Four years ago, revenue lifecycle management platform Conga was bought by software firm Apttus. The former retained its name but welcomed a new CEO and a year later, a new CHRO in Dayna Perry. The Conga workforce was integral to the success of its transformation in the last few years, Perry says—and that journey was made possible, in part, thanks to the development of the Conga Way, an initiative to identify and embed company values throughout practices and programs.
Now, Conga workers around the globe have a unifying, consistent framework, which Perry says has helped strengthen company culture, promote collaboration and deliver quality service to the company’s 10,000 customers and 6.4 million users worldwide. For her part, Perry has leaned into her three decades of HR experience—including at Amazon and BlackBerry—to help lead the change.
She recently spoke with HR Executive about the HR leadership capabilities it takes to build culture amid a changing future of work.
Perry: When our CEO joined in 2020, he was basically trying to bring together two companies that had merged—Apttus and Conga—and recognized very early that there were very different ways of working. There was a little bit of competition between the two. He calls himself the CEO and culture leader, and that’s very intentional. The Conga Way was his design and his ideas, and as we thought about what that would look like, he played a very, very key role in that.
We did bring in a lot of input from our colleagues: What was the experience they wanted to have? What was the experience they wanted to deliver to our customers? And so between that, his vision, the support from HR and input from our colleagues, that’s what formed the Conga Way and the three pillars around that.
HR Executive: Can you tell me more about those pillars?
Perry: The three pillars of the Conga Way are entrepreneurial spirit, achieve together and champion the customer. We talk about them in almost every meeting; they are embedded into our reward and recognition programs and how we talk about performance.
When you think about “achieve together” as an example, it is one of those things that could sound like unicorns and rainbows, right? But it’s the really hard things about achieving together—when there’s natural tension or friction between functions and what they want as an outcome—that really requires hard work. Peer accountability is a core dimension. That comes together with championing the customer, which is how we make our customers successful, and the entrepreneurial spirit: How do we show up with a lot of grit and resilience and work together, even when it’s hard? How do we sometimes put aside our own view of the world and make sure that we’re hearing what’s important to others and other teams as we’re working together to solve hard problems?
HR Executive: Through the Conga Way and beyond, how has HR focused on becoming a strategic business partner in the last few years?
Perry: I’ve been with Conga about three years. Sometimes [new CHROs] are working from a place where HR is very transactional, and that was not the case for the most part. We have always been good thought partners and people partners. And where I feel like we’ve made some really material changes over the course of time is up-leveling our expectations around how to be really good business partners.
How are we helping the business see around corners? How are we thinking about talent? How are we showing up with data that actually helps us do those things? Do we have the right leaders in place? Are we coaching them in the right way? What’s the support they have? Have they onboarded differently?
We’re forcing ourselves not to just be responders and thought leaders in a moment, but to really be looking down the pike and helping leaders see deeper into the organization and in places they might not look—because they, too, are running at 100 miles an hour.
HR Executive: What kind of HR transformation is underfoot as the function thinks about its role in the future of work?
Perry: I think we have to be very, very good at thinking through the technology that we’re leveraging. We’re starting, obviously, to think about AI: How do we embed that within how we perform the business of HR? How are we using the tools and technologies available for better communication with our colleagues? Are we doing it in the way that is most likely to resonate?
Resources are always in some constraint, and so therefore, we can’t just show up and go, “Hey, we think we should do this because it matters to our colleagues.” Well, does it? What’s the why? What does the data tell us? We need the qualitative and the quantitative data. How we show up with our why and our business cases and the data and helping to inform our decisions and investments has been something we have been transforming materially over the course of the last couple of years.
HR Executive: What emphasis is HR placing on DEI?
Perry: We’re a very global company; more than 50% of our colleagues are outside of North America. When you think about what diversity looks like, it can look very, very different across the globe. What we have been very intentional about is, how do we make Conga a place that people want to join and, more importantly, where they choose to stay?
We really believe that the whole person matters—the human connection, the experience they have when they’re here and that idea of achieve together. At the end of the day, we want our colleagues to feel like this is someplace they can show up with their best ideas and be their true selves, and that it’s a place where they’ll feel supported. We’re very intentional about the design and about our recruiting practices.
Depending on where we are in the world, we rely on anywhere from 25% to more than almost 50% of our new colleagues coming through a referral. If people have a really good experience here and their networks are diverse, then they too will bring diverse talent into the organization. And that’s the experience that we want, and that’s the momentum that we want.
HR Executive: Especially given that you’re a global company, how have you thought through return-to-office decisions in the last few years?
Perry: It’s a topic that just keeps coming up, doesn’t it? And for good reason because it’s not easy.
Effectively, we’ve landed on mixed modes, and we don’t feel there’s any one answer. Fifty percent of our organization is outside of North America, so this idea of having teams come into the office is such a misnomer for us anyway. Probably two-thirds of my HR global facilities team is outside of the U.S. Even coming into an office doesn’t mean you have your team together.
Remote is just a thing we all have to get really, really good at. That doesn’t mean that we don’t value coming together. That’s absolutely important; the idea of breaking bread and having some service to the community—these are part of our DNA, and we invest in it. As an example, our CFO organization globally just came together—we brought them from across the globe because we feel like having everyone together to do that planning for the next year is super important. Would that have been the same if they all worked in their individual offices? Absolutely not.
For the most part, we allow the functions within the business to determine what works for them. There are some more early-in-career roles such as sales development or business development, where we have concentrations near offices. Typically, we will want them in two to three days a week to be together, because we think that helps them establish positive ways of working early in their career, and helps them build their own skills and critical capabilities.
HR Executive: Is there a mantra that guides you as an HR leader?
Perry: My team and I talk about this a lot: making what we do matter. Is it relevant? Is it having the impact that we want? If we do this, what will be the response? It’s not necessarily quantifying the impact—sometimes that’s easy to do, and sometimes that’s very hard to do—but it’s about, is this something that matters? At the end of the day, it’s about relevance.
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