Ms. Payal Sahni - Pfizer Executive VP & Chief Human Resources Officer on Colleges & Careers

Sure. You know, this recent headlines with Afghanistan has really brought out memories for me. And I almost forgot all of the things that I have been through since I came to the US. I lived... I wasn't born in Afghanistan, but my parents, grandparents, everyone was born in Kabul. I was born in Delhi, India, but just stayed there for about a year. My extended family, that's just the nature of it. And my parents strived for a better life, so my father kept trying to come to the United States. I remember my mom still telling me stories that my grandfather said, 'You're nuts, you're going to go out there and there's no jobs, you're going to end up washing dishes.' And he said, 'I don't care, because I think that the future is going to be brighter for us and for my little family.' I don't have any siblings, so he just said, 'Let's go.' He left before my mother did and went to India to be able to get a visa from Afghanistan to India and waited for us there. A few months later, we ended up joining him and made our way to the United States and began a life. I was dropped into the first grade in Queens, New York, and I had to figure out and do a lot of sacrifices, making a lot of sacrifices so that I could have a better life. And lo and behold, my mother's aspirations for me were a lot of the things that she didn't get a chance to do, which were going to college, having choices, whatever those choices were, being equipped to handle life in the way that I wanted to handle it versus being told or being expected to do something that I didn't want to. For her, college education was a big one. So they worked really hard. I had financial aid, I had uncles that pitched in so that I could go to college. And then my mother's aspiration after that was, 'Don't stop now, go for your master's degree. And if you settle down, if you want to do something, that's fine, but I don't want you to look back and say you didn't have the opportunity.' That landed me at Pfizer. So I'm so grateful. And when I look at all of those refugees, me being one of them, that came into this country in the United States and having the choices that I did, I just feel my heart still breaking for so many that may never have the opportunity that I did.

You know, such is life, right? And I think I learned a lot of that because of my culture, my background, which my family basically put one foot in front of the other and they're a bunch of entrepreneurial people just figuring out what to do next. For me, I loved biology in high school, I was really good at it, and my parents' aspiration was like, 'Be a professional in something.' So I went in pre-med in college, and I didn't like it. I loved the science of it, but there was an aspect that was just not bringing me joy. It wasn't because I wasn't doing well, I was doing fairly well, I just wasn't enjoying myself. One of my advisors who I sought out said, 'Well, why don't you...' and funny enough, he said, 'Why don't you try psychology?' And the whole science of thinking about why you make the choices that you do, what goes through your mind, and life is full of experiences. So I continued down that track and finished undergrad, and then I said I wanted to go further. I wasn't sure how much further, like did I want to become a psychologist? That was my sort of aspiration if I needed a guiding light. So I continued that, and one year into my graduate school, I remember my father asking me, 'What are you going to do after you graduate?' And I thought, 'Well, I haven't really thought about that, I haven't thought that far.' And so he said, 'Why don't you start talking to some of your professors?' And I came upon an amazing advisor, he's since passed, but he said to me, 'Come audit one of my classes.' And I learned about why people make choices, why the brown-eyed girl versus the blue-eyed girl, all those experiments. I had never even really heard of human resources. And he said, 'I've got some folks that I know that are at Pfizer. They look for summer internships. You may not get paid at all, but I'll give you some credits, and why don't you go experience it?' So I landed myself an internship, interviewed for it, and they gave me the role. Right before my internship was supposed to end before the summer, they offered me a job and said, 'We could really use you.' It was a time where Pfizer was growing, we had just embarked on a new product launch and we were about to acquire another company, so they said, 'We could really use the resources, you're trained now.' I called my parents and said, 'You're not going to believe this, but I got a job offer and I'm not even done.' And they said, 'Are you kidding me? You got a job offer and you're not even done?' I said, 'Yes, and by the way, they offered to pick up my last year of school.' They said, 'Why are you calling us? Go accept the offer.' And I did. Throughout my time, 24 years later, I'm at Pfizer in this role. I just never said no to experiences. I have always stayed in HR but different parts of HR. I tried to learn the vastness of Pfizer, so many different functions, and the best people I've come across in industry, the best scientists, the best finance people, reputation, philanthropy, all of the giving back that Pfizer does. It was never about where I would be in three years. It was about doing things that I learned from, that I enjoyed, that I had a personal fulfillment and commitment. And I was just so excited every single day because no day was the same. And 24 years later, I can tell you the same. Yesterday was nothing like it is today, and I love it.

When I joined Pfizer, it was called 'Personnel,' and then it moved to 'Employee Resources.' I remember getting into the elevator when I saw the change and it said 'ER,' and I thought, 'This is not a good way to market our human resources function.' And then it evolved to HR. And so has the function, right? Over the years that I've been in it, it was much more focused on administration, hiring, terminations, benefits, compensation. But it has grown to be so much more. It's about organizational effectiveness, human motivation, productivity, culture, leadership, and it continues on and on. Right now, in this moment, managers and everyone else is struggling with, 'How do I grow my career when I'm not in the office every single day? How do I engage differently? How do I ensure that my teams are diverse and diverse voices are being listened to when I may not see everybody on a regular basis and I may see some more than others? How do I keep that balance?' Such big issues and challenging issues that make you really reflect back. People need some guidance, and HR that function has been the carrier of a lot of those opportunities and roles and ideas for our leaders and for the people that we support and for the colleagues thinking, 'How do I do this? Where do I go? What if I have concerns about...' We help in shaping how work gets done. What are the ways in which you attempt to do your work? How do you reimagine it? How do you think about using our digital tools in a very different way because the workforce is evolving? So we touch all of those core functions that I mentioned earlier. We still have to come up with unique benefits that are going to meet people for the moments that matter for them the most, pay them equitably, and give them an incentive plan that excites them and motivates them to do their best job. At the same time, we have to make sure that we structure the work so that they can do their best work and that there's fairness, that everyone's voices can be heard. We're the carrier of that culture and the torch that everybody looks to to say, 'How can we evolve the...' You have to really struggle for answers. There is never going to be an answer that everybody is going to be happy with. It's hard decisions, but it's decisions that you have to say, 'What are the principles that can drive it? What are they? Are they speaking our values? Are they allowing us to be fair and consistent in how we approach it?' Knowing that we will never make everyone happy because we're made up of the world that we live in, and rarely is everyone happy with the choice. So again, not for the faint of heart, but a place where if you like to think about things hard, if you like to create an environment where people can do their best work, pick human resources. It's a fantastic place to be.

Yeah, it's a very good question. No, I think our hiring, we obviously look for the best talent, but there's a filter that we use. And our filter is very similar to the filter that we use to drive every decision that we make at Pfizer, which is around our values. We've got four core values that we really use for our key decision making: courage, excellence, equity, and joy. And we ask questions of our candidates to ensure that people can really abide by those values, no matter which country location you are in. It's a good footprint for us all. And what we love is, you might have a technical expertise that obviously we would look for, specific engineering skills or scientific skills, but the behaviors and leadership that we expect around our values is consistent for all.

Oh gosh. I think I kept following my passion, and my passion was about making a difference, and learning and gaining new and different experiences, and being in an environment where my personal values aligned with the company's values. And so I never found a reason to leave because, if I was looking for why would I leave, I would leave a company because maybe I wasn't happy with the boss, maybe I wasn't happy with the work, and maybe I wasn't happy with the pay, and last but not least, I wasn't happy with the values. And none of those ever came to light for me because I had to not just look at how do I get my next promotion, but how do you get your new experience. Because if you're not enjoying what you love, no amount of money is going to make you happy. It's just not. I've seen it, I've tested it. People leave for other reasons. It's usually not compensation, it's usually not anything like that. It is usually because they stop growing, they stop learning new things, and they don't feel respected, or they don't feel like their values align. And last but not least, actually, is also who they work for. If they don't respect them, then they make different choices. But for me, I've always found that sense of discovery, every time I turn the corner, I couldn't find a better match. But you're part of that question of like, how did I get here? I think it's because I put my head down and did my job right. I tried to do the best where I was and contribute the most that I could, and promotions came, opportunities came. A lot of the moves I made actually didn't even come with a promotion, they just came with a new experience, and I just embraced it because I was excited about the experience. And I would definitely encourage people to do that because if you're not happy, you will never be able to do your best work.

Yeah, I think it's definitely evolving very fast, and the pandemic accelerated that movement. We can figure out ways to get our workforce to do their best work but in a very different way. It is no longer face time in an office, which by the way, at Pfizer we weren't that way anyway. People had a lot of flexibility pre-pandemic, and we were headed that way even more so. So that hasn't been a new thing for us. But I think engagement, growth, and development, we've got to leverage different mediums, different forums. We've got to actually reduce meetings and emails, right? Which is something I certainly try to do. Even if I could control the amount of emails and invites and things like that I get at work, I get a ton on my personal email, I get a ton on LinkedIn, I get a ton on other sorts of social media, and it's overwhelming. And that is what our workforce is dealing with. We've got to figure out ways to declutter so that our colleagues can actually advance their job in the best way possible and be most productive. That's one major area, and that's pretty big. The other area is around our efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's something that I'm very passionate about, making sure that everybody is seen, heard, and cared for. And that's one where we make room for everybody so that everyone has an opportunity for growth and development. It isn't just concentrated in one area or another. And third, but not last, is a lot of our technology is full of data. We have a lot of data, and it's not about mining and watching people, it's not about that. I'm not policing anybody or anything, but we should be leveraging the data that we do have more effectively for insights to make our work more productive, more easy, ensure that we're not spending too much time on processes that don't make sense. For an HR organization, productivity is huge, so we should be looking at that. We should be looking at where our employees are spending their time and using those insights that we're getting from the data that we do have for good and to make our employees even more productive.

Yeah, I would say definitely the ones that you mentioned are top of my list as well. I think instead of the fields, I mean, for sure, digital capabilities, I would rather go with capabilities than even fields because, going back to the experiences, if you have the right capabilities, you can apply them to multiple different disciplines. I think about my background having psychology coming to HR. I have hired people now on my team that actually came from a business background. They were running country organizations, they were general managers, and their perspectives because of the skills and experiences that they have allow them to bring a unique skill set. Digital tools, no matter what field, digital used to be that it's got to be in your technology area, right in your digital function. Now we're at a place where everybody needs digital capabilities. We need to be able to interface and figure out solutions that will meet our audience and our employees, our patients, our communities in a way that they're used to receiving information. So those kinds of capabilities are important. I believe also collaboration, I mean it's a general one, but what are you uniquely going to bring to the table that others, that robots can't? You have to bring different skills, you have to bring problem solving skills. But I think from a collaboration standpoint, you look at most recent technology advancements or anything, the reason why it came to fruition is because multiple disciplines came together. And so bringing that together requires you to see the world and to see a problem from multiple dimensions, and for that you need to be prepared to bring different experiences to the table. So I think a lot of those fields are emerging, but most importantly, those capabilities that you're going to need are so vast and broad that focusing on the capabilities will allow you to be competitive no matter what the new hot job might be in the future.

Oh, you know, it's funny because as I mentioned earlier, this is why I love what I do and where I do it, because no day is the same. But usually, I have multiple stakeholders. I have a lot of our executive team members, different functions that I look after, as well as partnering with my CEO and then running a team myself. So every day it could be an issue about a vaccine issue, mainly COVID, and how do we make sure that the benefits that we have for our employees are appropriate? Setting up a process for selection of our employees, what benefits will we have, and making sure all of the communication and a process is in place to do that. The third could be a grievance that I get from an employee that says, 'I don't feel like I was treated fairly.' And then my favorite ones are the ones that say, 'Hey, I really love the way that you're shaping human resources because it finally feels like the employees are at the center.' So I love all aspects of that. But I always try, it doesn't always work, but I try to always keep a little bit of block of time so that I am not running from meeting to meeting and I have some time to think. For me, I love going out for a walk whenever the weather allows me to do it. What I love to do the most is the creative. I love bringing innovation and new ideas, new ways of operating. This past year, I understood that in addition to vacation time, people just were not taking it. And May is Mental Health and Wellness Month, right? So we partnered with Arianna Huffington's company, Thrive Global. We had them come for a session with all Pfizer employees, and we offered every colleague, no matter where you were across the globe, one day off to be used as a wellness day. And so it was to say, 'We care about you. We know you have your vacation, but just take this one day and do it for yourself.' So coming up with that concept with my team, I was really excited.

Definitely. I would say take advantage of gaining as many different experiences as you can, because life for me has been more of a process of elimination rather than saying that this is where I need to go or this is where I want to go. And you learn a lot of what you like to do from doing things that you don't like to do as well. Each one gives you a different perspective. So take advantage of every opportunity.

My pleasure, and thank you. Thanks for the opportunity.