Colsubsidio: Leadership, Talent and Digital Transformation in HR

Cindy: Welcome to a new coffee break session, this time we'll talk about culture of change, leading organizational transformation. In this new episode we will talk about a very important company in Colombia, it is Colsubsidio, is a non-profit organization whose primary mission is to improve the quality of life of its members through a wide range of services and benefits. Since 1957, this company has been home to millions of Colombians, with more than 18,000 passionate, dedicated and committed employees consolidate one of the most comprehensive compensation funds in the country. Allow me now to introduce you to Martha Cecilia Castaño, Human Talent Manager at Colsubsidio. I'm going to tell you a little bit about her so you can get to know her later. Martha is a leader with more than 20 years of experience in the world of human talent, with in-depth knowledge and extensive experience in leadership and talent management processes. Martha has promoted innovative initiatives that have improved the quality of life of employees and strengthened a great organizational culture during her time in different organizations. She is a social communicator by profession, a specialist in economic journalism and also has a master's degree in people management from Inalde Business School. Welcome to this space, Martha. Thank you for accepting the invitation.”

Martha: “Oh, Cindy. Thank you very much for the invitation and well, we are here for what you need.”

Cindy: “Well, Martha, many people are going to want to know what that organizational culture management process has been like at Colsubsidio, so my first question is: How has Colsubsidio managed to align the talent needs of its different businesses while maintaining a unique and attractive value proposition for each of its businesses?”

Martha: “Well, hey, let me tell you that this is not an easy topic, especially in a company that has different lines of service. Hey, well, there's the issue of hospitality, there's the whole issue of housing, there's the whole issue of health. So, we have different services and lining them up hey, doesn't end up being that easy. However, hey, what we decided a long time ago at Colsubsidio is that something that united us and really challenged us as a team, as an organization, is what we have called our higher purpose, our higher purpose which is create opportunities to close social divides, to put it more easily, to create opportunities to transform the lives of Colombians, to improve their quality of life. And that for us is our great transcendent purpose, that regardless of what area of the company I belong to, well, that's what makes us want to get up every day with a real desire to transform the country. And attached to that higher purpose, well, there is the way in which we act, which is our values, our behaviors. We fixed uh, four values who are known to all our workers across the country and who stick to that purpose, who are therefore the value of integrity, the value of the social commitment because basically it is part of that social responsibility, the value of Passion to serve because we serve millions of Colombians, millions of families, and obviously the value of excellence, because we do things right from start to finish. So, that's what we've found that really allows us, regardless of where you are in the company, regardless of how old you are, regardless of what you believe in, that's what unites us as an organization, as a team, and that's really to transform the country and transform the lives of millions of Colombians.

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Block: Higher Purpose and Colsubsidio Values

Cindy: “Great, well, Martha, let's go into detail and talk about culture and I would like you to tell us: How has Colsubsidio managed to create a solid organizational culture and, above all, understanding the diversity of services and business units that you have within the company?”

Martha: “Well, the first thing that has to do with consolidating that culture is Generate a shared vision, is that we all really understand what what we do here is about, because in culture really when you know what you have to do, you behave that way, you act that way and you feel that you are pointing to something in particular. But obviously the organizational communication has been fundamental in this path. Hey, we have different channels and means of communication that allow us to reach all our workers, it's not easy because more than 70% of our workers are not sitting in front of a computer. So, that has also forced us to reinvent ourselves in terms of the media, to look for digital communication mechanisms. We have a model that we call of 360, which seeks that through mechanisms such as WhatsApp, but also through the intranet, communities, uh, communities that we have within the same intranet, the same leaders become our communication channels. Some of them, because we have trained them to help us in this dissemination. So, the issue of communication has played a very strong role there, but the most important thing that I think is what really makes a company consolidate its organizational culture is the visibility of their leaders, the example of their leaders, that they also do it on a daily basis. And something I've always said: What is not measured does not exist. So, what we did with our leaders was to include them too, uh, an indicator of results, which is the Index of culture and work environment in the company, which plays an important role in its indicators, between 15 and 30%. And that makes us all committed not only to deploying culture but to setting the example that is needed to make people feel that they are in the best place where they could be right now and that hey, they have a sense of belonging and are allied with the culture and values of this organization.”

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Block: Cultural Consolidation: Communication and the Role of Leadership

Cindy: “Very interesting thing you mention about the role of leaders, isn't it? , understanding that leadership is one of the factors that most impacts an employee's decision to remain or not. Tell me a little bit more about this leadership model.”

Martha: “Well, look, for a long time we understood that of course, we could make a lot of efforts from communication, but starting with our main leader, who is Doctor Luis Carlos Arango, uh, we decided to deploy a mode of leadership that has several components. The first is to understand, Segment leaders, understand what type of leaders we have in the company, because depending on your your level of leadership, you have different responsibilities and roles. Hey, the second thing we did was say, 'Okay, what kind of leader do we want and then what's the gap between the leader we want and the leader we have? ' And after identifying that gap, we began to define development programs, and that's why we have our Leadership Academy, which is in line with the levels of leadership, has routes. So, I have the Consented leader Which is the one of the operational leader; I have the Mentor leader who is the leader of senior management; and I have the transformative leader who is the middle management leader. And everyone then receives according to their level, then receives a series of training and training in development. The third thing we did was define how we were going to measure them in terms of their impact, and for that we have our culture measurement, as I told you, but specifically there is a variable associated with leadership and every quarter we measure the microclimate that that leader generates and the microculture that that leader generates in the team. And finally, there is our performance model that is united, and as I tell you, the impact that that leader has on culture has a weight of 30% on your results, and we have a kind of requirement, and that is that if the leader does not exceed a certain threshold, then he loses his leadership capacity, because it is not simply a matter of giving results but of giving them, but giving them within the framework of the culture and work environment that we have defined.”

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Block: Leadership Model and Impact Measurement

Cindy: “A lot of learning from now on. Thank you for that generosity and tell us how they have been doing it from Colsubsidio. I'm sure it's going to be information that many people who are going to be seeing this information can take as insights, ideas.”

Martha: “Of course, and here at Colsubsidio, we're obviously open to sharing that knowledge when they need it.”

Cindy: “Thank you, Martha, for that generosity. Well, we know that we are in times of change, acceleration, uh, of digital transformation in all companies. Tell us a little about how Colsubsidio has responded to this challenge, uh, to that digital transformation, and what new skills you are looking for in employees to adapt to these new ways of working.”

Martha: “Look, some time ago when we defined our model of culture, we said: 'Okay, our culture has our higher purpose, it has our values, but we want some attributes in our culture', and it goes hand in hand with that. And we said, 'We want our culture to strengthen the whole issue of digital transformation, the whole subject of agile service And the whole subject of generation of experiences for our customers, for our affiliates'. Then, attached to culture, we once again said: 'You have to develop those attributes'. And that led us to a whole process that Colsubsidio began more than 5 years ago of digital transformation. Digital transformation in two fundamental things: the first in how our affiliates accessed our services. Our members used to have to go to a service point or even to the Pisilago box office to buy the tickets; nowadays they don't, they access them digitally. And we began to transform in that sense. Telling you that the pandemic obviously accelerated that issue, made us even more committed to that one in that exercise, and that's where our change management process helped, because it's one thing for you to paint the digital transformation and another thing that internally employees also push the issue and learn to be able to better serve our and our members. So, there we began a whole process of digital transformation from the customer's point of view and internally from the point of view of automation of our operations. Not all of us are on that path, but we started a whole automation process that allowed our people to also dedicate themselves to more analytical things, more than a different exercise other than just doing repetitive actions, and there we have a lot of hard work on the subject of automation. This then leads us to reconfigure the profiles of our workers in some of the positions, because I don't necessarily know the digital transformation in all of them, hey, it touches the company's service portfolio, but not necessarily because it means that all workers now have to become super megadigital. However, we created two academies: the Digital Academy who at the time came to that specific group for all that knowledge of digital skills and the Agility Academy to also start implementing all these agile methodologies that allowed projects to come out very quickly. Skills that we are clearly looking for because everything that has to do with those abilities of digital citizenship, hey, because that really makes people integrated into how the world evolves, but also all the skills that have to do with the subject of business intelligence, with the whole topic of BI, with the whole topic of automation and with all the knowledge of new, uh, tools that make it much easier to access our services and design the products we need.”

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Block: Culture and Digital Transformation in Services and Operations

Cindy: “OK, Martha, you gave us a global view at the organizational level, but right now I would like to delve into the human talent process. Tell us a little about that process, if you have integrated artificial intelligence technology tools into human talent to leverage those human resources processes.”

Martha: “Well, we're on that path. You will understand that an organization of 18,000 workers managed manually by human talent would be very very difficult. Hey, many years ago we decided to first go into a whole topic of technification of tools that would allow, for example, the entire topic of selection. In fact, because we have the Magneto platform It also allows us, uh, to manage our recruitment processes much better and faster. Hey, then we have a whole internal platform also with another provider, eh, which allows us to consolidate all the tools and all the access to the worker's services on a single platform. Something very important that we did and that again prompted us by the pandemic is that the Worker care became 100% virtual. The worker at Colsubsidio does not have to go to a physical point to be treated, but rather they do everything for their self-service, for their virtual self-office, eh, and access different subjects: certifications, proof of payroll, and the request for a benefit. All that has been, uh, for a couple of, no, more like 3 years, super technical, super organized. Obviously access to everything that has to do with selection processes and internal promotions, hey, everything that has to do with performance management is also automated. And now we are on a project that seeks to get started using the virtual assistants for other types of tasks, uh, that have to do, for example, with the topic of development. We have a virtual campus, but we want to start customize the development experience a lot more. Hey, everything that has to do with the topic of well-being, for example, the whole topic of virtual training. So, we've been working on that. Hey, I can't tell you that it's already full today, we're still just starting to think about the topic of business intelligence of intelligence of of artificial intelligence. Hey, we want to start involving him in some of our issues, but we're working on that. I think that in Human Talent not only in Colsubsidio, but in Colombia, that is still a topic that is just entering, and I think that people with Human Talent have to start training in that in order to do it. And one thing that we are definitely doing with this digital topic is starting to venture into the topic of People Analytics or talent analytics that allows us to segment people and that allows us to design solutions and alternatives according to the profile of each employee. That if you are not you are not a mother, you have no children, because maybe you will not receive the offer of the benefit of educational assistance for the child, but maybe you will receive university aid. So, how can we begin to better parameterize and segment our audiences through artificial intelligence models and thus through much more advanced analytics that are much more focused on the worker and the worker's experience.”

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Block: Skills Development and HR Technification

Cindy: “Great, Martha, at the beginning we talked about organizational culture and I think that the work you have been doing is too important at Colsubsidio in this cultural transformation, so I would like to ask you: What advice would you give to other leaders of human management who seek to promote a change in organizational culture, which, as you said, is not easy? What advice would you give them?”

Martha: “Well, first of all, the work is not mine, it really is the work of my entire team that is behind all that, uh, and that really, without their hard work and their study and their commitment, it wouldn't really be possible to do it all over the country, because I have a team that really is the one that makes things happen within the company. What advice would I give? Look, the first thing I think is that organizations have to find their higher purpose. Hey, today hey, the fundamental tendency is that people work for a purpose and that is increasingly relevant because people don't want to just go to a workplace just to receive money and do a job, they have to understand that what they do transcends and has a greater purpose. So, the first piece of advice I would give is, from a cultural standpoint, Establish the purpose through which we are going to bring people together. The second is that the values that are defined have to be taken into action, translated into visible behaviors. Sometimes we're left with, I don't know, the value of respect, but people don't understand how they should act to really say: 'Hey, respect in this company is lived this way'. Then, translate, lower the value of each of the values to behaviors. Not many, not a lot, but behaviors that are visible and that are easy for people. If I say that one of my values is a passion for serving, then one of the behaviors is: I greet looking at people every day, why? Because for me it's important to tell the person: 'You represent something to me, I'm here to serve you'. So, if you tell anyone from the Front to greet looking into their eyes, he understands that this is a passion for serving. So that would be like my second piece of advice. And the third thing, you have to have a Very very strong communication plan for change and culture, because people have to know and people have to know how they should do it. If we don't communicate effectively, and communicating it is not leaving the responsibility to the communications area or the human talent area of the company, communicating it is Lower it through company leaders, because the leader is the one who shapes culture through example. You can't be incoherent and then say that the fundamental value here is respect and I have a leader who mistreats or disrespects people every day. So, I think they are like those three things: to be very clear about the purpose, to go for easy, visible, observable behaviors, values, and thirdly, to have a whole plan for communication of culture and change that is implemented through leaders as molders of culture.”

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Block: Automation, AI and People Analytics in Human Talent

Cindy: “Great, three super relevant tips, Martha. How do you envision the future of talent management at Colsubsidio and in the industry in general?”

Martha: “Oh, look, I see talent management as something supremely transcendental and strategic. In those days I was reading a report that already talks about the human sustainability, we no longer even talk about human capital, but about human sustainability. And I visualize it as that, as a Win-win between company and employee where I feel that I am giving something to this company, that social contract that we end up making, where I give you my workforce, but in return what do you give me. And in return you give me quality of life, you give me well-being in return, you obviously give me a salary, some benefits. But I see it as something fundamental and strategic in terms of being able to truly transform societies. We are from Human Talent we are the fundamental engine, the main engine not only of the growth of companies but of the transformation of society. I see it as a function, no more than an area, I see it as a function that It does not correspond specifically to a group of people but to the entire organization at the head of the leaders, also obviously with a team that therefore supports the different processes. But I see it as a transversal function for which we are all responsible, regardless of whether we are in the management of Human Talent or in the vice-presidency of Human Talent. I visualize it in a very agile and digital world, uh, for the people who are working on Human Talent It's not optional to know the whole topic of automation, artificial intelligence, People Analytics. In other words, he is behind him, and if that is happening in some companies, we have to start changing it. Gone is the Human Talent area that deals only with well-being, the party at the end of the year. No, that's changed, we really are, we must be uh, those Partners hey, what really makes human capital, people, feel in a very good place to work with conditions uh, decent, with healthy conditions, with safe conditions. And I see it as a integrality in terms of what the worker's experience is. In the long run, the issue of human talent involves ensuring that the worker's experience, the time he spends in the company, is the best experience he can ever have. Hey, it's increasingly difficult to retain people, that's why now we talk about loyalty, but more and more it's a reality that we'll have itinerant, multigenerational workforces. And so we must concentrate on that visualization that you ask me, we have to focus on ensuring that while that worker is here he has a great time, learns, grows, but even when he leaves, he leaves with a good memory of his company and can speak highly of it and recommend us.”

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Block: Tips for Cultural Change: Purpose and Behaviors

Cindy: “Great, Martha, after 20 years working in Human Talent, I would like to ask a question, and that is, what did you like the most about working in talent management?”

Martha: “Oh, God. Well, I think that maybe one of the things I like the most about working at Human Talent is that ability to learn something different every day. The topic of Human Talent really is a dynamic topic, hey, the human talent that I learned 20 years ago is not the human talent that is experienced today. So, I think that from an intellectual point of view is super challenging, eh, but I think that the most important thing and that ties in with the higher purpose of Colsubsidio is that possibility of transforming people's lives. Sometimes you think that doing something for someone is going and I don't know, making great contributions and going to do big campaigns for things to help people, and you forget that at work, on a daily basis, with that collaborator that you have, You can transform his life, you can transform his life by helping him to develop better, having a conversation about development, recognizing him, uh, guiding him and suddenly helping him to organize himself on the path he wants to take, uh, helping him to improve his skills so that he can have a better job and have a better income and can grow as a family. So, in the end I think that what I like the most about my work in Human Talent is that capacity to transform people's lives, uh, in the small way, in everyday life, starting from the detail. And there is a phrase that I once heard from a supplier that we had and that was that at the end of the day you should take stock of How many pairs of eyes did it shine. And I think that at Human Talent we have the opportunity to go to bed every day to take stock and say: 'Today I made at least a couple of people's eyes shine', and that happens more often in Human Talent than perhaps in others in other professions.”

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Block: Closing and Reflections on the Human Talent Profession

Cindy: “Well, Martha, I think there was no better way to close these than with this inspiring way of transmitting that passion for human talent. So from Magneto we thank you for participating in this session, thank you for sharing your experiences, your knowledge, but above all for opening the doors of Colsubsidio to us so that many other people who also work in Human Talent can learn a lot from this session.”

Martha: “No, Cindy, thank you very much and thank you very much for allowing me to, uh, do my part, a grain of sand, because I think that uh, We people of Human Talent are the ones really called to be true transformations And if you'll allow me to do the wedge, I think we have to believe the story, we have to give value to our profession, we have to train, we have to learn, obviously we have to understand that this is not done overnight, but we have to understand the great capacity that we really have to make a difference not only in companies but in society And because that is fundamental, we cannot lose sight of it and have this opportunity with you because it gives me that possibility to help replicate the message. So a big thank you to you, uh, obviously always welcome here at Colsubsidio because hey, our great purpose is that, to help people have a better quality of life.”

Cindy: “Well, thank you, Martha, and happy to have this session at Colsubsidio and we hope that all the people who watched this session, this episode, will join us in future sessions to continue learning this wonderful world of human talent. Thank you very much.”

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