Fifteen months ago, I thought Banfield was ready for 2020. We had our plans and metrics in place. Like all of you, I had no idea what the rest of the year had in store. As the pandemic quickly progressed, there was no manual on the shelf for us to pull from. We had no existing strategies up our sleeves to pivot how we operated and provided care at our 1,000 hospitals across the U.S. during quarantine. At the same time, the demand for pet care was soaring. More than 11 million American households welcomed new pets in 2020.

Here’s what we did have: an inclusive culture with a high level of mutual respect and teams who have each other’s backs. Our culture is one in which people are encouraged to engage in conversation and share their ideas across the company. It made all the difference.  

Banfield is made up of more than 19,000 Associates nationwide. As part of the Mars Veterinary Health family, we are united by our purpose to make a better world for pets. When we can make a better world for our people, it allows them to realize our purpose. It’s about advancing pet health, human health, and societal wellbeing.

Culture is my top priority. It is our culture that got us through 2020 – not our best-laid plans and metrics, as important as those are. I often tell my team, strategy without empathy is a wasted idea. I am enormously proud of our responses to the pandemic. We made the health and wellbeing of pets and our people our top priority. We did our best to understand what it was like for our Associates to manage the heavy stress of increased workloads and family routines turned upside down. We did everything we could to engage in conversation with one another, learn, and then act.

The foundation of Banfield’s culture is built on authentic connections and two-way dialogue. For me as a leader, the origin of this commitment is personal. In my shelf-stocking days, working for a large pharmacy chain, it frustrated me that visiting leaders from the corporate office would only talk with the store manager or the pharmacist. The rest of us were on the front lines, interacting with customers every day, but our insights were rarely heard. When I became president of Banfield, I made it a point to avoid this mistake. Today, the strategic direction of our organization comes from the voice of our Associates.

More than 75 percent of Banfield’s workforce consists of millennials and Gen-Zers, which means that using social media to connect is not optional. Many companies focus only on their intranet or email communication, forcing people to use their platform. This one-way mode of communication is becoming less relevant. Companies should also use systems that people are already using. As leaders, we must go to where the conversation is happening instead of expecting the conversation to come to us. That’s why I use Instagram – it’s where our people are every day. When I scroll through my feed, I can learn about what’s happening in our hospitals and directly engage with Associates. This is especially crucial at a time when in-person hospital visits aren’t an option.

Now, our Associates have another opportunity to make their voice heard through The Mars Associate Survey. This annual survey enables us to continue moving our practice and culture forward in the right direction. As leaders, we gain invaluable insights about where to focus our efforts to create a positive and inclusive workplace that aligns with our Five Principles, which are the foundation of how we do business today and every day.

As I experienced at the start of my career, it’s dispiriting to open up about a problem or an idea, and then to feel as though it went nowhere. Establishing and sustaining a thriving culture as a leader means acting on what you learn from your team. I believe the only thing worse than not engaging in conversation is doing so and then letting it drop. This does not mean that we can do it all. It’s about taking our Associates’ ideas seriously, prioritizing actions, reporting back, and empowering our people.

I was excited to share more on this approach to developing culture at FUTR Europe and The Conference Board’s Leadership Development Conference alongside other leaders from PepsiCo, H&M Group, Boeing, Volkswagen, Facebook, and more. We don’t have all the answers at Banfield, and there’s always more we can do. That said, I’m so proud of how we’ve continued to foster a culture of conversation, learning, and action. This is what allows Banfield Associates to continue to be here for each other and the pets that rely on us.