In Conversation with Nancy Harris, EVP, Sage North America.
So many great companies often get lost in the shadows of the Googles, Apples, and Facebooks in the tech industry. Many don’t survive or are gobbled up over time. The Sage Group (LON: SGE) has a different story. Founded in 1981 in the UK, it’s one of the largest providers of business management software and services millions of small and medium-sized businesses worldwide. It successfully built a global brand and cloud-based infrastructure supporting every aspect of operations, including billing, business intelligence, contact management, e-commerce, customer relationship management, and human resources management.
Not only is Sage successful in business, the company has been honored consistently for its workplace culture, winning 10 Comparably Awards in 2019. Since the awards are based on anonymous ratings from current employees, it’s naturally curious to wonder how the company and its staff – which they call “colleagues” – are able to maintain such a positive culture even as the world changes drastically amid the pandemic. Comparably spoke to Nancy Harris, Executive Vice President at Sage North America, about how she came to Sage, the opportunities the company has offered her, and the organization’s progressive approach.
With Harris’ experience in Enterprise software, SMB software, Agile Methodologies, Go-to-Market Strategy and Strategic Partnerships, she’s a veteran when it comes to the SaaS industry. Prior to her current role, Harris was Director of Product Marketing for BMC Software and Chief Operating Officer for Asure Software and ESO Solutions. But it was at Sage where she really found her perfect fit.
When asked what drew her to Sage, she’s quick to point out that it was due to her earliest experiences with the company. She recalls being recruited by a woman who was Head of People at the time, seeing a woman vying for the role of her then-boss, and interviewing with peers that were also women. Clearly, Sage was a company that did more than talk the talk, but actually walked the walk in real-time. Harris’s memory, an instant impression of equity in the company, was clearly worth a million words of talk.
As far as what has kept her at Sage for nine years? “It’s our mission and it’s the people, but not in that order,” says Harris. “They’re tied. The people here are unbelievable. This is a company full of really smart, really grounded people.” From Harris’ first impression to 9 years later, the common theme that continues to support Sage’s growth is a gifted leadership team. Mrs. Harris, in particular, has focused on making sure actions speak louder than words, resourcing the organization and initiatives to ensure the continued growth, success, health, and safety of all stakeholders.
SERENDIPITOUS TRAINING
Harris is eager to speak about how the company and its colleagues have kept cool heads while working remotely in a world undergoing multiple sea changes over a very short period of time. In February, just prior to the major shutdown in the U.S., she was in the company’s Newcastle headquarters at an executive meeting, participating in a crisis management and preparedness simulation.
Not knowing that they were right on the precipice of what was about to come with the COVID crisis, the simulation was an exercise meant to illustrate what the company would do if the virus continued to escalate and office sites had to shut down. This allowed them to identify their weak points early on, form task forces, and ask questions (What are we doing about COVID? What’s the business doing? How are our customers and partners doing? What’s happening in other regions of the world?). Luckily, they were afforded several weeks to work on them before the pandemic really hit.
Sage’s already extant status as a globally connected company gained heightened importance in the hours and days that followed.
“As a global company operating in 23 countries, we have to have our finger on the pulse of what’s going on with the crisis in every area that we operate in,” says Harris. “So immediately there was just this swarm to protect the welfare and well-being of our colleagues. That had to be number one. And when we realized that we needed to get our 13,000 colleagues working strictly from home, which was the week of March 10th, we never skipped a beat.”
Putting the well-being of people at the forefront of everything during the crisis helped. Harris credits CEO Steve Hare for assuaging the hearts and minds of Sage colleagues when he addressed the company’s angst about returning to physical offices with the statement, “We will not go back until we know it’s safe.”
However, with the temporary move to a fully remote workforce came complications that most office work has never had to compete with. Realizing that working from home created all kinds of permutations and combinations that are not conducive to productive work (families, pets, small children that have to be homeschooled), they quickly came up with an action plan and resources.
- An emergency leave bank was created, so if for whatever reason colleagues couldn’t work they wouldn’t be draining their PTO.
- Many forums were created so that people had places they could join and talk about what they were doing.
- All-hands meetings are held on a regular basis.
- More frequent communication cadence.
- Sage TV Live where CEO Steve Hare talks about the state of affairs around the globe. The messaging is first and foremost about the health and well-being of colleagues.
When Hare joined Sage, he reinvigorated the organization’s culture by leading with a people-first mentality. He intentionally worked with Chief People Officer, Amanda Cusdin, as well as a number of other leaders who had been in the prior environment to get as many people involved in the process. Together, they worked to reshape their culture by preserving the best of their legacy and adding improvements where needed. In an effort to engage more employees, they launched two big initiatives: 1) a Hackathon style all-hands conversation called the “Big Conversation,” and 2) An “Always Listening” tool that allows for constant feedback and follow-up action (one resulted in the Headspace app being free of charge to all colleagues).
“Our mission is to build a great SaaS company on behalf of our customers and our colleagues alike,” Harris says. “Steve’s an amazing CEO and we’ve grown by leaps and bounds under his leadership on ENPS. That means it’s all resonating with people.”
While this may seem like common sense, the fact is that it very simply elevates Sage’s colleagues to the level of its customers – and that is a still-revolutionary idea in business.
DOING THE RIGHT THING
Sage’s philosophy is if they do the right thing by their colleagues, who are the customer- and partner-facing brand representatives, then the rest is going to take care of itself. The recent tumult in the world, especially in the U.S., did not end with the still-unsettling presence of COVID-19 but instead has seemingly led to a society focused on doing the right thing itself – in terms of finally tackling longer-lingering American crises.
“With the strong focus on Black Lives Matter, we’ve seen a tremendous and understandable amount of stress, anxiety, anger, and frustration,” Harris says. “Racism is wrong. It flies in the face of our values, number one of which is ‘Do the Right Thing.’ That means being inclusive, diverse, and welcoming. Anything that we can do to continue to educate ourselves on being the most inclusive place we can be, we will do.”
Sage has been focused both inward and outward during its own diversity gut check. Through employee resource groups, such as Colleague Success Networks, they look at ongoing sustainable things they can do to recognize the importance of black colleagues, and their culture and heritage.
“I think we’ve shown our colleagues that we don’t shy away from difficult topics and we will state our mind around what we think is the right thing to do, Harris adds. “It’s really created some great, very open conversations that we hadn’t had prior to recently.”
As life continues stacking the deck with paradigm shifts on the way to a necessary new normal, Sage’s history of transparency with its employees helps foster trust going forward into still-uncertain waters.
A few years ago, Hare formed what was Sage’s original D & I Council – now called SageBelong – with representatives from across the globe. They look at everything around inclusion and diversity, including gender-related issues. As part of this initiative, Sage recently held a series of “civic dinners” in Atlanta, bringing the community of D&I heads from the Atlanta Hawks, FedEx, and Coca-Cola – among other local corporate entities as well as nonprofit organizations – to share their missions, action plans, and learning lessons.
“A lot of actionable ideas came out of what people were sharing at those dinners,” Harris says proudly.
“I believe in our mission wholeheartedly, but it’s also the people. The people and the mission are inherently linked in the most inspiring way. I sincerely feel very fortunate to be here.” Sage’s Leadership Team is not complacent in the successful customer/employee-focused model they have built; bringing together corporate peers to uncover new opportunities and reveal blind spots is not done out of responsibility, but rather unwavering desire to learn and evolve Sage for the future.
Sage is the very model of a modern company. It has a mission that inspires its employees, and a group of employees that continue to inspire that mission. As 2020 has continued to pave an unforgettably rocky road before us all to traverse, this organization has shown that a near-perfectly calibrated company culture can withstand major outside tumult and still remain innately itself.
