have to take a look at your technology and say, look, what makes the most sense? And there are companies that go, you know what? We are all in on one technology. We know it can't do everything we want, but we're going to stick with that technology so it's easier. And then I'm in a little bit of a different camp. I believe you have to have a really strong HRIS technology, but I think where you want to be world-class and where you want something that is more of a subject matter expert technology, you really need to be willing to go outside your HRIS system. And we had looked at our HRIS system, decided that our objective setting tool and our performance management tool couldn't be innovative enough to where we wanted to be with OKRs. It wasn't built for OKRs. So we went out and we found a best-in-class OKR tool. And the intent of that was that it was built to have objectives and key results and cascade and transparency and be able to connect easier to performance. We were able to recreate our performance our performance management questions and how we did that and the whole of assessment. A lot more dashboarding, a lot more capability. And so we are really pushing, we've just launched it, but one of the things it's giving us is full transparency in the system to everybody's OKRs across the company. So everyone can see them, which means immediately people are paying more attention to them because they know the CEO or their manager or their manager's managers can go in and see them. And so we're also spending a lot of time making sure people really are writing good OKRs as well at the same time. But it was a decision of us in this particular circumstance that we really wanted a best-in-class subject matter expert tool rather than try and wrestle with a tool that we felt just wasn't capable of what we wanted to do.

▶13:10HostEmma, any parting advice you'd like to share with our audience?

▶13:15GuestOh, that's a really good question. You know, I think one of the things I would say, and I said it earlier, we're living in an ever-changing world. And it's a world where the, uh, a CHRO is being pulled into multiple things and having to do multiple things. And sometimes you're all looking going, huh, not seen this one before in a way maybe we haven't before. And I think making sure that you kind of a network. So, you know, this is, I say, one of the loneliest roles in the company. It's not the loneliest. I actually think the CEO is the loneliest role in the company. But I do think this is one of the top 3 loneliest roles in the company. And so having a network of support of other HR leaders, other business leaders outside of your company becomes really important. A place to go and go, have any of you seen this or have any of you dealt with that? And I saw more of that happen in HR with HR leaders in COVID than I ever saw. I saw more sharing across companies around what are you doing about testing? What are you doing about vaccinations? What are you doing about supporting your employees? And it's definitely led to stronger networks. And in a time of change where it's almost impossible to keep up with everything that's going on, having a network you can reach into during the same day. What are you doing on this topic is more important than ever, in my opinion. So making sure as you're, especially as you're coming in the role, that you have that network and you have that support is really important.

▶14:49HostEmma, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure having you involved.

▶14:55GuestYou're very welcome. Happy to be on it.