Silicon Labs’ Serena Townsend, Chief People Officer, The Importance of Adapting

Hi Christina, thanks for having me. My name is Serena and my pronouns are also she/her/hers. This question makes me laugh because I think I had about 17 answers by the time I landed in HR. Like many other children, I wanted to be a marine biologist for a really long time until I saw the movie Jaws a little too young, so that changed my trajectory a bit. I landed in a lot of the humanities fields as I was going through college. I ended up with a psychology degree with a sociology minor and was going to go on a path to social work and thinking about getting my PhD in psychology, but I took a little bit of a left turn and ended up in recruiting and loved it. I didn't really set out to be in HR at the time, but certainly here I am today. It was a really good fit for my background.

A couple of facets to that. One thing you may not know about me is that I grew up internationally for most of my life. I spent almost all of my childhood in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. The reason I mention that is because I think it has led me to seek out companies with international teams. I love the diversity of that, the problem solving of that, and I'm really comfortable in those environments where there are a lot of facets to the human experience. The other piece is just growing up in all of those different places and understanding that there's a lot of difference in the way we each solve problems and go through life. Being able to bring that human-centered lens into the workplace was really exciting. Blending that international experience with my own lens around humans and people has been a great foundational element in getting me into HR and then into a leadership role as well.

When I reflect back to how HR was when I first started, there's a massive shift. I remember when I was in recruiting, I thought I was going to stay in that for a long time because I didn't want to be on the other side of the house where I'm developing policies and finding all the ways to say no. It's so different than that now. The concept of true business partnership and consultation, and being able to add that unique lens of impact on our people and forming our decision making with how we can influence people's outcomes, is a really important piece. The other thing I would add is that partnership model is really important. I'm expected to know deeply how the business functions, how teams interact, and I have to bring that to my job. It's a really important part of it now, and it didn't used to be, at least in my role and the way I experienced HR. It makes it so much more exciting, and the problems are so much more complex. The only other thing I would add is the breadth of the work we do on the HR side is now so much more diverse and vast. Especially in the last 18 months, there's no playbook for a lot of the stuff we're doing today. I'm trying to figure out how to reimagine the workplace, balance flexibility for employees with building community and connection, handle our pandemic response, and roll in initiatives around DEI and learning. The scope of what we need to tackle from an employee experience lens has quadrupled from when I started in HR.

Let me back up a little bit because I've thought a lot about the term culture. There are fundamental programs and initiatives we're driving, and I'll talk about those in a minute, but one of the things that's important for me as my north star is that culture is really about the hundreds of decisions I make every day and how I interact with people as a leader and a team member. All of those combined create the culture of our intentional culture at Silicon Labs. Most importantly, for the last 18 months, you're really tested on that when things are tough and challenging. I try to keep that north star on the fundamentals of respect, empathy, trust, and compassion, and what's the right thing to do in this particular case, which is one of our core values: do the right thing. Grounding myself in that before we make decisions on programmatic changes is an important concept for me. We have definitely widened our focus on how we think about supporting our employees. There's a great need for thinking about how to improve and protect people's wellness, their physical safety, and their mental and emotional health, and how we help people balance all the things coming at them. From a culture perspective, we're also looking at making sure people have the flexibility they need and that we can adapt and personalize the approach as we go, depending on what people need from us to support them. Some of the more traditional programs around supporting employee needs from a community building perspective include introducing quite a few new employee resource groups, which are really important community builders and places of connection. The main point is how do you step back and look holistically at the employee experience and identify really good targeted interventions to make sure every person feels supported, at least as best we can. That has meant really different things in the last 18 months.

That's a great question. One thing we've been spending a lot of focus on is normalizing the conversation. Taking the opportunity in our town halls, providing managers with tools and resources on what to do when they see someone withdrawing or how to handle a situation where someone is really struggling personally. Being able to talk about it often, in a way that is supportive to our employees, so that one more person comes forward to say, 'I'm struggling in this way and I need additional support,' and that being okay. That's the big focus of what I've been personally trying to do and what we've been driving at the company. Some of the things we've been rolling out include our ERG called BEAN at Silicon Labs, which is focused on wellness and how we best support our employees holistically as they go through this unprecedented amount of change and stress. We've also come from some benefits design where we're looking at what new programs, benefits, and policies we can add so that people have easier access to mental health support and providers. Tackling that in a number of ways so that we can touch the most amount of people is what we've been focused on.

When I think back to the early days of the pandemic, one of the guiding principles for all of us was this concept of flexibility. We don't know what we are going to need from one week to the next; it's been so drastically different as new information comes at us. How can we provide flexibility for our employees so we can adapt and personalize our approach? It translated to moving as best we could to a remote virtual work environment and putting trust into our employees, empowering them to work in ways that match their needs at the time. That was a huge pivot for our organization, and many others. The central concept was: you've got a lot you're dealing with, we are here to support you, we're going to give you the tools and information and support as best we can, we're going to accommodate for you personally as best we can because we know your situation is going to change. Gone were the days of creating a bunch of policies around it. It was more about how do we create or adjust our culture so that we are really meeting people where they are, being able to iterate and adapt as we go, and saying that's okay for employees and managers to give a whole bunch of latitude. Sometimes people are looking for the box and specific swim lanes, but there's just none to be had right now.

I'm excited about this question. We all have an opportunity to innovate on our roles, especially on the people team. At Silicon Labs, we have an event every year called the Tech Symposium. It's a chance for our engineering teams to come together and highlight some of the innovative work they've done on our products and processes. About a year and a half ago, we had our first HR entry ever. The reason I mention that is because it's so important to think about your job just like an engineer would. How can I bring some creative new thinking to the team and the job I do? The project we highlighted was using design thinking and agile processes to revamp and redesign our university recruiting strategy. The core point was that there are so many best practices happening in our software teams across our organization, and all of those same concepts can apply just the same to our people processes. We've done a lot of interesting new work led by someone on my team named Sam Wiseman, who has been an amazing force of nature around implementing agile HR, working in sprints so that we have a tempo and cadence to the job we do, and we can estimate our work just like a software team can. Again, bringing those design thinking concepts to make sure we are designing and delivering programs that matter for people and fit our global footprint.

Me and every other HR professional, I'm sure. It's really the area around back to work, hybrid work policy, flexible work policy. There are so many buzzwords out there, and nobody knows how this will all play out. We're all trying to read the tea leaves and think about what mix of synchronous and asynchronous work is best for teams. I don't know that anyone has the answer to that. Everyone has opinions, but no one really has the answer. So I'm spending a lot of time with our business team members across the organization, getting input from our employees on what's working for them and what's not, thinking about how to apply that after it's safe to return to the office. Things that might appear simple on paper, even high-level design decisions, become incredibly complex when you're applying them to a global organization with 19 locations and very different norms and employment law. It's been really interesting to work on. I have a really great HR network and roundtable that I'm a part of, and we spend a lot of time thinking through what those shared workspaces look like. What do you use conference rooms for anymore? It's not really to do work anymore; it's really to build community. Turning everything on its head and anticipating what that might look like is pretty challenging. Also, ensuring that we are keeping safety and health our top priority across the globe. We have a whole bunch of people doing an amazing job as site health teams, reacting and adapting to local guidance and making sure our essential workers are protected. Those two things are part of my everyday job for sure, on top of other day-to-day stuff.

That's a great question. I'm going to touch on this a little bit and then come up with something new too. The workplace trends are also an incredible opportunity. There's so much ability for us to rethink workplace norms, the way work is done, how that translates to culture, and the impact on so many different things. I see that as a huge opportunity that's going to be years and years in the making. At this point, fast forward, we'll have all kinds of articles and white papers written about this period of time. The other opportunity, at least in my world, is that we are going through a tremendous amount of organizational change. When I think about that combined with what people are dealing with in the world today, there's no shortage of crises we're all having to handle. The ability to adapt is a fundamental piece of how we're all going to be successful. There was an interesting McKinsey article that came out recently about adaptability, and I've been thinking a lot about how that applies to organizations and how we build resilience. The concept of change management isn't a one-and-done situation. We have to figure out how to build teams and organizations and equip individuals with the ability and the toolbox to tackle new problems and come out successfully on the other side, not totally burnt to a crisp. I don't have the answer for it, but I spend a lot of time thinking about the opportunity I have to lead through that)Skip that our leadership team has to equip people to be successful at that. I think that's a really interesting part that employers will play moving into this next stage.

That's a good question. Historically, we've kind of measured outcomes, like engagement scores and retention. I think those things are important markers, but they are poor proxies. There's just so much under the covers when you look at aggregate engagement scores. One of the things that's important to recognize if we're thinking about how effective we are at leading people through change is being able to talk with our employees about their experiences. The way we measure should be a little bit different. One of the things we're doing is looking at different assessments. For example, we are partnering with a company called Canary, who are wonderful, and we've been looking at an inclusion index. How do people feel about their sense of belonging at Silicon Labs? Are we doing all the things that will impact employees in a way where they feel supported, their voice is heard, and they have a seat at the table? There's new and innovative thinking on the questions we're asking and why these metrics are important, and what we should throw out as a check in the box that isn't really getting the information we want. We're in the midst of exploring and doing some testing to try to understand what that new set of qualitative and quantitative measurements should be.

I mentioned earlier the Tech Symposium, where we were able to highlight some of the ways we were innovative. That was a really significant moment for me. When I reflect back on why, I was excited and proud of the team. They challenged themselves to identify as a team worthy of that Tech Symposium and worthy of being judged on our innovation, having that seat at the table equally. It was amazing to see people, including me, who were intimidated by that, able to get to the other side and be proud of the work and demonstrate that. The central theme for me, what drives me as a person, is being in the trench, working shoulder to shoulder with people you admire and respect, and it's really hard. Then being able to get to the other side and look back and think, 'Wow, that's a really significant achievement.' I was so proud of the team and what I knew was such a mental challenge. I knew the work was good, but that mental challenge of 'I belong here, in this space, and my job is worthy and it's equal' was awesome. I'll never forget that.

I'm trying to edit myself for the five words that come to mind. For me, empathy certainly is a cornerstone. That is basic humanity to me, frankly. In the role I play and in any leadership role, it's a necessity to be able to stand in someone else's shoes and think about how this program, my words, or this work decision is going to impact that person. Sometimes you adjust the decision, but oftentimes it suggests the messaging and how you manage change and the downstream pieces you need to put into effect. Recognizing that the personal experience behind your team members is going to be super critical for you to understand and at least be sensitive to moving forward. That's a pretty key ingredient. And not to keep putting words in there, but I do think the adaptability piece is incredibly important, especially with the way the world is changing. You have to throw out your concepts of 'I do things in this way and that's really worked for me.' The world is changing, and you have to pattern match in a different way. You have to be open to the possibility that your plan A isn't going to be a fit anymore, moving to plan B, and having the vulnerability to ask for help, seek other opinions, adjust, and sometimes say that your first response wasn't right and we're going to try things a different way. I know I'm giving you two answers, but I couldn't pick.

My brain goes in two different directions, so if you'll humor me for two things. One is, I get asked fairly regularly about my path to this role. My honest answer is it was not linear and it can look very eclectic on paper. I was in recruiting for five years, in program management, in HRBP world. I'm not saying it was a very clear roadmap in my mind at all times, but I went to where I was curious, where I had a lot of interest, and where I could add value. I had the faith that I would figure out the next step as I went. The amazing part is now, where I am today, I use those components so much. Someone could think of that as a detour, but understanding how systems are built and how data flows is incredibly important to my role. Trust your instincts on finding where you add value and where you want to solve interesting problems, and it's all beneficial in the end. The other thing that comes to mind when we're talking about resilience and adaptability is a very strong visual. About three years ago, I went on a bucket list trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. It was amazing. The most surprising part was that it's incredibly physical and very hard. You summit the mountain at night, and it takes you 10 hours trudging in crazy hard conditions. I can tell you a lot about the climb and the physicality of it, but the one overriding thing I will remember forever is the humanity of it, the giving and receiving of support. The reason I've been thinking about that trip a lot, particularly that night, is because that's how I feel a lot of the times going through this pandemic and all the challenging things coming at us in the world today. When you work beside people, in all your relationships, there are these moments where you have to be the giver and then you have to be the receiver in equal parts, and you sometimes don't know when that's going to be. On that climb up the mountain, one moment in your mind you're like, 'I'm amazing, I did no problem,' and then literally seven minutes later you're crying, laying on the ground, 'I can't go any further.' The mental game of it is unbelievable. Obviously nobody's climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, or maybe they are and good luck to them, but there's a parallel to that. We're all struggling in some way with processing what's going on in the world. You have to be open to the support aspect of it. You really don't know when your time of need is going to come. Give other people grace when they need it, and give yourself grace when you need it. It's a really symbiotic relationship. I've been thinking about that a lot as a parallel to my role today and how to go through life as a parent, a spouse, a mom, a daughter, and all the roles we play.

Thanks, Christina. It was really nice to meet you.