A Dutch perspective doesn’t work in an international and diverse environment like FrieslandCampina. It is essential to gain insights and perspectives from all countries where we do business. This means that sometimes you need to consciously slow down, to accelerate later on,” says Patricia Snel,Chief People Officer (CPO) of FrieslandCampina. When she took on the CPO role 18months ago, FrieslandCampina was undergoing a drastic reorganization reviewing all business units, their business potential and costs. This week, FrieslandCampina announced its best results in the past five years.
To which minority do you belong, Patricia?
“I am privileged in the sense that I don’t feel I belong to many minorities. I technically belong to a minority as a woman in the senior management of FrieslandCampina. However, I haven’t experienced the feelings that might come with that. I always see the glass as half full and recognize potential and positive challenges. This mindset has helped me many times over the past 14 years at FrieslandCampina, and especially in the past year and a half as CPO.” When Patricia took office, she led the reorganization of FrieslandCampina as a whole. This required her to collaborate intensively with all members of the Executive Team. They got to know each other very well in a short time.
At the same time, Patricia used the momentum of the reorganization to transform her own People function. “The HR function had been struggling for years with the need for a new operating model.Since every Executive Team (ET) member was tasked with reviewing their businessunit, I did the same. I enjoy bringing in innovative working methods from outside. Additionally, the benchmarks we conducted showed there was room for improvement within HR. The benchmarks, the internal assessment and the support of the Executive Team, gave me the confidence to take on this major transformation as well right at the start of my role.”
“Finding the right balance in a new role is always a challenge. You want to be bold, but you also want to avoid turning everything upside down. Especially when the entire organization is going through change and needs guidance. This required a lot of alignment and explanation.” Looking back, Patricia acknowledges a key learning: “We should have involved business leaders from different countries earlier in the process. A change in the HR operating model essentially means a change in the entire organization and in the roles of line managers and employees. The support of business leaders is crucial to the success of such a change. As a result, we only received some valuable insights too late in the process. By now, a large part of the new HR operating model has been implemented. We have also launched shared servicecenters in Kuala Lumpur and Budapest. The first results on our KPIs are promising, which gives us confidence.”
HR as a true business partner
“This is also the message I want to give to the entire HR function: step forward as a business partner and look at how we can support the business as a whole. Dare to think big! That means actively claiming attention for both the people agenda and the professionalization of the HR function. The new operating model and the ‘people dashboard,’ where we collect all our HR-related KPIs, have been instrumental in this. Progress and change in the people agenda are now much more integrated into the overall business performance.
I am now challenging our areas of expertise to think more about the impact they want to make on the business—shifting from effort to impact. If you work backward from business results and the value you add, your expertise aligns much better with what the business truly needs. This requires more connection and a lot of involvement with the business.
For some colleagues, this is a big and exciting step—leaving the safe space of their expertise and engaging in discussions about business impact. But I see it happening more and more, and also see how much joy people get from it. After all, the most fulfilling work is when you can clearly see the results and value it creates.”
Embedding core values across the organization
Patricia’s team has involved the entire organization in defining FrieslandCampina’s core values. Through focus groups, the HR team gathered insights from across the company—a massive effort to distill all that input into three concrete words that resonate with 80% of employees, while leaving room for 20% ambition.
“It was our mission to develop these core values as the DNA of our organization, especially during the reorganization. Not everyone was convinced at first that this was the right timing. But over time, we have seen again and again how these core values serve as a guiding thread in all our actions.
For example, we now have the challenge of raising our people management skills to a higher level. Our employee satisfaction survey shows that we need to do evenbetter in areas such as well-being, development, communication, and diversity& inclusion. The values form the foundation for how we want to approach this development.”
Living the values
“For me, the values ‘We act with respect,’ ‘We aim higher,’ and ‘We succeed together’ are very close to my heart. This is how I have tried to work every day for the past 14 years at FrieslandCampina. These values and our purpose should help everyone reflect: Do I want to be part of this organization and this team? Because our business is so diverse, we also give each business unit the opportunity to define their own purpose within FrieslandCampina’s strategic framework. I love it when every executive and every employee, translates this into their own personal purpose: ‘What drives me in life and in my work?’ My purpose is to help people reach their full potential. By truly seeing people, listening to them, and offering opportunities they may not even feel fully ready for yet, allowing them the space to take ownership and grow. I encourage my colleagues and the people they lead to do the same. We also provide them with the necessary tools. For example, we expect every manager to create a development plan with their employees for every person appointed new into a role. This plan outlines how they will grow and what tools and resources they will use. Employees truly appreciate this. It also helped me when I started asCPO a year and a half ago.
