Summary:

In this episode of the podcast, host CT Leong welcomes Marcela Pizzi, Head of People and Communications at Atlas Renewable Energy. The conversation pivots around the essential role of cultivating a people-centric culture within an organization and how it can spearhead the company's drive to be a force for good. As the episode unfolds, Marcela shares the origin of Atlas Renewable Energy and how her role evolved beyond traditional human resources, focusing on inclusive, safe, and growth-minded work environments.

Marcela recounts the innovative strategies Atlas has employed from its inception to foster unity, diversity, and excellence - key pillars of the company's values. From implementing blind CVs and increasing women's representation in the energy sector to investing in community training and development, Pizzi narrates Atlas's commitment to "being a force for good" and leveraging cultural diversity for the company's expansion across LATAM regions and beyond.

Key Takeaways:

• Atlas Renewable Energy is a pioneer in the clean energy sector, with a presence in multiple LATAM countries and focused on creating a people-centric, diverse, and safe work environment.
• Marcela Pizzi was the first HR hire at Atlas, where she has played a pivotal role in shaping the company's culture to prioritize sustainable growth and employee well-being.
• The discussion centered around the importance of moving beyond viewing HR merely as administrative or 'soft' work, and into a strategic partnership integral to business success.
• Atlas Renewable Energy's commitment to diversity and inclusion extends to their hiring processes, with initiatives such as blind CVs and insistence on a diverse candidate pool for all positions.
• The company's value system incorporates the principles of being united, excellence-driven, human, and constantly evolving, which weaves through every level of its business operations.

Chapters:

0:00

Building People-Centric Companies for Global Good

2:28

Building Atlas: A People-Centric Culture from Scratch

5:10

Driving Sustainable Energy Transition as a Force for Good

8:02

Embracing Diversity to Forge a Unified Identity

8:36

Debunking HR Myths and Embracing Strategic Partnership

12:04

Cultivating Inclusive Culture in Atlas's Evolutionary Journey

16:43

Fostering Inclusion Across Multinational Corporate Cultures

17:57

Implementing Diversity Without Quotas in Global Hiring Practices

23:05

Embedding Corporate Purpose and Values in Business Strategy

28:16

Connecting With HR Expert Marcela Pizzi for Social Good

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Marcela: linkedin.com/in/marcela-pizzi-56a32a15/

Music Credit: Shake it Up - Fesliyanstudios.com - David Renda



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Mentioned in this episode:

Engaging Leadership Intro

Engaging Leadership Outro

With us in the studio to have a chat on this is Marcella Pizzi. Marcella is the head of people and communications at Atlas Renewable Energy. It's a great pleasure to have you on the show with us today. Welcome, Marcella.

And that, of course, will help Atlas accelerate the energy transition that at the end of the day it's our main purpose as a company.

We very quickly realized that this wasn't an traditional HR role. It wasn't a human resources role. It was a people centric role because for us in Atlas, people are people, not resources.

And that we are still evolving and growing. It was a people centric culture that we needed. And in that sense, also, there was challenge for us as leaders to really lead the company and not manage the company thinking that it's a human resources department.

Some rapid fire questions for you before we dive into the meat of today's conversation. You started out pretty much saw the growth of the company from day one. What is the achievement that you yourself are most proud of your own kind of achievement within this journey?

We have this goal or vision of being forced for good, which is something that has been very present in everything that we do, ever since we began as a company. And why is that also related to your question in terms of what is for me one of the biggest achievements?

It's seeing the company in the position or the moment that we are today and also having being able to being true to what we believe in terms of being a force for good. Being a force for good for us is so important because it's not just that we do renewable energy. So you will say, Oh, then you're already doing a good thing for the planet.

In the great consolidation path that we are right now, last year was the first year with our new shareholder. One of our main concerns when we were first beginning was first that nobody knew us. And of course, doing things in the right way. But I would say that most of all was not being in the position of going through the same situation that led the previous company into the position of having to sell some of the products. We really wanted to create a company that lasts, being able to stand in the different scenarios and be a really strong player in the industry by doing things in the right way.

Mission, vision, the way that we lead, how we communicate, what our key and main elements in the way that we lead people as well.

From an operations perspective? From a finance perspective from all the different departments and functions that we have in the company. What does it mean for us to work in a sustainable way, which also translates into being a force for good and how that will help to accelerate the energy transition.

So that for me, very important to keep that in mind. And if we move away from the biases that leading people or managing people or HR, it's only about these things that nobody understands or doing activities, cutting papers and team buildings.

And on the other side, it's not just personal or administrative roles or administration of benefits. It's something in between, which is very difficult and involves many different aspects of the role and what I would say most important is that HR or people in my case needs to be part of the business and understood as part of the business as a strategic partner and not as a function that does something because it's very complex.

What are the salaries about? What are the benefits? What is happening? What's going on? Why are people leaving the companies or even your competition, for example. So you need to be very aware of what is happening in your business and also in the market. And that is very challenging because there's a big load of work that needs to be done from an HR perspective, meaning personnel perspective.

For example, how are we thinking of these benefits? Are we going to provide the same benefits for everybody, for example, if we really want to instill this feeling of being one company. Yes, we should. Okay. So what benefits? Then you start looking at your regions and the diversity that you have in the different regions that we worked in and seeing, for example, what are we going to do, with paternity leave or with maternity leave.

But that's an ongoing conversation. The same thing that I mentioned with vision and mission and purpose, it's an ongoing conversation because you then are faced to different situations and realities, and then you also evolve in the way that you approach to those different aspects of the role. I'm very thankful because for me has also been a very, interesting learning opportunity.

I have the fortune of having also a very fantastic team, not only my direct team, but also working with the leadership team and being involved in those conversations and taking all those conversations and decisions together has also been something that I would say it's the key of our success at the end of the day.

How do you bring them on board in this journey and engage them so that they can engage their people?

One thing is diversity. Non diversity is inviting people to the party, but the true inclusion is asking that person to dance at the party. If that person can't dance at the party, then you're not doing the thing correctly. You're not doing the inclusion correctly. You're not doing the diversity and inclusion part correctly.

If we do a town hall or we do an all hands, it's very important that people receive the messages. It's not just delivering them, offering the message, but also people understanding and how that will impact them. So we have translators, for example, in the all hands or the town halls. Another important part I would say in this not having second class citizens as well was that.

This all comes from being a force for good. And it's not just something to look good in the picture like I always say. Because it's what we truly believe in. We were setting up the company. We started having this discussion. So for example, what are we going to do with the hiring?

Okay. So first of all, we don't believe in quotas because that's not the way that you increase diversity and that's not the way to increasing inclusion because someone will feel included, excluded with a quota. So we were thinking, how are we going to do this? And then in this conversation, he said but what do you mean?

What is your concern? And my concern is for example, what are we going to do with gender. what we are going to do with race. I started the conversation with gender because, of course, I'm a woman. And then I said we are 23 people and we have 11 percent of women and it's basically the lawyer and me.

Also both women in very female traditionally occupied positions. And then he said, Oh yeah, you're right. So what are we going to do about it? Like you said, sometimes you're so close of the problem that you don't see what is happening, what's going on. And it's not necessarily that it's a good or a bad thing.

How putting both of them together will bring a different solution or a a new state of things. And so new masculinities was a very important part for us, not the unconscious bias at first, but the new masculinities to understand how also men are feeling with everything that is happening and going on in this new change of the market and the world of everything.

And at the same time, we were working on our talent acquisition and attracting talent for more diverse. So I started by asking headhunters to have a more diverse pool of candidates. And they say if you mean women, we don't have enough women in the energy sector to do that.

Then of course, we started working on unconscious biases. And after that, we were still not having more diverse pool of people going into the final interviews. And then we realized that, you know what we're going to do?

It's not about people wanting or not wanting. It's so strong the way that we think that we really need to put in place blind CVs. So we have blind CVs for everybody. So you don't know if the person, it's a female or male or age or race. You don't know anything. It has been a challenge for us in a way, because since we operate in different languages, in Spanish and in Portuguese, you can clearly identify by the pronouns if it's a man or a woman. Then the other part is not as easy to identify with the language. We needed of course to eliminate all the pronouns, so that the CV was truly blind.

It's not a quota because we really believe in having a more diverse workforce. And then that has evolved to other conversations and also extended that as being a source for good for our other initiatives in our projects. So in our projects, we realized that we also were having the same situation that we didn't have an enough diverse workforce, for example. So our head of ESG at that point, today is our head of sustainability, she said I'm going to do the same thing that we did in the corporate. I'm going to ask our contractors to put more women or a more diverse workforce, because that also evolved. It's not just gender that also evolved to have a more diverse workforce.

I want more women, but I don't want them working in the cleaning toilets or working in the kitchen. I want them working, building our projects. So I want women trained in electrical capabilities or construction and everything that we need to do in the project. And so then the answer was then it's impossible.

Then we're going to do is we are going to train them. You're going to hire them. And we're going to train those people to work in our projects. And that was, taking this initiative that we had in it from a corporate perspective, to a whole different level and actually realizing that you can work towards having this really ambitious purpose and being a forceful good once you start having this amplified in the things that you do.

You can start with different things like we were doing at the beginning, establishing the basics, but you cannot just settle with that. You have to keep looking what's happening, what's going on, because you have to make sure that you are being true to what you believe in. In this case is materializing our purpose and this ambition that we have of not only accelerating the energy transition, but doing it in a very sustainable way.

You will encounter difficulties and problems along the way, despite the good things that you're doing, and this being a force for good, but you have to be not just persistent. It's being coherent with everything that you're doing. You will find problems. Not everybody will think that this program is great.

We are not doing this to have better financing for the banks. We do because of this, that's great. But that's not where this come from.

It comes from who we are as a company, it's part of our DNA. We make sure that we transmit that in everything and all the initiatives that we do and that we have.

They will help us make decisions that are aligned with not only that purpose, but also with our strategic objectives. And they are a commitment. The framework are the values because you commit on behaving in a certain way that, is aligned with everything. Values are the ones that guide and inspire us to achieve what we want to achieve, what we want to become and what we are inspired to. Our values are very simple. They translated to specific behaviors. Also, the ones that we measure in our performance of evolution process. We don't call it evaluation. Our performance evolution process. So our values is united.

It's driving improvements in your area. Do not settle. Constantly pursue learning and growth both as a person, of course, and as a professional.

I hope we will keep the ball moving with all of our or my fellow partners as well.

So thank you so much for listening and take care. See you again soon.