LEADING INDICATORS
“People are leading indicators. I absolutely believe that. People create strategies, they create structures, they sell to customers, they maintain relationships. It’s very critical to have not only the right quality of people, but also people with a passion for the company, people that are highly engaged. Because that is what makes or breaks a company in the end.”
So says Marion Mestrom, Chief Human Resources Officer at German headquartered and listed company Brenntag SE, the global market leader in chemicals and ingredients distribution. Mestrom journeyed into the world of HR with three master’s degrees – for Pedagogics, Educational Science, and Business Administration – under her arm. After having worked at the ministry of home affairs in The Hague, she left for multinational conglomerate Philips where she held roles at corporate healthcare, consumer electronics and lighting division.
From the start of her career, she knew she had an international focus as well as a passion for transformation initiatives, HR, organizational design, strategy, key account management. From Philips’ headquarters she worked extensively in all regions and spent a huge amount of time in Latin America, North America, Middle East and Asia Pacific. Mestrom then was expatriated for five years to Hong Kong, where she first held a regional role for health care and later on a global role for consumer electronics.
“There was never a dull moment and always a lot of new grounds and new areas to tackle. So that was the reputation I built up,” she says.
To woman on a similar path early in their careers, Mestrom offers, “Do not wait till somebody asks you to pick up an assignment or to do a task. Dare to take initiative. Keep your eyes open and see what is needed. Where can you jump in? And don’t let yourself easily be put aside. That’s what has worked for me.”
Despite an innate loyalty, eventually Mestrom felt the need for greener pastures, which took her from The Netherlands to Germany, where she became CHRO, first for a customer of Brenntag, before becoming the CHRO of for Brenntag SE. She was drawn to the challenge at Brenntag because it was a listed company that still didn’t have a global HR department and management in place.
A GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION
With Mestrom’s leadership, Brenntag now has a growing international HR presence – that is especially needed as the company is going through a comprehensive global transformation program.
During times of transition within a company, Mestrom says it´s crucial to focus on the positive future, while at the same time acknowledging and not to neglect that there are also uncertainties for some people which need to be addressed. This, she says, is the formula for successful progress. Every leader has to be empathic, understand other perspectives to successfully transform. “You don’t turn around either a company nor the people in the company overnight,” she adds. A company is not an isolated island. The world and market environment around is changing and so a company needs to constantly and proactively set the pace in the industry and change.
Being a global company certainly magnified the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Brenntag put global, regional and local crisis teams into place immediately to handle the situation on all levels, not knowing at that moment, how the drama would unfold around the world. The teams met every day for the first months of the crisis, with the clear directive that the safety of Brenntag employees had to come first. This meant the immediate implementation of safety and hygiene concepts and the creation of remote work setups for the Brenntag employees wherever possible while trying to keep people connected and not suffer from working in isolation.
“We do all kind of non-work-related virtual meetings on different levels around the globe to ensure people can connect in an informal setting. Virtual coffees talks, virtual after work drinks. You need to keep that connection to have non-work-related chat, because normally when you’re on the office, you go to the coffee machine, you meet a colleague, and you have an informal chat,” she says. “In a home office situation, the informal part has to be cherished. And you need to have sympathy for the fact that people with small children don’t work so easily at home, because they have a multi-tasking challenge to coordinate job and family life.”
Instead of trying to pretend that children who burst into the background of Zoom meetings aren’t there, Mestrom and her team began to encourage little interactions with the kids on-camera to lend a warm energy to the proceedings. On the other hand, you also need to pay attention to people who live alone and who also miss their social interactions in the company. Which is to say that managing a remote team involves many recalibrations and a lot of flexibility and empathy of everybody involved.
“We invested in diverse e-learning videos for working remotely. People got a lot of tips and guidelines, which was very well received across the globe,” she adds.
BACK TO THE OFFICE
People are largely excited to get back to the office. How and when people will go back to the office differs across the globe. Going back to work will now feature more flexibility than the pre-pandemic model taking into consideration different labor requirements and cultural differences.
“The pandemic has accelerated the request for and implementation of New Work models. It has been proven that virtual work is possible, and people deliver excellent work.”
When she looks at the company’s overall culture and what she’s most proud of, Mestrom attests to Brenntag’s people-centric orientation, its diversity of opportunity – hugely appealing from a career growth standpoint – and a real investment in employee development.
Over the next one or two years, Mestrom says she looks forward to continuing the transformation journey Brenntag has started. “It´s a marathon, not a sprint. However, being the marked leader means we keep on setting the pace in the industry”, she adds.
“Everybody needs everybody in the value chain, that’s one of my credos. So ever person is important, every expertise and commitment counts, whether operator, truck driver, salesperson or administrator. The value in a company is created by the people on all levels.”
As far as the kind of staff Brenntag is looking to add in the future, Mestrom reminds us that the business world never stops moving and qualifications will keep changing. Diversity in all aspects is crucial as well as companies need to tackle challenges by looking at them from different angles. Diversity enables innovative solutions.
“We need to look for people with potential. This has to go beyond checking specific experiences or skills during the recruitment process, as we have to think longer term” she says. “You have to prepare people to be able to cope with future challenges as well, dare to take calculated risks and try thinks out, also when not all details are known yet. Change will always be around us and the pace of change is increasing.”
