Valerie Petroff, HR Country Manager, Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc.
By Laurel Hyatt
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
is a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software, and services that make the Internet work. Since its inception in 1982, it has grown to a company with revenues of US$11.4 billion in fiscal 2003 and more than 35,000 employees in more than 100 countries.
Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc. has roughly 550 permanent employees, plus a small contingent workforce of co-op students across the country.
Like most high tech firms, Sun is facing challenges in a tighter market. Workplace Today spoke to Sun Canada’s Human Resources Country Manager, Valerie Petroff, about how the company is rising to the occasion.
WT:
Do any of your employees in Canada do R&D? A couple of things that Sun is known for is coming up with the Unix operating system and the Java Internet software platform, so I’m wondering if any of that kind of thing happens here.
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Valerie Petroff
Sun Microsystems
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VP:
Sun has a long-standing history of innovation, both in the United States and Canada. For example, we have a global Centre of Excellence, or COE, program. There are over 40 COEs in the world today. In Canada, we boast five COEs that conduct research in areas like bioinformatics, visual genomics, and nanotools. We are pretty proud of our results and our contributions to global R&D efforts through these centres.
It is also worth noting that Canada has produced some of the greatest minds at Sun. James Gosling, the founder of Java, is a Canadian from Alberta. Dr. Marc Tremblay, who was born, raised, and educated in Quebec, holds 69 patents and invented UltraSPARC. UltraSPARC is key to Sun strategy and a core technology used in Formula 1 racing, like at the Grand Prix.
So, with these examples in mind, the people that we look for in those types of roles are a lot of co-op students placed from the University of Waterloo. We look for the true engineering minds who are looking for that type of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit.
WT:
What are you doing to recruit the brightest and best for that kind of work here in Canada?
VP:
It is awfully competitive, so our name does speak for a lot. Java has really helped us over the years. It really speaks to what we do, our strategy, and vision.
Essentially we try to have a strong presence at some of the universities. When we’re recruiting for coops, some of our managers will go and recruit on site. Some have booths at university career fairs and they’ll hold evenings where they can meet with some of the folks and get to know them and they can get to know us a little bit better.
WT:
I was really interested to read on your Web site that all Sun employees have been using email since the company started back in 1982. That was absolutely revolutionary back then. Would you describe the corporate culture still today as being cutting edge?
VP:
I came into Sun well over 10 years ago and it was new for me at that point: sitting down in front of a system where you could communicate so easily via email. Now, it’s a natural thing to do.
Definitely we’re still very much about innovation. One thing that we look at is to meet the customer needs, so we’re constantly evolving to try to keep up with what the customers are looking for.
For instance, I’m sitting now right in front of my Sun Ray (created by Sun Microsystems) and I use my Java card and I simply put it into the Sun Ray and the last session that I was working on pops up as I left it when I walked out of my office three hours ago.
That’s just one example of how we’ve been keeping up and it really revolves around the strategies of attacking costing complexities: our customers are obviously reducing cost these days. Being more productive and having mobility and security are other big issues that very much fit into the Java card, because you can access anything that you need anywhere, anytime. We store everything on the network so you don’t have to worry about your PC or laptop.
After a while, you sort of take it for granted, but it really is a cool piece of technology that makes us stay on the cutting edge, which is exciting.
WT:
Can you tell what us what the Sun Ray involves?
VP:
We have a Java card that you just insert into the Sun Ray, which is sort of a slim piece of equipment that you put your card into, and it reads everything from your previous session that you were working on. So when I put mine in, it comes up and I was working on an email last so it’s got the last piece of email that I was looking at. You can just continue on as you were before.
WT:
I want to talk a little bit about the industry itself, the IT sector. We’ve certainly seen a lot of consolidation lately and Sun has had its share of acquisitions, from what I’ve been reading on the Web site. You must have this down to a science by now. For example, do you have a process in place for the HR department to integrate employees from the acquired companies or does that not yet affect operations here in Canada?
VP:
It has, actually. We’ve had a few acquisitions over the years. The largest one that we had was a couple of years ago—Isopia—which was and has been a successful acquisition of a little under 200 employees at the time when they came over.
There is a global process from an HR perspective and we customize it locally as necessary. Once it’s determined that new employees are coming our way, we have a welcome event and we include as many Sun executives as possible. If not, we’ll have a video welcome, which Scott McNealy (Sun’s global chairman, president, and CEO) did for the Isopia folks to make them feel part of the Sun family. We put them through as much new hire training as we need to, to bring them up to speed.
There’s the aspect of technical training to help them get used to their system and understand how things work, and then from an HR perspective they learn about benefits and how they’re going to get paid. We also post things like that on the Web. We have a special Web site with a Q&A specifically for those folks with any typical questions that they might ask.
As well, we have what we call an on-site champion and that is somebody who knows the business and can help them through the transition. We had somebody come up from the U.S. who worked in Isopia’s line of business and was up here for about three to six months to help them integrate into not only the culture of Sun, but the culture of the business that they were in within Sun.
Someone from our group in Human Resources would reside with them as well for at least a month. This particular group is at a different location so we made sure that there was at least one HR person down there at all times for the first month to help them understand things like benefits and HR processes, and be there if they had any questions.
It did work out well and they’ve integrated over the last couple of years and gone through some re-orgs, which is not uncommon in the high tech industry. We’ve tried to do some focus groups and get some feedback from them and make sure that we’re managing the change properly for them.
WT:
You do focus groups with the integrated employees?
VP:
That’s right. It really helps because since then, a couple of the groups have broken off and are now housed under different lines of business and so we’ve had some sessions at that time as well. It helps us understand how can we do this differently, how can we improve things for them, and what are some things that we need to know. At a corporate level, there’s a team that’s always looking at the process to see where we can improve and listening to the employees who have gone through it to see what we can learn.
WT:
How is Sun weathering the downturn in high tech? Have you had to lay people off, for example?
VP:
Over the last couple of years, we’ve had some reductions. We are not alone, as you know. A lot of others in this industry are in similar situations. It has been a tough economy. Sun remains committed, however, to driving operational efficiency and in doing so must continually review, monitor, and respond to changing business priorities by evaluating organization, workforce, projects, product strategies, and cost structures. It is good business to constantly review our priorities and the business needs of our customers and adapt accordingly.
WT:
Do you have a sense of how the current environment is affecting morale at Sun?
VP:
A tough economy will always result in a little bit of unsettled feelings. We have really tried to communicate that our selective workforce changes and reallocations are ultimately a good thing in the long run as it allows us to more tightly align the organization towards achieving its goals of growing revenue, improving profitability, and increasing shareholder value. In the end, morale is not affected too much because our employees do feel like we are in this together, all working towards the same goals, and becoming a better and a stronger company at that.
What we try to do is keep our open door policy alive and encourage people to talk to their managers and to talk to us in human resources.
It’s all about frequent and open and honest communication from all levels and between all levels and really listening to the employees. Especially in a tough economy, it’s even more important to keep the communication lines going. We have town halls and then from a global perspective, Scott McNealy has Web chats and we hear from him on a regular basis. We hear from the local senior management team here and we encourage that. We have manager briefings that are done on a global basis that each of us is supposed to do with our departments.
We hire smart people, so we need to listen to them and hear what their concerns and fears are and how we can counter that so that everybody is going through this together.
WT:
I’m guessing those open lines of communication are probably one reason why Sun has made many lists of top employers around the world, including Fortune’s 100 best companies to work for in 2003. Would you say that those open lines of communication is one reason that sets Sun apart as an employer of choice? And can you give me some other examples?
VP:
I've been at Sun a long time. One of the things I've always appreciated since I first started here is that we try to retain a fairly flat org structure. I know we’re huge around the world, but we try to retain a fairly flat structure so that there aren’t a lot of gaps between the layers, between top management and individual contributors. I think that’s really helped so that you don’t feel so different from the person making decisions at the very top. I really feel that if you have a question, you can go to the person you need to ask—you don’t have to go through the management chain and follow a defined process.
Some of the other things that really have stood out for me, and I think I can speak for a lot of the other people here, is that we’ve always maintained the motto of “working hard and playing hard,” which is work-life balance. We really do ask a lot of our people, especially since after having some reductions in force, we’re asking people to redouble their efforts. We try to encourage people to play hard as well and to take the time that they need to regroup, to reenergize, and to spend time with their families. That’s really stood out for me.
From the work side of things, I think what attracts people and helps people here is we encourage risk-taking and that obviously leads to innovation. It really provides a lot of opportunity for employees: they feel very empowered to make decisions no matter what level they’re at. Speaking of innovation, it’s definitely been a strategy since Sun has started and they’ve never faltered from it.
And lastly I would talk about our values. Sun Canada was a leading force in creating Sun values when Sun came into Canada back in 1985. A small group of employees who were here at the time developed the core set of values that were intrinsic to Sun but also very key to Canada in particular. We still take them very seriously and the employees hold everyone (including management) accountable for these values, which is great. The fact that they were created by our employees really means something special and we try to uphold those on a daily basis. It can be a challenge sometimes, but we do take it seriously and we’re very successful with that.
WT:
How much autonomy do you have in setting HR policies and practices in the Canadian operations?
VP:
I’ll tell you briefly what our model is from an HR perspective. We have four quadrants.
One of the quadrants is a dozen or so people at the corporate level who set the strategy.
We then have centres of expertise, which are the design component: they have groups of programs, like compensation and benefits, or training and development, and they focus very much on the design aspect.
We then have business partners who are on the strategic, consultative side, with senior VPs and above, and they very much link in with the line and advise or guide them from an organizational design perspective, for example, how to move their business forward, and work through change.
Then we get into the shared services group, which is the group that I look after here in Canada. That’s very much about the implementation and the roll-out of the programs, and that’s where we have a lot of autonomy. A lot of the programs are designed and architected globally but from an implementation perspective, it’s local. We look at what the program entails and what is the best way to implement and roll that out to Canadian employees. We look at what some of the implications are that we need to be aware of so that we can address them up front and be prepared for any questions or concerns that might come out afterwards.
So there’s a fair bit of autonomy and there’s a lot of sharing among the global HR community. We’re always aware of what’s going on and anybody can provide input to the designers and share best practices.
WT:
I don’t want to get into all the details of your org chart but I’m just wondering to whom you report.
VP:
I report into an HR director down in California; he’s the Director of Global Shared Services for the U.S. and Canada.
WT:
It’s becoming more common these days to see female executives in the high tech field but I get the impression that it’s still fairly much an industry dominated by men, if I’m correct about that. Have you ever felt along your career path that it was more challenging because you were a woman? Or maybe is high tech so innovative that that really hasn’t been an issue?
VP:
I wouldn’t say it’s been challenging because of that. Being in human resources, it’s a little bit different. There are a lot of females in the HR field and that has really increased over the last five to 10 years, and much more so in senior positions.
What I have seen is when I got into HR, probably about 10 years ago, a lot of females entered the field in more of a secretarial or clerical manner, whereas males would typically go into it more from a program focus, and might go into compensation or benefits. That has changed a lot. In high tech, very rarely do you have an administrator here who just does secretarial. So from an HR perspective, females now enter much more into program related areas—it’s not necessarily through the administrative route, so that’s how I’ve seen the change.
I've talked to a few other colleagues as well and we don’t really see it as challenging or feel there’s a glass ceiling from an HR perspective: we’re able to enter the field from various areas and so it hasn’t really been a disadvantage in that sense.
WT:
You said you’ve worked at Sun for about 10 years, is that correct?
VP:
About 13 and a half years.
WT:
And what did you do before that?
VP:
Before Sun, I worked at a few other companies. One was consulting engineering, one was in consumer electronics, and one was in the health care supplies industry, for a couple of years each. And then I got into high tech.
I’ve always been in HR. Before the role that I’m in now—I’ve been in this role for a little over six months. When I started, I primarily looked after the recruitment side of things and then I morphed into much more of a generalist and worked my way through the ranks of a generalist and got into management roles.
WT:
You say you’ve worked in other industries, for example, the health care supplies industry. How do those compare with high tech in terms of HR issues?
VP:
I find the difference here is that it’s much broader in scope and the culture is just so different: it’s a much faster pace. It’s very dynamic and the change is constant. You’re always having to keep on top of the business, understanding the business a lot more, making sure that employees’ needs are constantly met, and having to be much more proactive: thinking ahead and trying to anticipate needs as opposed to just reacting to them.
WT:
You say you’ve always worked in HR. Did you study that field in post-secondary education?
VP:
I did once I started into HR. I kind of fell into it. My university degree is in French, which comes in handy occasionally. One of my summer jobs was in personnel, as it was called at that time, and I kept at that job and decided I wasn’t going to do another degree. That was at the engineering firm and I stayed for a couple of years then went on to different companies from there. It was just sort of circumstance, but I think it was fate; I soon enrolled in night school, and got my diploma in HR as well.
WT:
It’s amazing when I ask people the question about their education and career path, just how diverse it can be. It’s kind of hard to be an engineer without an engineering degree, but HR is much more forgiving, I think, in terms of your educational background. It’s really more based on your personality: you have to like working with people, you have to like coming up with strategies, solving problems, etc. and to me—I’m sure a lot of people would disagree with me—I think your educational background is not as important as some of your skills and aptitudes.
VP:
You’re quite right, but I think it does depend on what education you’re taking as well. The HR courses that I took were just fabulous and were much more practical in nature: you take the theory that you’ve learned along the way and then put it into use and apply it. That’s what a lot of the HR programs will focus on, which is great, because then it really prepares you for the things that you encounter on a day to day basis at work.
WT:
If you could give one piece of advice to our readers who hope to become an HR executive—or country manager in your case—some day, what would it be?
VP:
One of the things that I’ve always tried to do is keep an open mind, especially as things change so quickly. You really don’t want to close any doors that you might think weren’t necessarily relevant. You just never know—you can never have too much information or too much experience.
One of the things that’s really been key over the last five or 10 years is that HR is becoming much more part of the business and not just a standalone support function. You need to understand the business as much as possible so that you can relate to what the line management needs and what their concerns are ahead of time rather than just being reactive. You should operate very much as a business partner so that you’re connecting with them, being part of their team, partnering with all the different lines of business, and really showing what the value is that you can add to their business.
The business partner role, I think, is key. The lines really see the value and they see what you’re bringing to them; it’s very much about working with them to help design their organization so that it meets the business needs and helps them move forward.
WT:
Was there anything you wanted to add?
VP:
HR obviously wasn’t something that I was looking at all those years ago but it’s such an incredibly changing field and high tech is such an incredibly changing industry that the two together are an exciting experience. I just love coming into work every day.
We have a lot of people who’ve been here a long time and are enjoying their job, enjoying the company they work for, and it really does boil down to being all about the people. That’s what makes it happen for me.
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