The Come As You Are Culture - Shannon Sisler, Chief People Officer, Crocs

Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks.

Right, so I'm fortunate right now to serve as the Chief People Officer at Crocs. I've been with the organization right under four years. I report directly into our CEO, Andrew Reese. And as somewhat of a non-traditional HR person, I have an undergrad in finance and an MBA. Started my career in consulting with Anderson Consulting back then, or Accenture now, made my way through a lot of financial services organizations, but ultimately I found my way to a consumer product. So that is my background.

Well, we actually donated 860,000 pairs of shoes for a retail value of 40 million dollars during that epidemic, right through our Free Pair for Healthcare initiative. And you know, we were fortunate going into the pandemic that we went into the pandemic in a strong place, but I think we even came out in a better and even stronger place. So it's been a really good journey. I think we've had a lot of lessons along the way. One of the key lessons being, you know, we put in a really strong offensive and defensive strategy, and that has really helped the business accelerate.

Right, so one of the things we take a lot of pride in is our mantra of 'Come as You Are.' And it's really about being your authentic self, both for our consumers and our employees. And our goal is to really have everyone be comfortable in your own shoes. And so as we think about what that looks like, to be honest, it looks different for every person. It's a way we offer a way to provide self-expression opportunities for people. You'll see that we have lots of bright, colorful, different types of shoes, but we also have our fun Jibbitz, which are our charms that go on our shoes. And it's amazing what people want to put on their shoes and how they want to express themselves. And we take a lot of pride in being an opportunity for them to do that.

I think actually we've almost doubled down on that concept of 'Come as You Are.' I think it's really relevant in today's turbulent social environment. I think people are really wanting to get comfortable with who they are and find comfort in their lives. And we've been able to double down on that. We've seen a trend towards comfort, but also a trend towards self-expression, and we're enabling that to happen, not only with our consumers but also our employees.

Yeah, so first of all, we operate with employees in 22 countries, so the situation is quite different depending on where you are around the world. However, what I can say is that three quarters of our workforce actually sit on the front lines, so they are in our retail stores or distribution centers. And we've seen they have been remarkable at being on the front lines, making sure that we're able to ship shoes and we're able to sell them in retail stores. So those folks have been at work most days. They've taken little breaks based on what's going on in their respective countries, but we've really been able to have them at work. And then our office workers have had a different experience, but we have kept our offices open to the best of our ability and just provided flexibility for people and a lot of safety protocols all throughout the world to try to keep our colleagues safe.

Right, I think we've had a lot of learnings like other organizations, but whether it's temperature checking or wearing masks, or really looking at all of our physical space and making sure that we've got good distance between people, it might even be shift time starts and ends and when people take lunch breaks, things like that, and being really thorough with how we run our facilities. And we've done that all over the globe. And then just really being clear and transparent with communication and setting the expectations and holding firm with those. The other thing that we've done is really encourage people to take care of themselves. One way we've done that is through vaccine incentives. So we offered $100 US dollars, for example, for our American workforce if they go out and get their vaccines. We're happy to send them to do that with $100. And so I think we're trying lots of different ways. We are encouraging testing and we'll help people get that. We've given some time off to go get it if you need it, if you have a COVID sickness. So we've done a lot of things to make sure the safety and well-being of our workforce.

Yeah, I think it's actually both of those reasons. One is solidarity with our workforce. As I said, three quarters of our workforce has to go to work every day, and we felt the office employees, if we could do it in a safe way, we wanted them to also have that experience to the best of our ability. But then also, I think we as an organization do believe that in-person interaction is critical for maintaining a strong culture. And we were fortunate to go into the pandemic with top decile engagement, and I'm proud to say that we've retained that, we've even ticked up a little bit in the pandemic. And I think it's because we've made sure that interaction and transparency and communication has really continued, if not even strengthened during this time. And we believe that's critical to maintaining our culture in the future.

Yeah, I mean, the good news is we have good communication tools going into this, but I think we once again doubled down on them. So if you think about things like town halls that we have with our employees in different regions, there were times during the pandemic where we were almost doing weekly town halls with our whole global workforce, saying, 'Here's what we know, here's what we don't know, here's what we're doing, here's what we need you to do, and let's open it up for questions and see what you want to ask leadership.' And so there were times that we were doing that every single week if we had to, to make sure that everyone was on board and really knew what the plan was, because the plan was shifting week to week to make sure that we were taking the right actions.

Yeah, I think where we've landed is that we will not require vaccines, but we're going to highly encourage vaccines. And like I said, the incentive is one way to do that, but also education is an important thing that we've done. So if you look at, for example, our Ohio distribution center, we've literally run sessions where we've had experts come in and talk about the vaccine, the pros, the cons, and open it up for questions and let people become informed. And I think that's really important to provide that education so that people can make good decisions for themselves and their families.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, well, we've spent a lot of time thinking about that. And we've always had, I think, some different types of flexibilities in our workforce, but we have taken this opportunity to define what that flexibility is going to look like. And we have taken a role-based approach for how we're going to handle flexibility in the workplace. And so we have designed four personas that really set out expectations for the percent of time, based on the persona, that we expect to see people in the office. So for example, our Residents, which is one persona, those folks are going to be at their workplace 90 to 100% of the time. They are in retail stores, distribution centers, maybe working the front desk. They're going to be there most of the time. Versus our Explorers are people that are working from home. They might be IT developers, they might be remote sales people. Those folks might only come in up to 10% of the time, don't have a defined desk in the workplace. However, then we have our Collaborators and Connectors, and those folks will be in at least two to three days a week. And so we have gone ahead and mapped all of our roles to those personas all around the globe. People know what their personas are, and they know what the expectations are of their role going forward, depending on the timing of their country and where they're living, and what the expectation will be when we do turn up all of our offices again and have people fully in the office. And we've taken that approach because I think it's really important to be transparent and help people set realistic expectations. We're not going to be a 100% virtual company. We've decided that that's not in our best interest, and we want people to be able to make plans for themselves, their families, their children, and be able to plan accordingly. So we've already done that work, and people know what it's going to look like, and some people are already starting to head back in on a very regular basis, which we're happy to see.

Right now, all of our folks that are in offices have assigned desks. We will see that evolve over time. So people that are only going to be in the office two or more days a week might not have an assigned desk, might have a hot desk that we use. We will use technology to help us with reservations for what those desks look like, but it is going to be different country to country because our office spaces look and operate differently across the world.

I think our reliance on Microsoft Teams has gone up exponentially over the last year and a half, and I think people are feeling really comfortable being on video most of the time. If anything, I think we're now starting to think about how do we communicate tips and tricks for when you're on, when you're off, what the expectations are, because people's hours are getting a little bit confused between 'I'm at home, I'm at work, when am I actually expected to work and participate?' And so we've got some tips and tricks coming out around that. But we will continue to rely on technology. But I think for our remote employees, utilizing Teams has really actually helped us connect more. Those people feel more connected than ever. When there used to be a meeting room of people and you were the only person remote, it was hard to interact. Now if you've got everyone on a screen, it's fair game, everyone can interact similarly. So we want to retain some of the good things that came out of this shift to technology as well.

Yeah, I think the question being asked right now is really, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And I think our employees have worked really hard over the last 18 months to help us navigate this pandemic and get us to the growth trajectory that we have right now. And so we're trying to find ways to sustain energy and help people balance their personal and professional lives and still meet the requirements of the business. And so we're really spending time thinking about how do we enable well-being. How do we get people to continue to be engaged? They're highly engaged, it's almost like a startup culture right now, very entrepreneurial. What can we do to grow this organization? And so we just got to keep people healthy. One example of what we've done is we've done what we call Comfort Days. I've told you about the need to help everyone be comfortable in their own shoes, and so around the globe we've done Comfort Days, where they're extra holidays where everyone's offline and we're encouraging you to take a break. And we think that's important.

I think a huge percentage of our population wears Crocs at work. And once you start wearing them, they're so comfortable you don't want to take them off. So if they don't start that way, they usually get there pretty fast.

Right, so I think you highlighted an important trend, which is a shift to digital commerce, and we definitely have seen that shift in our business too. It's becoming a large portion of how we sell our product. However, we've also seen a real interesting and continuing return to our stores, and so our retail stores are doing quite well. But I think one of the things we've really leaned into is providing a good experience. And what we find is people want to come in and personalize their shoes and get them instantaneously. So I think it is going to continue to be a mix of retail and digital commerce, but how you take that omnichannel view and provide those experiences both online and in the store is going to continue to evolve.

I think probably one of the best resources I've had came from a chairman of the board I used to work with at a financial services organization. When I very first became a head of HR, he told me, 'This can be a really lonely job, and it's going to be important for you to create a network of people outside of the organization that you can rely on, that you can get coaching and feedback, talk with them, and have good supporters.' And so I took that advice to heart. I've created a really solid network of people all over the world and lots of different functions and disciplines, and I rely heavily on that network, especially as I'm navigating difficult times, which the last year plus has definitely been challenging. But that network of people and investing the time has paid dividends, and hopefully I've been able to help others along the way as well.

Yeah, I think there's lots of traits. I think the last year has really emphasized for me the importance of really thinking strategically and making swift decisions, and making decisions with not all the information. Sometimes it's important, even if you have 80% of the information, you got to go. You got to tell people, 'This is why we're making the decision, this is what we're going to do with it, and if we get it wrong, we'll fix it and we'll iterate.' And telling them that up front, I think that swift decisioning with a strategic lens is critical, especially during times of high change.

I think if I were leaving a piece of advice behind tomorrow, it would be really aligned with my personal mission, which is to support the individual and collaborative growth of people. And I find that if you really genuinely support people around you growing and developing and continuing to learn, it's amazing what you can accomplish together. And I've been so proud of the teams I've gotten to work with and ultimately the organizations and how they've succeeded. So I think really taking time to help each other grow and learn, both yourself and others, is critical for all of our futures.

Thank you so much for having me. Have a good day.