Being People-first Means Making Tradeoffs

When employee preferences, business needs and available resources pull in different directions, what does being “people-first” require of HR and senior leadership? How do you decide whose needs to prioritize and where to make tradeoffs?

Being people-first doesn’t mean saying yes to everything employees want. That would be lovely but it’s also not particularly realistic. Being people-first does mean listening carefully enough to understand what employees actually need to do their best work, and then balancing that with what the business can realistically and sustainably support.

We try to focus on the things that can make a meaningful difference while preserving choice and agency wherever we can. MacImpact is a good example. We don’t tell employees what giving back should look like. We offer a handful of options including matching contributions, book donations and time off to volunteer and then let people choose the causes that matter to them. I think of it as a menu approach.

That philosophy carries through a lot of our work. There will always be constraints, competing priorities and, occasionally, reasonable things that happen to be in direct conflict with each other. That’s where leadership comes in. Our job is to listen to different employee populations, understand where we can have the greatest impact, and make thoughtful tradeoffs that support both our people and the long-term health of the business.

It isn’t about finding the magical answer that makes everyone happy. Usually that answer doesn’t exist. It’s about making decisions thoughtfully, transparently and consistently and being able to explain why we made them.

How do you determine which employee programs or experiences are worth investing in? What are you listening for before deciding that something needs to change?

I’m always looking for patterns. One employee raising something certainly matters. However, when you start hearing the same thing in engagement surveys, divisional Q+As, CEO Office Hours, check-ins with leaders and even conversations in the hallway, that’s when my HR antenna goes up.

From there, we ask some pretty straightforward questions:

• How big is this need? Is there a real employee need here?
• Does it align with our values?
• Can it meaningfully improve the experience for a broad group of people?
• Can we actually sustain it?

That has led us to invest in everything from remote flexibility and well-being to professional development and belonging.

Our REACH Program supports early-career employees, we refreshed our Mentorship Program to incorporate virtual networking, and MacLEAD has now graduated more than 300 people managers.

After hearing from people across the organization that weren’t leaders but hoped to be one day, we launched a future leaders training program. Not just because people were asking for it but because it also meant that we were investing in a really important lever of change - future managers.

Because I have both a product management and project management background, I am a big believer in iteration. Once we launch something, we ask for feedback, look at participation, and measure impact. 

3. Can you give me an example of an employee program or practice that changed significantly between the original idea and what you ultimately implemented? What caused you to rethink it?

A good example is our Immersive Internship Program. Historically, we ran separate summer, fall and spring internship cohorts. Our internship program is a huge tentpole initiative for us here. We’re proud of what we have created, including the fact that we hire a significant number of our interns into entry-level roles.

When we first started looking at the program, we weren't planning to fundamentally change that model. We thought we would refresh the programming, make the experience more cohesive, and focus more intentionally on attracting nontraditional candidates.

Once we started talking to hiring managers and looking more closely at how the program was actually working, however, we realized we were solving the wrong problem.

A hiring manager survey was the final light bulb moment for us. Managers were telling us that just as an intern became fully trained and productive, the semester ended. Then a few weeks later, they would start over with someone new.

There were coverage gaps between cohorts, repeated onboarding and training, and managers were understandably hesitant to give interns more substantive, longer-term work when they knew they might only have them for a few months. We also saw that many managers were asking to extend strong interns anyway, which was a signal that the existing structure wasn't really meeting the need.

So instead of just improving the programming around the existing model, we redesigned the model itself. We combined the fall and spring cohorts into one 28-week academic-year program.

We went into the process thinking we needed to make an existing program better. The feedback told us that what we actually needed to do was question one of its fundamental assumptions. We ended up with a very different program because we listened to what managers and interns needed rather than getting overly attached to our original idea.

4. Macmillan includes a number of different businesses and employee populations. How do you decide which parts of the employee experience should be consistent across the company and where different teams need more flexibility?

We want the principles underlying the employee experience to be consistent, even when the experience itself doesn't look identical for every employee based on their role or imprint. Across Macmillan, our values of Respect, Inclusion, Trust, Sustainability, and Impact provide that common foundation.

There are experiences that benefit from company-wide consistency. Programs such as Flex Fridays (half-day Fridays) and Wellness Days establish shared expectations around well-being and sustainable work-life boundaries. Our 20+ Employee Resource Groups, MacImpact program, and professional development opportunities similarly create resources and communities that can reach employees across the organization.

At the same time, consistency shouldn't mean one-size-fits-all. We have employees across very different businesses, roles, locations, and working arrangements, and the same experience isn't always going to be meaningful or even practical for everyone.

We try to be intentional about where flexibility actually improves the employee experience. Author events, educational sessions, and community gatherings, for example, often have both in-person and remote components so more employees can participate.

Other experiences are intentionally tied to being in the office. We might provide lunch on an in-office day because part of the purpose is to create connection among the people who are physically there. Initiatives like ERG programming, book giveaways, or social activities can also be tailored to the interests and needs of different employee communities.

The goal is to be consistent about what we want employees to experience: connection, opportunity, inclusion, and well-being, while remaining flexible about how we deliver it.

5. When Macmillan invests in improving the employee experience, which outcomes convince you that you’ve improved the organization—not simply created something employees appreciate?

This is an important distinction because “people liked it” is great but it isn’t quite a business case.

I spent a few formative years at Nielsen, which at its core was a data company, and one of the things I took from that experience was to look at data from multiple angles. In people's work, I tend to think about three categories: quantitative, qualitative, and what I call intangible data.

Quantitative data is the easiest to measure. We look at engagement scores, participation, utilization and turnover to tell us whether our investments are strengthening employees' connection to Macmillan, supporting their well-being and development, and creating an environment where they can do their best work.

Our engagement data gives us one important lens. In our most recent employee engagement survey, 85% of employees said they would recommend Macmillan as a great place to work, 83% reported a strong sense of belonging, and 79% agreed that Macmillan prioritizes employee well-being.

We also look at how employees engage with the opportunities we create. MacLEAD, for example, has graduated more than 300 people managers, while our DEI team facilitated 57 programs and 1,165 training hours in 2024.

Then there's the qualitative data. That's what we're hearing in surveys, company updates, conversations with employees and leaders, divisional Q+As, CEO Office Hours, and the day-to-day conversations our HR team is having across the business. Sometimes that context explains something the quantitative data alone can't.

Beyond that, there's intangible data, which I think is particularly important in employee experience. What’s the energy in the lunch line? Are people giggling at the beginning of our Google meetings? Are employees bringing colleagues into something because they're genuinely excited about it? Are managers asking us to do something again? What are people talking about when they don't think they're giving you “feedback”?

Those things are harder to put into a dashboard, but they're often some of the earliest signals of whether something is actually resonating.

None of those measures is sufficient on its own. I want to see whether the numbers, what people are telling us, and what we're observing in the organization reinforce one another. That's when you start to understand whether an investment is simply popular or whether it's actually contributing to the culture and employee experience you're trying to build.