Strengthening Company Culture and Identity in the Evolving DEI Landscape

Creating and maintaining a consistent culture, identity and values can be tricky for a big company, especially when you have nearly 40,000 employees and operate in close to 30 countries worldwide. The onus is on the company to build community while operating in many different, often complex regulatory environments. In this episode, KBR Chief People Officer Jenni Myles speaks about the challenges of building and strengthening corporate culture in never-ending unprecedented times, about how recent U.S. policy changes provided the catalyst to accelerate KBR’s people strategy, and about the importance of creating spaces for employees to belong, connect and grow.

Transcript

IN ORBIT: A KBR PODCAST

Season 5, Episode 9

Strengthening Company Culture and Identity in the Evolving DEI Landscape

INTRODUCTION

John Arnold

Hello, I'm John, and this is In Orbit.

People of Earth and probably a lot of AI bots, welcome to the podcast. In the car at the gym, sipping coffee at home, plugging away at work, well, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, we are grateful that you're listening in and staying in our orbit.

If you've listened to the podcast before, you know that KBR does things that matter; working in areas such as national security, defense, space exploration and security, energy transition, decarbonization, cybersecurity, and the list goes on and on.

When you're delivering solutions to the world's tough challenges, you need to be a magnet for people who can take on those challenges, who want to take on those challenges. KBR has made it its mission to attract the best and brightest, not only by giving them opportunities to do amazing things, but also by creating an environment where they can belong, connect with each other and their communities and grow in their careers.

This season alone, we've talked to subject matter experts in space domain awareness, digital engineering, in clean fuels and lithium technologies and energy consulting. None of these experts would be talking to us if they didn't think KBR was a great place to work. Thank goodness they do.

That's by design and it's part of a people strategy that has been driven by data, employee feedback, best practices, and lessons learned during a period of history in which it seems the world is in nearly constant upheaval.

So what is that strategy? How is KBR making it work? And how are we meeting the brief when it comes to making sure people feel included? Well, you're about to find out. And I am thrilled to welcome, at long last, KBR Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer Jenni Myles to the podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Jenni.

INTERVIEW

Jenni Myles

Thank you so much, John. It is a real pleasure to be here.

John Arnold

Well, as I said, “thrilled” is an understatement. I'm very excited about this episode and hopefully, as we were just discussing before we got started, that anyone inside or outside the organization will get something out of this. But before we get into all things KBR People and/or human resources, would you please just tell our audience about yourself and your career and your journey to KBR?

Jenni Myles

Yeah, happy to. So interestingly, my background, I started out doing a law degree because I was particularly argumentative when I was a teenager, and I thought that was the right career for me. I also knew it was a good baseline for any career in business.

So I didn't choose to practice law. I actually ended in HR because a friend recommended it to me and grew up through manufacturing. I spent a spell in consulting, and then didn't really find that was the right career for me at the time.

Moved into the security industry and I was there for over 20 years before I had this call to talk to a company that apparently worked from the bottom of the ocean to outer space. And at the time I'd never heard of KBR. And five years later, I love this company, best job I've ever had.

John Arnold

That's fantastic. Number one, the law thing fits. I can see you being a lawyer. I didn't know you were argumentative. That's interesting. But security, that's very fascinating transition that you were there for so long, in that industry.

Jenni Myles

Yeah, professional services, albeit a different talent group, different population, but the company I worked for had over half a million employees globally and we were in up to 120 different countries. So I saw the world when I worked for them, including spending four years living in the US, which was fabulous.

John Arnold

Where in the U.S. did you live?

Jenni Myles

It was in Florida, actually.

John Arnold

Oh, okay. Excellent. Very close by. I'm in Georgia in Atlanta. Coming to a company like KBR from a company that had half a million people, although different industries, you had big industry experience. I remember when you first came on board just prior to pandemic or during pandemic actually.

And that brings me to my next question. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for precedented times. The word unprecedented has been tossed around a lot since you joined just because of all of the global disruptions that we've had to life and to the ways companies do business.

From a people or human resources perspective, how has KBR managed and maybe how have you personally managed to mitigate or stay ahead of those kinds of challenges?

Jenni Myles

And it's interesting. I think that it is quite incredible how much the whole world has been through over the last few years. And COVID was exactly when I joined. In fact, I'd accept the offer to join KBR before the U.K. went into lockdown. Stuart [Bradie], our [KBR president and] CEO was very keen for me to experience what it was like to be hired remotely whenever we were having to do that with hundreds of employees around the world.

But the first thing I'd say is that during these unprecedented times, the backbone of how we've been able to be responsive and support our people has been through my own HR team. I was incredibly fortunate to inherit a very capable, very professional, very agile HR team who are committed to delivering for their internal customers so that they can deliver for their external customers.

So no matter what has been thrown at us or what we've chosen to do at pace over the last five years, they're often at the center of things and the resilience and expertise has been invaluable, so they deserve the full credit. But on top of that, I think that the two really critical things for us have been, first of all, listening to our people.

KBR did its first ever company-wide survey during COVID, and since then, that's become a bit of a drum beat with our People Perspective Survey, which really gives us insight into what matters and how people are experiencing life at KBR. And then the other thing that I think has allowed KBR to be successful is the fact that we have leaders who care.

So whether it's from the executive leadership team to project directors and project managers to technical supervisors or frontline leaders in different businesses around the world, those leaders really care about their people, whether they talk about the family feel or people being our secret sauce, that's the golden thread that really pulls through the organization. They always put their people first, which is fantastic to see.

John Arnold

It is an experience just on the employee level that has been fantastic for me, is that the environment at KBR from a leadership perspective and the tight-knit family feeling is not lip service. It really is something that permeates everything that we do.

So if anyone's listening and interested in that, it is truth. That is not lip service. Jenni, you said fantastic company, best job you've ever had. What about KBR makes it a special company to work for?

Jenni Myles

I think there's a couple of things. First of all, we have got an incredible sense of purpose in the organization. I really believe that it's the work we do and how much it matters to society and to the world at large. That's the hook that brings people into this organization.

Now, obviously the purpose can vary depending whether you're on the energy side of the business, the government side of the business, or even frankly my own team, having a great challenge, being able to exercise your mind, it attracts the best and brightest talent because they want to do things that matter and will make a difference.

That's what brings people in. I believe that the thing that keeps people in the organization is our values. So as an organization, we refreshed our values during COVID. I think that they had been getting lived across the organization, but not necessarily articulated in a way that people fully understood what the values were.

But we did some work consulting with our employees and with leaders across the organization and really tried to demonstrate what it is about KBR that makes us different. We know that we're not perfect everywhere, but we also know that our values are not just aspirational.

They guide us when we've got tough decisions to make. They unify us across diverse cultures with all the different markets in which we operate, and we try to live them in our everyday behavior. And I think that is really special and different from most organizations.

John Arnold

One of the things that I've had the privilege of seeing happen in real time and experiencing the benefits of is the evolution of KBR's employee value proposition or EVP. Without giving away any of the secret ingredients, I wonder if you'd tell our audience about KBR's EVP and how the values and the shared purpose that you were just talking about fit into that formula.

Jenni Myles

Happy to. It's funny, because I remember I into the organization, it was in May 2020, and I spent many weeks and months connecting with people on Teams calls and getting to know the organization without being able to poke anybody because we didn't meet in 3D in those days.

But through that process, I pulled together a draft HR strategy, which I thought was really going to help KBR move forward. And I was so looking forward to unveiling it, and so I shared it with Stuart and with the executive leadership team and expecting to get accolades.

This was fantastic, it was really going to move us forward. But instead, Stuart said and said, "That's great, happy with all of that, but what are you doing for our people?" And it was such a brilliant question because I'd been focused on what was my team going to do for the business, but the key in KBR isn't what I'm doing for the business, it's what I'm doing for the people.

And so that really, really crystallized my thinking. And so it wasn't that we then needed to change the strategy, but we needed to turn it around so that we were demonstrating to talent both inside the organization and outside what it was was our unique offering for them.

So in pulling that together, it picks up on that hook, the purpose that I've already mentioned, the wrapper of the values that really keep people in the organization. And then the everyday experience that we're truly trying to differentiate is around belong, connect, and grow. And those are the three facets of the employee experience at KBR that I think are really coming to life and have come to life over the last several years.

It's important not just that we can articulate that to new hires, but then we assess how we're performing against it and we ask our employees how we're performing against it. So the People Perspective Survey that I've already mentioned, that's how we measure whether we are delivering on our values, we're delivering on belong, connect, and grow.

And we're always looking for areas to improve, whether they're subtle or significant or whether they're local or global. The key is people who are talented get to choose where they work. And so every time that we are thinking about how can we be successful as an organization, it is about how can we attract the best and brightest talent? So that's the most important mission that I've got in KBR.

John Arnold

Well, speaking of unprecedented times, many, if not all of the people in the world by now are aware of the current US administration's executive orders that have led many companies including KBR, to make some changes to the ways that they do business in some ways.

But rather than focusing on potentially negative effects, I actually read a LinkedIn post that you posted on May 21st, as opposed to being hamstrung by COVID, for example, or any number of other things, it seems like anytime something happens at KBR, that it always is a time for the company to ramp up a strategy that was already in place.

And that certainly seems to be the case now that in the aftermath of the executive orders that the people strategy has been accelerated and KBR has used this moment as a time to pivot and to bring forward those positive changes. And I'm speaking specifically about All In, this new employee network. Would you tell us about All In and what its purpose is?

Jenni Myles

Of course. I absolutely would love to tell you about All In. I am very excited about the move that we're undertaking at the moment. So a little bit of context and history maybe to start with. In the five years that I've been with the company, our employee resource group or ERG community has thrived and expanded.

It's actually got a heritage going back decades with some of our longer standing employee resource groups. But it's continued to gain momentum over the last couple of years driven by employees who want to support each other, whether that's creating a safe environment for colleagues or building networks or creating opportunities to learn from each other and together.

So the ERGs have been a fantastic part of our vibrant community in KBR. We had heard in the People Perspectives Survey, the PPS, that that focus on particular communities wasn't working for everyone. It was actually part of our inclusion and diversity strategy, but it was much broader than that.

But what was happening was that some people were feeling those ERGs were not actually targeted at them, and while they could get involved as allies, they were feeling a little bit left behind. And so we'd been picking that message up in the survey from as far back as 2021 in truth.

And so as a result of that, we've been researching, well, what do companies do when they get to this stage of their inclusion and diversity journey? And what can we do to try and focus on total inclusion so nobody feels that they're left behind?

We've always been an organization that's focused on merit-based hiring, making sure that people have equal opportunities, but somehow the ERGs, while they were really positive, they just weren't as inclusive as we really wanted them to be.

So when the executive orders came out, we had some choices to make. We could protect what we had because there was nothing illegal about it. We weren't discriminating in any way. We could have protected that. Or we could see it as an impetus to really move forward in a more positive way. And as you've already alluded to, that's what we decided to do.

So we took it as an opportunity to accelerate the thinking that had already been underway. And we set up a sprint team, including people from the ERGs, but also including people from across the different parts of the business, different demographics, and thought about, if we were going to replace them and move forward, what were the essential elements?

Things like making sure we lived our values, making sure that we were living in an ethos of total inclusion and what were the desirable features of a go-to model? And things that came out of that were making sure we could support remote workers and providing a network for peer-to-peer support, that psychologically safe environment for people.

So this sprint team determined what we wanted the new model to deliver. And what we'd actually found as we were thinking this through is that regardless of the ERG's particular mission or the demographic that they were supporting, the reason they'd been so successful is that the activities they were undertaking were actually all driving our employee value proposition.

They were all focused on belonging, connection or growth, as I've already mentioned. Whether it's networking events or psychological safety or providing support for technical talent, whatever else it might be. They were all bringing this belong, connect, grow ethos to life.

So the team worked out that rather than dismantling all that momentum and that positive energy that's been built up through these volunteer communities, we would just turn at 90 degrees and instead of focusing on specific demographics, we are now going to focus on belong, connect, and grow.

And so that's how All In has been developed. We're not forgetting the past, we're building on it, but we're wanting to have a more holistic focus on total inclusion and really having this employee-led volunteer community helping bring our employee value proposition to life in their local markets.

John Arnold

Fantastic. Thanks so much for the clarification and also spelling out what belong, connect, and grow means. All In, as I mentioned before, on May 21st had its global launch. It was a pilot program at locations across the globe.

Tell us about what All In looks like as far as its structure and how it will enable opportunities for engagement, that belonging, connection and growth between employees and the various communities that our people are passionate about supporting.

Jenni Myles

Well, the truth is I don't actually know what it's going to ultimately look like. I know what it looks like today and I know the principles that we're trying to adhere to. So we've actually set up a new All In Council. It's got two purposes really.

One is to support the pilots that we've started across different locations in KBR. And the second and longer term more important thing is to make sure that we achieve those essential aims that the sprint team set out right at the start of this journey earlier this year.

So the All In Council's got representatives from our different business segments. We've got a chair who's a business unit leader, a deputy chair who's another business unit leader. We've got people from each pilot location and then support from your own colleagues in the comms team. Obviously somebody from the people team and from the ELT [KBR executive leadership team] as well.

So that's the governance side of things, really making sure that we provide the support and achieve our aims. But what it looks like locally is definitely going to vary so that we've got five different pilots. We've got a couple that are happening at a country level in Australia and India, and they've got different models in place already.

And we've got three specific locations; one in Saudi, one in the U.K., and one in the U.S. And in each one of those areas, we've established what we're calling a chapter board where there's a chapter chair, and then a lead for the three pillars; belong, connect and grow.

Within that community, we're also nesting our two remaining employee resource groups. So we kept Impact, which is our ERG, focused on early careers talent. They have specific needs to get their careers a kickstart once they join the organization.

And they're also a very social bunch, so they like getting together and going for a drink after work and socializing like that. And we importantly have kept OK NoW, which is our ONE KBR Network of Well-being. And the reason that's so important is that OK NoW focuses on peer-to-peer support, something I've already referenced as being important, looking at employee well-being in a very holistic way.

So whether that's emotional well-being, physical well-being, social or workplace well-being, they really are the safety net to make sure that people who need that safe environment to make sure they feel psychologically safe, they've got somewhere they can go, a support network of their own, who can really help them if it's needed.

So each of these local chapters are going to be developing their own plans for what they want to do. So the kickoff, the parties happened around the world on the 21st of May. They were amazing. And now we're focusing on, what are they going to do in June? What events do they want to have?

They might have one or two, they might not have anything in June, and they might be planning things a little bit farther out, but it's up to the local teams to decide what do they want to do. I'm sure there will be some events that we will celebrate internationally and everybody will get behind.

But locally, it's really about what do those employees care about most and how can they get together and have fun, but at the same time do something meaningful that's going to help people belong, connect and grow?

John Arnold

It's fantastic to think about celebrations happening internationally where the whole company can come together, but then also giving those local chapters the chance to have a little more employee-led autonomy, I guess, with guidance from the leadership across the country. That's really encouraging to hear.

You've already spoken a little about this, especially with the empathetic leadership that KBR has and wanting to maintain a personal identity or a cultural identity at the company. How does KBR's leadership balance government mandates with the need to maintain KBR's identity, culture and values?

Jenni Myles

It is a complex challenge that any global company has to face. We have to make sure that we navigate the complexities of different regulatory environments all the time. We've talked about the executive orders in the US, but we have very different environments in which we operate with very different legal frameworks, and that's a reality that we have every day.

While that is critical, it's not just about legal compliance. I, again, like to come back to our values. We are people of integrity, and for me, that means respecting the laws and requirements of the markets in which we are privileged to operate.

It is good that governments and companies want us to be in these different markets, so we have to demonstrate that we respect the frameworks that they've put in place that they believe are appropriate for their communities. But it's also about understanding that our people's needs are different.

So at an individual level, at a cultural level, people's needs and desires are very, very different, and we have to respect that. So the one thing that it then will all come back to for KBR is our values. They're what unify us. They're also what differentiate us and guide us any tough decision. That's wherever I go.

John Arnold

Just as an American, it's really important for me and for my colleagues here in the States to realize that we are in 30-plus countries all over the world or however many it is now. It's a lot. It's staggering to think about all of the complexities culturally and the regulatory requirements. So I appreciate you tackling that. That's a tough question.

Just a couple more and then I'll let you get onto your very busy rest of your day. I wonder if you'd give your sales pitch, for want of a better term, to someone thinking about making KBR home in their career.

Jenni Myles

It's interesting. So I've got two kids who are 18 and 21, and they both have a very natural leaning towards STEM careers; science, technology, engineering, and math. I feel like every day I go home and I talk to my kids and I'm selling KBR to them because I really hope they're going to work here one day.

But the pitch that I make, I've already said it to a large degree, if you want to make a difference, if you want to use your brain and use your capabilities, if you want to solve complex challenges and do work that matters, then come to KBR. And what you'll find is somewhere that you can belong, where you will truly feel at home, and that you find your people.

You will find a place where you can connect, where you'll be part of something much bigger than just your own job or your own team or even your own business unit or your own country. You can be part of something that is very, very impactful.

And importantly, when we bring smart people into the organization, they are curious. They want to stretch their intellect, they want to develop new capabilities and learn and advance knowledge and thinking, and so everybody will get a chance to grow.

And lastly, I don't know how many times I've said this in our short conversation, but you will find a company where our values are real. They're not perfect, but they're not PowerPoint.

John Arnold

Ooh, put that on a T-shirt. I like that. I really appreciate yours and our president and CEO, Stuart Bradie, our leadership in general, always making it a point to say that we're not perfect, really pointing that out, but that we're really trying to be. And I appreciate that candor and that honesty. Jenni, are there any final thoughts you'd like to leave our listeners with today before I let you go?

Jenni Myles

Just two things really. Whoever's listening, if you're not a KBR employee, then why not? Why wouldn't you want to come and work for this amazing organization? But if you are a KBR employee, I would like to say thank you. My job is actually working for you, and we are very, very glad to have you on the team.

John Arnold

Jenni Myles, thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate it.

Jenni Myles

Thank you, John. Love talking to you.

CONCLUSION

John Arnold

Belong, connect, grow, and change the world. We want to thank Jenni Myles, KBR's Chief People Officer for her time and candor. It's always a pleasure to speak with her. If you're interested in learning more about KBR's people, culture, our values, or the All In community, please go check out kbr.com.

If you got excited listening to Jenni, talk about working at KBR and are interested in exploring the employment opportunities with us, you can do so at careers.kbr.com.

If you like what you heard today and have an idea for an episode or if you just want to say hello, you can email us at inorbit@kbr.com. We've had some issues with our In Orbit email lately, so I apologize for belated responses. I will be getting back to anyone who has emailed us about episode subject matter.

Before we go, as always, I want to thank you, our listeners. Life is coming at us all fast. We know you're busy and that your time is valuable, so please know that we appreciate you spending some time with us and keeping us in your orbit. Be kind to each other, and take care.