So Nici, Nici Bush, welcome.
So great to have you.
- Great to be here, Shelley.
- Well, I know that Mars has been an integral part
of my household in the,
it was previously,
but it especially has been
between the amount of snacking for me
and the feeding for my dog.
So many know Mars, I think, as a name,
but maybe you could quickly just give us
a little bit more about the brand and yourself.
- Yeah, absolutely.
So a little bit about Mars
and then a little bit about myself.
So Mars is still a private, family-owned business
with over a hundred years of providing consumers
with great products and also services.
And what I think most of us think about
when we think about Mars
is those consumer brands.
So M&M's, Twix.
Twix is actually my favorite
because I used to run the plant in Cleveland, Tennessee,
and when it's hot off the line,
it's just delicious.
(Shelley laughs)
Pedigree, Royal Canin.
But I think what many of us aren't,
or, certainly, as aware of,
is we also have a very significant services business,
pet services and vet services.
So Pet Partners, VCA, Banfield, just to name a few.
And in fact, we have 130,000 people that work for us,
we call our people associates,
and over 65,000 of them
are actually in our vet hospitals and vet clinics,
so just about half.
And I've been very fortunate
to work for Mars for many years.
I'm in my 30th year across many different businesses.
I spent my first 15 years in pet
and also worked as the head of supply and R&D
for our chocolate business across the world,
which, as you can imagine,
when I had young kids,
everyone thought I was like Willy Wonka
coming home with a new product.
But I've been very fortunate
to have a long and kind of varied career
and now, obviously, after a long history
in both operations and strategy,
being able to now think about,
what does this mean for us
when we think about workforce transformation
and workplace transformation?
- Wow, I mean, so you really,
given just 30-plus years in the company,
I would imagine
that this new kind of hybrid work environment
has been a real shift for you.
Will you talk a little bit
of how you're thinking about hybrid work?
- Yeah, absolutely.
I think the first thing probably to say
is that we're a very decentralized business
that doesn't have a large global headquarters
and we're in over 80 countries around the world
and so we're used to being very distributed
and having a very flexible environment
where we're having to work in a hybrid way,
even prior to the pandemic.
So if I take the US, for example,
we've had flexible working policies in place
for over 15 years.
So some of it is not new.
But obviously some of it is new over the last 18, 20 months.
And I think when we think about hybrid work,
I think it's important to think about,
what's the why behind all of this?
And for us at Mars,
the why is about our purpose,
and our purpose is around the world we want tomorrow
starts with how we do business today.
And the world we want tomorrow,
everyone is thriving.
People are thriving.
And so when we think about hybrid work,
we think about,
what can we do that allows our associates to thrive,
customers, consumers, and our pet parents to thrive as well?
And so the way we started this
was very much with our associates,
not to our associates.
So we talked to over a thousand associates
in more of a user centricity, design thinking type approach
to really gather kind of information
of what people were experiencing.
And very much what you shared
in your stats in the introduction around the hybrid paradox,
people are looking for,
and our own associates were looking for,
97% of them were looking for
more than occasional flexibility,
but they were also missing
some of that face-to-face connection.
But in a business, as you said,
in terms of consumer products and retail,
over 75% of our associates are frontline workers
working in factories, vet clinics, retail ourselves,
we have M&M World stores,
and therefore it's not a one size fits all
and we need to sort of think through
how do we provide principles
instead of really rigid policies?
So I think that's some of the way
we're thinking about it
as we approach this very complex journey.
- Well, I love what you shared because,
and I was writing it down,
sort of the world we want tomorrow.
I think sometimes we, in the middle of all this,
we think we're solving for today,
but you're grounding yourself in your distributed model
but looking for the world that you want tomorrow.
Tell us a little bit,
I think it's hard for people, especially now,
to understand how they're going to unlock value.
You know, at the end of the day,
we have to unlock value.
So are there ways in which you're already seeing
that this hybrid work adoption
is unlocking value for Mars, Incorporated?
- Yeah, I mean, I think if we go back to,
we want to deliver seamless experiences,
and I think you said that in your introduction,
for our associates, for our customers,
for our patients and our clients,
it's really about, what can we do in an environment,
you know, many of us had to myth bust very quickly
at the start of the pandemic.
So if I go back to the 65,000 associates
that work in vet clinics,
in the course of a few days,
we moved to curbside drop-off
so that you as a pet parent,
myself as a pet parent,
could safely drop off your pet at the vet.
The vet clinic could also remain safe
and everybody could put in those safety procedures
and do that, obviously, enabled by technology.
What we have also seen is Telehealth,
even in vets,
which you'd think would be slightly more difficult
than, you know, a human conversation
about what's wrong with me,
that that's gone up triple digit through the pandemic.
And that offers a hybrid choice
around whether you go into a clinic
or whether you do that,
whether you do that from home.
And that's really important
because we've seen through the pandemic
that now 70% of US households own a pet,
and that's the highest it's ever been.
And so as we think about hybrid working in the future,
we need to make sure we enable those pet parents
when they move back to offices
and we also have support,
and if any of the people listening need support
around how do you get a pet-friendly office,
that's certainly something we do ourselves.
So people in a hybrid environment
can bring pets to the office
so that they're not worried about leaving new pets at home.
And I think that the final thing,
if I think about our own associates,
I said we're distributed, we're very decentralized.
We know that we want to get out to our markets,
we want to get out to our factories,
but, actually, digital has really enabled us
to blend physical visits with digital visits.
And having spent most of my career in supply
and doing a lot of travel looking at factories,
it's amazing now the connections you can get
through a digital,
you know, a digital factory visit,
a digital market visit.
And so I think there are some practical ways
we've already been able to make this work for ourselves
in the first 18 months,
and that's only the start.
- I love what you said, Nici,
because from sort of a,
and I know I've been able to take advantage of it,
sort of a telehealth visit for a pet,
which, you know, for all of us who are working,
sometimes you do want to take your pet in
and maybe curbside,
but being able to do a quick visit like this
is so much more efficient.
So there's like a customer payout immediately.
But also, sort of all the way back
to maybe your Twix experience,
the remote operations of a factory,
I always say technology is good
when you don't even know it's there,
and those are both incredible examples
of how we're doing that together
and also how you're innovating for tomorrow.
Some lessons learned in the last 18 months?
Maybe the couple biggest lessons you've learned.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I think, certainly, the first place you tend to think about
when you think about hybrid working is where.
So your brain naturally goes to,
where are you going to get work done?
I think one of the biggest lessons we learned
through the associate interviews
and also through talking to other businesses
and experts in the field
is it's much broader than that.
It's absolutely about reimagining not just where you work
but how and when you work.
And when you talk to maybe young moms
who are trying to balance many different challenges,
people who are dealing with elderly parents,
many of us have got all sorts of different needs
we need to meet,
when can be really powerful,
if I can do something in the morning
and someone else is looking at it in the evening.
And so one of the biggest learnings I've had
is really think about the total associate experience,
not just it through the lens of where work gets done.
And as we think about total associate experience,
we also think about,
you know, many of us on this call think a lot about,
what have we done in a retail experience?
We use real-time data
to make sure that a customer has a fantastic experience
in a retail environment.
And we're no different when we think about
M&M World stores.
We need to think about this now for our own associates.
What's the fantastic experience they need to have
when they do come to an office
or they do come to a face-to-face location?
Because we know that someone's cognitive ability
is in fact affected by environment.
And so offices need to be an experience
that people really get value from,
and we use data in order to do that,
rather than just a constant in the equation.
I suppose my background, I'm a scientist,
and so I think about the fact
that offices used to be a constant
and now they're a variable
in the equation of how work gets done.
- It's so interesting hearing you talk.
I am not a scientist.
I am inspired by you.
But in a way, it actually brings memories to me
of even what we talked about in retail five years ago,
that the store has to be an experience
given the rise of the e-commerce channel
and that you have to have a reason
to get in your car, pay the parking,
leave kids, bring kids, all that.
And so you have to deliver an experience that's unique
that you wouldn't get online.
And in a way, what you're saying
is we have to think the same way about the office.
And I love that it's not just the where,
because I think a lot of the hybrid discussion
has been about the where,
but it's the when and the how which is so important.
So I'm sure you and I could talk for hours
but as we think about advice
you would give the audience watching today,
what would be some of those pieces of advice?
- Yeah, I think there's kind of a reflection on advice
that say, this is an area
where everyone has an opinion, right?
So whether you talk to someone that you meet
now that we're maybe spending a little bit more time
being able to get together,
everyone has an opinion on where, how, and when they work.
And there are no neutral views
and so it's a very strong, kind of emotional topic.
And there are no definitive answers.
And so in that environment,
my advice would be we need to continue to listen
and we need to use data and principles.
So it's not about rigid policies.
It's about principles.
And so as I think about some of the principles
that we've put together,
obviously, hybrid working
around doing work in an environment
that best fits the activity
and really thinking about that
rather than the percentage of time in office,
percent of time at home.
I also think about office, and we talked about that,
but also things like, what are our principles around travel?
You know, travel
and thinking through how digital has enabled us
and reducing travel.
And one of our principles
is to think about reducing that
by hopefully around half of our pre-pandemic levels
will make a big difference
to the associate health and wellbeing.
You know, when you travel a lot,
there's certainly a lot of tax on your own body,
but it's also a big impact on a family.
And then meetings as well.
So for me, and what I would say is think about principles,
not rigid policies,
and let's just keep listening.
We don't have all the answers.
- Wow, so listen, use the data,
and then really think more about principles versus policies.
Those are tangible pieces of advice
that I'm going to take back for myself as well.
A huge thank you to you for joining all of us today.
I hope, if you're willing, you'll come back again
and share how you're navigating,
how we're navigating this journey together.
But Nici, huge thank you for joining all of us today.
- Thank you.
Really enjoyed it.