Supporting a Company in Transformation

HRM. First, please tell us a little about your history. How and why did you come to work in HR initially?

Marcela Perez de Alonso. My career has been a journey that reflects many influences, from my family to colleagues and mentors. From an early age, I learned about the need to change and adapt. I left the familiar surroundings of my home in Punta Arenas and traveled to Santiago, Chile to pursue my university degree. It was not an easy thing to do at the time but it turned out to be a pivotal point in my journey. Since then, my career has brought me to several different countries – Mexico, Puerto Rico and for the last 17 years in the United States where I’ve lived in New York, Miami and now in California.
I began working in HR for a start-up operation shortly after I obtained my degree from Catholic University in Chile. I started out as a recruiter then moved on to be the division head of HR for the start-up operation, which today is one of the largest banks in Chile. I later worked for Citibank where I held several senior-level roles in both operations and human resources, including the lead HR role for Citibank's Global Consumer Business, which at the time was a 100,000-employee organization, where I was responsible for developing a host of breakthrough initiatives. During my tenure at Citibank, I also accepted an opportunity in line management to broaden my business experience and expand my knowledge base. In 2004, I joined HP as executive vice president of Human Resources.

Everyone’s journey is individual and personal and very different from person to person. When I was growing up and when I was starting my career, I didn’t know where I wanted to end my career. But I had a motivation: I wanted to learn, to develop myself as much as I could. I always had a curiosity. I was always trying to do things better the next time. I had very high standards about what I wanted to deliver. An important lesson I learned in my own journey was that if there’s an obstacle or challenge that I know I have to overcome to achieve my goals, I push myself, leave my comfort zone and take the necessary risks to remove the obstacle. As an example, I didn’t speak English when I joined Citibank so I immediately took an immersion course to learn the language.

Throughout my career, I have been extremely fortunate to have the support of my family, good role models, and great teams. There were also great supervisors and mentors that pushed me to go beyond the normal limits. I think it’s really a combination of all those factors that molded me into the person that I am today.

HRM. How have you established the human resources function as an integral part of HP’s overall organization? How has HR contributed to the organization’s strategic goals?

MPDA. At HP, HR drives the human dimension of the business and partners with each business to ensure that our workforce planning strategy is aligned to delivering on the business objectives. I am a member of the company’s executive leadership team and my HR leadership team collaborates very closely with the business groups to ensure that we have the right people, with the right skills, in the right jobs, at the right time, in the right location, and at the right market-aligned cost to successfully drive each group’s strategy.

When I joined HP in 2004, I encountered a post-merger situation in which HP’s human capital strategy had to be revisited and transformed to address the new global realities facing a complex multiple business model information technology organization with 150,000 employees in over 170 countries. Despite the significant resource and asset base, HP’s market value was not growing at an acceptable rate. I began a global organizational effectiveness initiative to support the business transformation by getting the right leadership team in place as well as aligning and strengthening organizational capabilities to position HP to foster innovation, respond to rapid changes in a global marketplace and maximize shareholder value.

Ultimately, we’re strengthening HP’s ability to grow by defining strategic workforce plans, supporting mergers, acquisitions and outsourcing activities, delivering cost-efficient infrastructure support in emerging markets, and helping to build a best-in-class sales team. And we actively recruit and retain people with new skills needed for emerging business opportunities and to build new core competencies.

HP's recent financial performance clearly shows these initiatives have had the intended impact. In the past two years, HP outperformed competitors in revenue and exceeded industry averages in growth. It has also enjoyed a 95 percent increase in stock price and has added $52 billion in shareholder wealth. HP has also enjoyed high rankings on two prestigious lists, the Fortune 500 (11) and the Fortune Most Admired Technology Companies (2).

HRM. What innovative programs have you implemented while at HP? What changes have you made over the past few years to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of HP’s HR programs?

MPDA. Over the past few years, HP has been a company in transformation. To remain ahead of customer expectations and competitive pressures, HP is positioned to simultaneously optimize all elements of our operating strategy – to grow our top line revenue, to be as efficient as possible, and to make smart investments of time and resources to deliver on our business strategies. As such, HR must adjust and evolve to support and align to the company’s strategic objectives.

To ensure that HR was prepared to fully support HP’s transformation, I led a concerted effort to transform HR and build a world-class organization that had the capabilities necessary to help deliver on HP’s business strategy. My leadership team and I developed and executed on a complete redesign of the company’s leadership programs, began driving talent management deeper into the company and created a strategic workforce planning machine that was recently identified as a “World Class” capability within HP from a benchmark study conducted by an independent third party.

As part of leading our transformation, we are committed to creating a high performing culture where we can help our people “grow and win with HP.” This is what we call our People Promise. The People Promise takes many forms: career development, talent management, succession planning, leadership development, recognition, rewarding for performance, and much more.

As an example, we recently launched the hpFirst initiative, which is designed to help promote internal movement and expand the experiences and capabilities of HP talent. While we look to fill roles with internal talent when possible, it doesn’t change our goal of getting the right people in the right jobs - we continue to strive for getting the best possible talent to lead HP to future successes. hpFirst is part of the end-to-end focus of the People Promise – to help our people build challenging and meaningful careers with HP. I believe people can become leaders over time, no-one is a ‘born leader’. As such, my team and I are committed to providing the tools, resources and support to develop our top talent to become the future leaders of the company.

Priorities

HRM. What are your key priorities for 2007-2008? How do these priorities align with the company’s overall goals and strategy?

MPDA. As a company we have been working on growing the business, implementing cost efficiency programs and driving our capital strategy. As such, we have been putting plans in place to support people development with greater rigor and discipline across the company and to enhance our value proposition for our employees. We do so by executing efficiently and effectively on the following:

• Leading workforce planning and business transformation
• Driving people and leadership development
• Building a high performing culture that delivers competitive and differentiated Total Rewards and maximizes employee engagement
• Delivering standardized, easy-to-use, and cost effective programs and services
• Leading and driving HP’s ‘People Promise’ – “Grow and win with HP” – particularly in the areas of career development, talent management, performance management, and leadership & management development
• Continuing to drive and build a best in class HR initiatives

Our employees are important to us and we strive to have a high performing culture that is aligned with the company’s strategy to enable us to win with customers, shareholders and employees.

HRM. So what was the premise behind the ‘People Promise’ and what does it entail? How does it align with HP’s business values?

MPDA. HP is committed to helping its employees grow and that commitment takes many forms. A great deal of research went into creating the people strategy, including focus groups around the world, surveys, and alignment with the HP brand promise and HR strategy. We wanted to be sure that our programs and processes were aligned to deliver the People Promise, which is about careers, experiences and learning opportunities. HP’s People Promise captures the company’s partnership with employees to develop and succeed together.

At its core, HR here is focused on driving the human dimension of the business. Our team is responsible for ensuring that our people strategy meets the company’s financial needs in order to provide positive returns for investors but, ultimately, HP cannot succeed as a company and provide continuing positive returns to investors without having a successful, talented and productive workforce to create the products and generate positive returns each quarter. Our primary focus in HR continues to be on ensuring that our employees are aligned well to meet the needs of our businesses in order to execute against HP’s overall business strategies and win with customers and shareholders.

Diversity

HRM. Does corporate diversity determine the long-term success of a company? How important is diversity in the business workplace?

MPDA. Creating a diverse, inclusive environment here has been an ongoing journey of continuous action for many years. We do this because it’s not only the right thing to do, it makes good business sense. Having an employee base which is reflective of the world’s population helps us to better develop products for our customers.

At HP, we believe that diversity and inclusion are key drivers of creativity, innovation and invention. A diverse, high-achieving workforce differentiates us and is essential to understand, relate to, and serve our customers throughout the world. We also believe that a culture that values differences motivates people to perform at their best. It helps us attract, develop, promote, and retain the best women and men worldwide. By weaving diversity into the fabric of our company - into all of our processes and day-to-day business practices - we create a mindset in every employee and manager that will allow them to think consciously about diversity and inclusion in everything they do.

HRM. While some enterprises might find they are successfully recruiting entry level or mid-level diversity candidates, recruiting for senior or C-level positions is notoriously difficult. How can enterprise tackle this problem?

MPDA. As a leading global technology company, we are fortunate to be able to attract highly qualified candidates, even in the current competitive job market. People in the job market, regardless of whether they’re entry, mid or senior level, want to be part of a company that consistently delivers strong business results and offers a challenging work experience, enriching work environment, opportunities for growth and competitive compensation packages. Operating in over 170 countries, HP is a company with a reputation for strong financials, new ideas, new thinking, reliable products and services, and uncompromising customer satisfaction. We find that employees are eager to become part of the company’s cultural legacy and future success.

BIO: Marcela Perez de Alonso – HP

As Executive Vice President – Human Resources, Marcela Perez de Alonso has worldwide responsibility for HP's human resources initiatives, including workforce development and organization effectiveness, benefits and compensation, staffing, global inclusion and diversity, and HR processes and information management. She also is a member of the board for HP Financial Services, the financing arm of HP.

Since joining HP in 2004, Perez de Alonso has spearheaded a pivotal transformation to build a best-in-class HR organization aligned to drive results and optimize the company's growth and efficiencies.

Previously, a long-time executive at Citigroup, Perez de Alonso has held senior-level roles in both operations and human resources, including the lead HR role for Citibank's Global Consumer Business – a 90,000-employee organization where she developed a host of breakthrough initiatives. Senior executive recruiting, diversity, variable compensation and employee survey programs are among the many worldwide efforts Perez de Alonso led during her tenure. She also was head of Citigroup's North Latin America retail business operations and was in charge of deposit products for the company's international retail bank.

One of only 10 women to be included in the ninth annual Hispanic Business Corporate Elite directory, Perez de Alonso was named one of the 50 Most Important Hispanics in Technology and Business by Hispanic Engineer & Information Technology magazine. She also was honored as the 2005 Corporate Executive of the Year by Hispanic-Net, a California nonprofit organization of executives and professionals in technology-related fields.

Perez de Alonso earned an advanced degree in organizational psychology from the Catholic University in Chile. She attended the Business Executive Program of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and received a certificate in finance and accounting.

Perez de Alonso is on the advisory board of the Marshall Business School, University of Southern California. She also is a member of the board of Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence, a charitable organization serving Santa Clara County in Northern California.