Heather Oxley

▶0:00HostWelcome 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 Heather to the Built by People podcast. Heather, 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.

▶0:48GuestAbsolutely. So if I think about my career, it's really been shaped by curiosity, continuously learning, and saying yes to things, even if I didn't know where they were gonna take me. So I began my career in consulting. It was originally supposed to be for 2 years while I saved up some cash to go back to school, and I was planning to go to medical school. But as so many stories go, I started having fun, I kept learning, and I've never looked back. That background in chemistry and zoology that I have really helped in those early years of consulting because I was able to really think about complex problems, break them down, use scientific methods in a way, and really think about how do you adapt, how do you change, how do you problem solve? So that enabled me to spend my 20s traveling, learning, taking on challenging work. And then when I got into my 30s, I really took a pause and I started to think about what might be next. I was lucky enough at the time I transitioned from client-facing consulting roles into an internal role supporting the same organization I did. And that's when I entered the world of HR. So I started in learning and development, leadership and succession planning, then I moved on to transitions work, and eventually into HR business partner roles. So if you think about it, I collected a bunch of experiences that then led to the full HR cycle. I gradually gained that end-to-end experiences by saying yes to new opportunities every 2 to years. And then I got to another point as my kids got older and I realized I'm, I was hungry again for that client-facing, customer-facing type of role. I changed gears again and I went back into a consulting type role. But as I did that my second time around, I transitioned into a very niche role around org design and development. And it was in that role I gained the experience that rounded out that experience, my total experience, and it was really around my advisory skills. So, it's one thing to know a fact, it's another to try to convince someone of a fact, and it's a third thing to really sit in an advisory position, right? And put all of those skills together. And I really, I'm so grateful for the time I spent doing org design work with Kate Kessler because that's the skill I honed in there that I think best prepared me from where I'm at now. So all that came together about 3 years ago when I was asked to join Global Logic, where I'm now the chief people officer. And as I collected all those experiences over time, while I may not be a deep expert in any one domain in HR, I've spent enough time by saying yes to lots of those varied experiences to have enough sense of what's important in each element of HR to hire really smart people to deliver on those areas for my business and then truly serve as an advisor. HR is really a strategic function now. It's no longer a back-office function. So, you know, understanding the business, understanding enough HR, and putting the power of those two together makes it really fun.

▶4:07HostHeather, how have you approached the challenge of leading HR with a global lens, particularly when managing diverse cultures and employee needs across different countries?

▶4:19GuestSo Global Logic operates in 23 countries with over 33,000 people. And at that scale, it's really important to build a strong team. And I'll underline the fact that I will— we think about empowerment. You have to think about allowing people to make the right decision as close to people as possible. So when I think about our scale and all the cultural nuances, it's that idea of building a team, a trusted team, and empowering that allows us to do that. I think about it also as global frameworks and local customization, which many organizations do. But let me share two examples. So the first is around the leadership development and how we handle promotions. So we established one single leadership framework. What does a good leader look like in sales and delivery and support functions, et cetera, with specific measurements around specific outcomes that are transparent, and we get leaders to assess against those frameworks. Now, the end decision sits within the location, right? Because as long as you're within that framework, you have freedom in that framework to decide who gets promoted. But what we create is global consistency at scale. I think that's key to operating at scale across those different cultures.

▶5:42HostHeather, can you share a story or case study where leveraging AI within your organization led to significant improvements in efficiency or innovation while also addressing employee concerns about job impact?

▶5:55GuestAbsolutely. The software development space— and we're deep in digital engineering— is key for one of the industries that will be disrupted through generative AI. We've taken that and built our business strategy around it to ensure that we will not only survive this next S-curve, but we'll thrive in it. So a powerful example of specifically how we've leveraged AI to drive both innovation and efficiency while dealing with the employee concerns as well is through our Velocity AI platform. So this is a comprehensive suite of AI-powered service offerings that helps enterprises integrate AI across their software development lifecycle. So this accelerates product development, streamlines operations, enhancing customer experiences. Different elements can be applied to different customer solutions. So if you think about that, what we're doing is simplifying the work. We're taking some of the more gritty work out of the software development cycle and lifting up the capabilities. If I look inside, we are leveraging AI-embedded processes within our organization to make sure that everything from recruiting to training to daily workflows, or even if I go into HR or HR helpdesk, all of those baseline activities that run our organization are augmented by AI. We continue to get something out there and continuously improve. Of course, speed is the name of the game. You mentioned the employees. We are very mindful of how these changes will impact employees. And rather than replace roles, we think about this as augmentation. We think about this as productivity gains in the realm of an individual being able to do more meaningful work. So to date, we have not focused on reductions in force as a result of AI, but more meaningful work, productive employees so we can deliver more for clients every day.

▶8:09HostHeather, can you tell us about a time when you successfully implemented a new employee value proposition at Global Logic? What were the key steps you took and what tangible results did you observe?

▶8:20GuestWe've been really fortunate over the past 6 years to grow our business from $500 million to $2 billion. And inside of that growth, we were acquired by Hitachi. And so that's a lot of evolution for one company over 6 years. We think it's really critical to continue to articulate what makes us Global Logic as our company itself continues to evolve. Also, the industry is continuously evolving, as we just talked about with generative AI. So as that all happens at the same time, we took a pause and we did a very employee-centric approach where we engaged our people. We used interviews, small focus groups. We also did scaled surveys. I went and looked at macro-level data. What's happening inside of the trend? What do new candidates want? What do mature candidates want? And All of that came together and helped us craft our EVP that reflects today who we are, but also where we're going. It was important that we held ourselves to some north star commitments in the EVP as we published that. So there were some elements of it as we communicated it, we said, all right, we realize that this may not be 100% reflective of where we are, but we are going there. And so it was like a self-publication of our commitments. We use that EVP today not only as a brand campaign, but also as a framework to test all of our programming that we do for our employees. And that's really built on 5 pillars. We prioritize people and we provide holistic support. We commit to ongoing learning and development opportunities for personal growth. We will provide engaging and inspiring work that ignites motivation and broadens horizons. We balance and we have flexible workforces to support work-life balance in tangible ways. And we are a high-trust organization. You'll find transparency, candor, and integrity in everything we do. And I think as I talked about a few of the examples that I've shared today, You can see why we hold ourselves to that EVP. So it's not just a campaign, but it's how we think about everything we do for our people.

▶10:45HostHeather, how have you navigated the dynamics of collaborating with your parent company, Hitachi, and what strategies have you found most effective in maintaining alignment and achieving mutual goals?

▶10:57GuestGlobal Logic has been fortunate to join the Hitachi family. An organization like us is deeply rooted in purpose-driven values. This shared foundation is evident in how we operate it. We're governed by a board thoughtfully composed of leaders from across Hitachi's ecosystem, and a key part of the acquisition business case was the potential for synergy, and that synergy is now being realized through several strategic channels. The first, the most common, is sharing support services. We are working across multiple corporate functions, including HR, finance, and IT to deliver services to our people through central teams. Secondly, we're able to deliver GlobalLogic services to Hitachi, enabling them to further accelerate the digital transformation of social infrastructure on a global scale by expanding its core Lumada digital solutions business globally. GlobalLogic's capabilities combined with Hitachi's Lumada enable GlobalLogic to deploy Hitachi's extensive library of digital solutions to the global market. Lastly, Hitachi and Global Logic work together to address the growing market for digital innovation, and we promote the global expansion of Lumada business, advancing Hitachi's mission to increase social, environmental, and economic value of customers by focusing on three areas of environment resilience, security, and safety. And that is ultimately getting us to realize a sustainable society.

▶12:30HostHeather, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶12:34GuestAbsolutely. I think there's 3 things I ask everyone on my HR team to do. The first is around understand the financials, how an organization generates revenue, what elements are prioritized for that organization in that quarter and that fiscal year. Are critical to being a true partner in our role. And while most companies track all the key financial metrics, there's usually one or two that are underperforming or receiving heightened focus from investors, the board, or other stakeholders. Identify that metric, understand how you in your role can impact that positively, and that will make you a high performer. The second is know your organization's direction and strategic goal. Know what are the levers that are critical to executing that current strategy and what needs to evolve to meet the business objectives over the next 3 years. This can often include expanding into new geographies, launching new service lines, entering new markets, and it's equally important to understand not only what those are, But why? What is that going to enable in terms of the growth trajectory, profitability lever, et cetera? So 1 and 2 go very closely hand in hand. And the 3rd, take the time to develop trust. This is more than just knowing your key customers, and I use the word customers intentionally, inside the organization, but also know how to help them and do it. Deliver on your promises. Deliver on the results that are impactful to the organization's future. Don't be seen as a barrier, seen as an elevator. Do it with poise. Do it with professionalism, and you will succeed.

▶14:30HostHeather, thanks so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶14:35GuestThank you. It was my pleasure.