Globally Great: How Leading Companies from the 100 Best Excel at their Culture Audit Submissions

Sonya George (0:00):

I've been with a Great Place To Work for 13 years and I've had the pleasure of working with these individuals for almost as long as I've been here and it's been an honor. They're fantastic leaders and in my role I have the pleasure of working with these leaders and many of you in the room for the past 13 years. And so I will be introducing them to you.

Sonya George (0:21)

First we have Meghan Magette. Meghan is vice president of recruiting and employer brand at Hilton. She spent the last 15 years building a powerhouse career, leading everything from HR consulting to recruitment tech and employer branding. As a sharp strategist and natural storyteller, Meghan helps show the world that Hilton isn't just a great place to stay. It is also a great place to work. And a quote from Meghan, I firmly believe where someone works can truly change someone's life. That's why I'm so proud to recruit new team members to Hilton and share why we are a great place to work, not to mention being number one on the 100 Best list.

Sonya George (1:06):

Next we have Sarah Reid Fletcher. Sarah is Hilton's director of employer brand and early talent partnerships. She came up through Hilton's early talent program and now leads them shaping the future of hospitality leadership. Her passion for culture and partnerships come through in everything she does, proving what's possible when you grow within a great company. Why does Sarah love working for Hilton in her words? Because it's the greatest place to work in the world. Big shoes to fill indeed.

Sonya George (1:45):

Up next we have Heather Niebel. Heather is Accenture's global HR talent strategist and the voice behind their global people listening strategy. She influences nearly 800,000 employees worldwide, turning culture insights into real change around leadership, learning, and belonging. Heather is known for her ability to listen deeply and turn that into action that truly transforms workplaces. Interesting fact about Heather. She came through Accenture by way of acquisition and 20 years later she's still thriving.

Sonya George (2:24):

Up next we have Annemarie Reed. Annemarie is a major player in marketing and the communications at Accenture for over 15 years. She shaped how Accenture tells its culture story, driving efforts around inclusion, leadership and global recognition. Annemarie helped expand their Great Place To Work reach from just a few countries to over 50, bringing heart and serious strategy to the table. This year will be Annemarie's 18th, one eight, Culture Audit™ submission. I've been here 13 years, she's been doing it longer than I've been here, so that's the woman to know.

Sonya George (3:06):

Last but not least, and you all should know this person if you don't, shame on you. And she's also one of my favorite people is Kim Peters, my colleague at Great Place To Work. With over 20+ years of experience launching and growing businesses, Kim leads global recognition, research, strategic partnerships at Great Place To Work. That's a big title. She oversees the creation of the best workplaces list, including the Fortune 100 Best, which came out last week, the World's Best and many, many more. And she built the certification program that helped companies earn the credit they deserve. Like many of you in the room, if not all of you. Thanks to her leadership and partnership with Fortune and People, more organizations than ever are being recognized for creating great workplaces. I didn't ask you this, but I was throwing it in anyway. Fun fact about Kim Peters: if she's not cruising the Mediterranean, you can find her on the golf course. For you in the room. Please absorb as much as you can, write as many notes as you can. We're going to have slides, but please take as much as you can from these individuals. They've been doing it and they're the best at doing it. So with that, Kim, I turn it over to you.

Kim Peters (4:19):

Thanks so much, Sonia. Is this working? Can everyone hear me? Okay? Awesome. It's on. It's great to see everyone here today. Thank you very much for coming. This year we decided that we would showcase some of our clients who actually write great Culture Audits and get them to share their secrets with all of you. Before we start, I just wondered if you could raise your hand if you have ever written a Culture Audit. Lots of people, but there are still some maybe that are just going to do it for the first time or thinking about it. Could you raise your hands if you're in that category? Super. Okay, well thank you. That gives us a bit of a sense for the group here. And both Accenture and Hilton do global Culture Audits now, which is something that we've been doing for just a couple of years and they were some of the earliest people to try them and so they'll, they'll be giving you some insights on that as well as we go through it. But fundamentally, I'm going to start with Annemarie here and ask you to explain to everyone how your company approaches doing the Culture Audit. What's your process?

Annemarie Reed (5:41):

Thank you so much for having us here and 18 years. Wow. Where did the time go? Glad to be here with you all today. Accenture approaches the Culture Audit and I'm in marketing and communications. As Sonya shared. We approach it with HR. I'm here with Heather and we work together all year long. We are not working on that Culture Audit all year long, but we are working together all year long and that is extremely important. One of the things I happen to love about this Culture Audit, you'll hear a couple of them as we talk today, is that it is the longest form narrative that our company has on its talent strategy. I'll also add that your Culture Audit is only as good as your talent strategy, and as I've seen our Culture Audit evolve over the years, I have also witnessed the talent strategy evolve over the years with it. It is an important document. You can have your talent strategy and phenomenal PowerPoint slides, but going through the exercise of writing it out, ours happens to be upwards of around 40 pages at the end of the day. It really is a critical document that we approach with every level of seriousness as we do external documentation we put into the public domain.

Kim Peters (7:10):

Thank you. And Heather, do you want to add to that?

Heather Niebel (7:14):

Yeah, absolutely. So with that, we also, as Annemarie had mentioned this collaboration between HR and marketing and communications. The importance, and I'll stress this again, the importance of that talent strategy and understanding how that actually tells that story into the Culture Audit is critical. It is something that we, it guides you, it tells that story. It also provides the content and the context for that Culture Audit as well, so that it's really important to kind of marry both of those as you're thinking, writing your Culture Audit

Sarah Reid Fletcher (7:58):

And then adding on that Kim. So at Hilton, we have a small but mighty team that writes our global Culture Audit as well as runs our Trust Index™ surveys all over the world. That team sits within HR, but it's so vital that we work across the business and with stakeholders outside of HR. The Great Place To Work Culture Audit is a representation of the business. So it's not just an HR initiative. We also, for those that are new in the room to this process, we really recommend that you have one team or one person that's dedicated to this work throughout the year because it is a significant amount of work. And through years of trying, we've really realized that having that one point a point person from start to finish to celebrate your Culture Audit and the stories that are within it is really impactful.

Meghan Magette (9:00):

And I would just add to it, I think the Culture Audit, your Trust Index is such a great indicator of where your culture stands with your employees. And the Culture Audit really tells the why. So why are they feeling like that? And so as I love what our Accenture friends are saying, that it really represents your talent strategy and so you have all this great data and then be able to say why your team members have a high Trust Index, why they think it's a great place for parents or for a specific group of people, you're able to really tell that why and give our friends at Great Place To Work the reasons why your team members are responding like that on your Trust Index.

Kim Peters (9:38):

Thanks Meghan and thank you everyone. It really is about your talent story, about who you are, and it gives us the context for all of the information and the data that we're seeing in the Trust Index results. So that makes us curious about how that all happened and what your priorities are and such. And so it is really about your story. Maybe Meghan, starting with you. So how long do you work on it? When do you start?

Meghan Magette (10:09):

That's such a great question. It does sometimes feel like it's a year-round thing because I think we are constantly looking for stories or examples. We're constantly keeping a pulse on what is changing in our organization when it comes to our people programs. Are we announcing new benefits, new programs? How are our team members reacting to that? So that is a year-round collection I would say ensuring what is the type of content that we are going to highlight in our audit this year. And then for the actual process, I would say it changes. It's good to always be flexible as there's a lot of socialization and collaboration that goes into it. But to the actual, I think writing and development usually is around six months.

Kim Peters (10:57):

And when do you take your vacation every year?

Meghan Magette (11:00):

I know we were just all joking. It's like the audit is submitted I think August 1st, August 2nd, and I'm on vacation August 3rd. So it's definitely a celebration,

Sarah Reid Fletcher (11:09):

A nice thing to look forward to at the end of the writing tunnel.

Kim Peters (11:13):

And what about at Accenture?

Annemarie Reed (11:16):

Yeah, very similar collecting stories year-round. It's critical. I've seen Accenture not do that and I've seen Accenture do that and for several years that has just been a priority because it makes the job so much easier. We typically start it in April and we wrap it up at the end of July and like our friends at Hilton take our vacation in August. So good. I would say for those starting out, I would give yourselves some more time. I would give yourselves much more time. Again, I have been doing this for nearly two decades and we've got it down to a science, which is how we're able to start in April and wrap in late July.

Meghan Magette (11:59):

I would just add to that our first timeline is definitely not our current timeline. We are constantly changing and optimizing our approach to the audit. So I would really recommend we do a postmortem after each audit writing season and say, what worked? What didn’t? What do we need to do differently? What do we need to move up? Who do we need to bring in? So if that is not part of your process, I would definitely recommend reflecting and then start planning for that next year after you wrap.

Sarah Reid Fletcher (12:24):

I think along those lines too, setting a group of targeted reviewers across the business that can bring in those different voices and also knowing that that list can change as you go from year to year as well.

Kim Peters (12:41):

Do you do an outline? Do you have a single theme that you want to follow every year? Do you know the story that you want to tell? Is that an intentional thing? Perhaps you can speak to that maybe.

Meghan Magette (12:57):

So I think each year we always anchor in our purpose, which is to spread the light and warmth of hospitality around the world. And then how does that help create a great place to work for all? So overall, that is the foundation of our audit. Every single year that does not change. Of course, each year we're introducing new programs or there's different initiatives going on in our company, so how we find the different stories and examples, that's really what is changing. But our overall foundation of really highlighting our purpose and how that creates a great place to work for all continues year over year.

Annemarie Reed (13:37):

We also anchor to a single theme. It is part of the content and outlining process when we get everything started, that theme, that outline goes straight up to our most senior stakeholders, our chief marketing officer, our chief HR officer are our executive sponsors. They also help set not only the tone for the submission, but certainly ensuring that we have the right resources dedicated to this effort, which one of the takeaways I would say from today is making sure that this is on the radar screen of very senior folks within your organization and that you have the right resources allocated to be able to do the job. But our single theme, the single theme we had last year could be a theme for all of us, and it certainly is on the table for this year, which is building trust in challenging times. That's really what is at the heart of great place to work for all in general. Accenture is in the business of change, Let There Be Change is our brand expression. We are continuously managing and working through change ourselves. I was saying to Kim earlier, every year when I close the books on the Culture Audit, I think, gosh, this should still last into next year. How could this change? How could this be that much different next year? But the world around us and how our business is rising to those challenges is in a constant state of change. And so therefore, how we talk about our talent strategy, how we talk about what we're hearing in the Trust Index does continue to shift and evolve over time.

Kim Peters (15:20):

Thank you. That's great. And would you like to go again? I'll start again on this end. What role does the Trust Index play for you?

Heather Niebel (15:30):

I'll go ahead and take that. Oh, and just my background. Yeah, really the Trust Index is where the story begins with the Culture Audit. We at Accenture do listen across all nearly 800,000 employees. You talk about it for all listening. That's it. We listen at three levels. At a very strategic level. We talk about change. We listen to our people as we are constantly going through change and transformation. We listen across our countries. This one should sound very familiar right around the policies, the procedures and our people's voices around their experiences and culture. And finally, as we heard earlier today at our teams at an engagement level within our teams, all this data comes in, shapes the actions, the programs that touch nearly everybody at Accenture that goes into that Culture Audit. We also focus on various countries and their stories. We reach out as we heard, we are now what over 50 countries that we do this for. Really important to have those specific examples in the Culture Audit and as we started in the centralization process. So yes, we started 11 little countries all separately. We have now centralized that process with Annemarie and myself, our senior leaders. But one of the big questions that came out were individual countries saying, well, how do I get my story told? How do I get my examples in this important piece of literature really? And it fosters that conversation. We do put those stories in there so everybody and all voices are heard. So really, really important piece and why our two organizations really work constantly throughout the year on this important story that we read back out to our people. We're very proud of it.

Sarah Reid Fletcher (17:49):

It’s a lot of work so you want to share it out. And Kim, I think along the Trust Index survey data and how I really would love to tell everyone in the room that it should match the story that you're telling in your audit. For example, if you're a company that has answering the question of how do my team members feel about our working environment and if that's high, high scores, tell why that's high, or if you answered a little lower on my team members feeling the impact to my community, share why that's lower and how you're working to change that within your organization. So really making sure that the storytelling of your audit matches the data of your survey is just vital to this entire process. And Kim, you guys have all the data so you can also see and you can really see what's an authentic story versus what's one that isn't the voice of your company.

Meghan Magette (18:53):

Aspirational. Yes.

Kim Peters (18:55):

Yes. I will just add that in fact, we're very curious because we can see whether companies have gone up or down in their Trust Index scores in various areas. If a company can tell us in fact that they recognize that and that's one of the things they're working on and how they're going about that, that resonates really strongly with us. It's one thing to talk about the things that are super high and another thing to talk about the things that you're working on. And so it's really great that you can share those kinds of details with us. It helps tremendously. Now, how have you felt the transition moving from just applying in the US to actually doing a global Culture Audit? How have you found that experience?

Meghan Magette (19:46):

Yeah, so I think when Great Place To Work announced the one global Culture Audit, first we were, I could say the initial reaction, we were really excited. We were going from 18 questions with, I don't think any limit to word count to five questions with limited word count. I think we were really excited of, okay, great, now we do not need to write as much. We thought the burden wouldn't be as big to get that done. And then we were like, oh wait, how are we now going to tell a global story now in fewer words. And so as our great CHRO Laura Fuentes who you heard this morning, even hard problems, they always have answers. And so trying to break it down piece by piece. And so when we started thinking about, okay, how do we tell a global story now in one document when there could be differences, as I'm sure you all experience from country to country programs or experiences, how do you do that?

Meghan Magette (20:40):

And so I think the first one is if you have a united purpose across your company as Hilton does, it's actually a lot easier to tell that global story than you may think initially as you're looking at this blank piece of paper that you have to fill up. And so the second piece is it's actually really, really fantastic because you're going to be able to scale your participation a lot faster and a lot easier. So if you've been wanting to get into more countries, that's going to be able to make that a lot more feasible. And then my third piece of advice is don't feel like you have to talk about everything. Really focus on what is differentiating, what is unique and don't feel like everything you talk about has to apply to every country that you operate in. So I think parental leave is actually a really good example. Of course in the US parental leave is not federally mandated, so that's a story for another day or a conversation for another day, but it is in a lot of other places. But how companies show up in the US providing parental leave, that is a really great benefit and that is a unique differentiator for companies. So don't shy away from telling some stories just because it's not applicable. Really focus on what is differentiating, what's unique and what applies to the majority of your team members or employees.

Heather Niebel (22:00):

I'd like to say also I think Kim, you said it very well, the stories of where you may have struggled and how you overcame those struggles based on that Trust Index maybe year after year, what was the thing that you saw in maybe a particular country? Again, it's not always about we do everything perfectly all the time. No, how did you learn from other your countries or globally? Get that in there. Tell your story. They'll find it in the data she says, but tell your story of a turnaround situation is always really, really important. So I would have to add that on as well.

Kim Peters (22:43):

Great. Thank you very much. I think we're going to be probably only having time for one more question, so I'll make it a good one here. And really we all know that it's a very crazy time. A few years ago, we went through Covid, which was another crazy time, and we all did come through that with interesting stories to tell. Of course. And again, now there's such a lot of change and volatility that what we're really curious about this year is really how are you in your organizations making sure that everyone is having a great place to work for all experience, given the fact that, I mean, if you're just doing a US one, it's probably a simpler answer, but when you're doing a global one, there are so many things to take into consideration. So maybe if you could offer your advice on how you're thinking about that, at least to our audience, they'll find it helpful. I have a feeling.

Annemarie Reed (23:48):

I'll take that. I'll start. There are certainly challenging years and this is going to be one of them where one thing I find about a Culture Audit is that it is a forcing mechanism for our HR and our marketing and communications colleagues to come together and talk about some of those hard issues. They're going to see it in the data, but we're writing this story well before we have the data. Okay. We will get our, for example this year consistent with years past, we'll get our data at the end of June. We wrap up our Culture Audit at the end of July. It might not seem like a lot of time, but when you're prepared for it, you go in, you analyze your data, you look for the testimonials, you to get the job done. But back to forcing mechanism, and I got to say a document again, I started with, it's the longest form talent narrative our company produces a given year.

Annemarie Reed (24:47):

It is more substantial. We talk about it more substantially than we do in our annual report, which I've had a hand in over the years. Our corporate responsibility report, which I've had a hand in over the years, this is a longer form. Take advantage of it being a forcing mechanism for your senior leaders to have difficult conversations about how your people are feeling. And as Meghan and Sarah have said, lean into what's going on in your workplace authentically and head on. Use it as an opportunity to better understand what is happening, look at your data to understand what is happening and use that Culture Audit to work through those challenges. I have witnessed that it surfaces issues and fosters dialogue that I would expect is happening in other pockets of my very large organization, but I do have a front row seat in working on the Culture Audit. I do get to witness a lot of our leaders having some of those tough conversations, and I don't know if they're having them in any other facets. So this will be, as Kim is indicating another challenging year. And I encourage everyone to be open, honest with how things are going in your workforce because I think it's a challenging year for our people and I think we've got even more headwinds coming our way.

Meghan Magette (26:12):

And I would just add to that Hilton is an over a hundred-year-old company. We'll actually turn 106 next month. So of course, in that time we've seen a lot of different world events, different political administrations and economic conditions. And so I think what we've learned is always staying true to who we are as a company and continuing to anchor in our purpose, and that is how we will approach this audit. That's how we've approached previous audits of really showing how spreading the light and warmth of hospitality, how that then creates a great place to work for all of our team members. And so just continue that thread throughout our writing will be our approach for this year and continue for the next.

Kim Peters (26:58):

Awesome. Well, I hope that's helpful for everyone. I know we'll be very curious about reading everyone's stories and in particular and then helping to share and inspire others with the help of your inspiring story. So we appreciate them very much. Sonya's been gathering questions from you now and you have some for the panel.

Sonya George (27:22):

Lots of great questions, but I think you all were so outstanding that many of your questions were answered. I think we have about 15 minutes left. I captured three that I think it would be relevant to most of the audience here. So the first one is more of a what not to do, right? When you've talked a lot about what you should do, but what not to do when you submit your Culture Audit. So the question is how can you ruin your Culture Audit submission? That's such a good question.

Sarah Reid Fletcher (27:56):

I feel like off the bat not being your true, not being authentic is so that's easy to decipher right away. Not taking the time to invest in the process too. As we mentioned, having a dedicated team or a dedicated someone with dedicated time and resources. This isn't something that can be written off the side of one's desk. I think really focusing and collaborating with stakeholders is the key to the strong audit.

Annemarie Reed (28:30):

No stakeholders left behind. We have a chief health officer, we have a chief diversity officer. I'm sure I've learned this lesson over the years in my experience, you better be talking to all of them. They all have something to say. You need to make sure that they know, Hey, we're coming. We're going to be doing this. We're really excited. We're doing this for the first time, or we're doing it for the fifth year in a row, but we're doing it differently. Really look forward to your guidance and feedback. And I've praised Kim over the years having consistent questions every year is a gift. There's nothing stopping you from starting them up whenever you want. The questions aren't changing until Great Place To Work tells us they're changing.

Annemarie Reed (29:16):

Signpost these questions to your key stakeholders. Do not leave them out. Make sure your CMO, CHRO or your respective leaders of critical departments are involved from the beginning and throughout the process.

Meghan Magette (29:29):

I'm going to make a t-shirt that says, no stakeholders left behind. I think to summarize what both Sarah and Annemarie said so beautifully is one of the biggest mistakes you can make is your company. I would say a company's mistake is thinking that this is only an HR project. It is truly a company-wide project in order to do it correctly and effectively and be able to tell your global story.

Heather Niebel (29:54):

And I just add one more thing is again, that Trust Index data in there to substantiate your story really important and that it's actually a story about your people and what their experience is. I think they all know what we do. Great Place To Work knows what every company does. So really about those moments and about the people's experiences in your culture, that's the story. So I think that would be another piece of advice for you all.

Kim Peters (30:23):

I'll just throw in a couple of two sentences here as well in that we do sometimes read cultural audits where people have not taken advantage of all of the word count space available. And really since we're most interested in the why's and the how's, people really should take advantage of that space to give us those kinds of insights. Sometimes we'll read things that are really very PR surface level without any depth, and that's not helpful because we can't guess. We need to have the background for the things that people talk about. And sometimes people will spend a lot of space telling us about their products and how great they are, which is just not relevant for the Culture Audit or sometimes their financial success, which is really only relevant if you could tie it to your people practices. So focus is really important as well.

Sonya George (31:26):

Wonderful. Thank you. I like this next question, how do you maintain and scale your culture and your storytelling when your company is experiencing rapid growth or organizational shifts?

Meghan Magette (31:42):

I know this sounds like a broken record, but we just continue to go back to our North Star, which is our purpose. And if you look at everything through that lens, it helps one, scale your story, but also share what you want to concentrate in your story as you're going through a lot of change. It's hard to figure out, okay, should I talk about this? Should I talk about that? And it's really thinking about, okay, is that laddering up to our purpose, to our culture? Then yes, that is a story I want to tell to maybe simplify it. Especially if you're starting out on writing a Culture Audit or you haven't done as many as this group has up here. Something we like to do is, so whoever is your executive sponsor of this as that's your CHRO or whoever that may be, ask them, when you read this audit, what do you want to be able to think about afterwards? So what do you want that takeaway to be? What are the three things you want to make sure shine through? And that would at least give you a starting point of what you want to talk about and how you want to build your outline even with you're going through a lot of change in growth.

Annemarie Reed (32:48):

Sure, I'll add those senior sponsors in from the beginning. Our company has gone through rapid growth. When I joined, we were a hundred thousand. We're now over 800,000. And I would say, I mean the number of people who are involved in our process are relatively the same in terms of the volume of people who are involved despite that. But now that we've centralized to one global Culture Audit, which by the way has saved our people around the world hundreds of hours in just a year 11 culture, we were only doing 11. I think Hilton, you guys were doing even more 11 Culture Audits to one. I will tell leadership that story for as long as they'll listen how many hundreds of hours we've saved our people. However, those folks on the ground all know and we all stay connected and they help inform the story that we are telling. We've got consistency in people on the ground despite large growth. We've been able to have a lot of consistency of people around the world. If there's inconsistency, if you will, the people who are supporting the Culture Audit, get to them early, get to them often and get their input and bring them along the journey with you.

Sonya George (34:08):

Thank you. Kim, you and I get this question quite a bit, but I'll open it up to the panel. Meghan, you touched on it with your last response too, but how do you keep your audit from getting stale? How do you make it fresh and keep life into it year after year?

Sarah Reid Fletcher (34:25):

I had say the biggest thing is our team members perspectives change year after year. So making sure that you are gathering those stories. Laura spoke about it today, you're listening to each of them and making sure that you're changing as your team members change and shifting the focus overall each year in that way.

Heather Niebel (34:51):

Yeah, and I think also a little bit of the freshness comes from the external environment itself forces us to be finding new content, but also how are we navigating those changes with our people as well? So I think some of it is kind of brought on to us. I don’t know if you want to add anything, Annemarie to that. Yeah, that's great. Great.

Kim Peters (35:18):

I would just add that we're always interested in what your priorities are for the year. So if you have decided that you're going to work on breaking down silos, for example, between departments, how did you go about that and what are you hoping to come out of it? So you have, all of you, I'm sure have objectives that change from year to year. So telling us a little bit about those things, why you're doing them is always going to add richness and improve your cultural audit results.

Sonya George (35:55):

Awesome. Kim, I'm going to end with one final cheeky question for you, but for everyone, it would be good to get a sense from you based on your many, many years of doing this. What's one tip personally that you'd want the audience to walk away with? And this is for the entire group.

Kim Peters (36:12):

Okay. Well, from my perspective, the one tip is to really think about it as your story, the story of your company, the story of why you are such a great place to work for all, your true north, as you call it at Hilton. It really is, if you can frame it as a story and think about it in that way, I do think that you'll then be able to give us the depth of the why and the how that you're doing things, and that's going to be the most valuable that you can do it. What makes you special. And it probably helps to focus and understand that because you're going to be telling that all over your company and to all new people and all old people as well.

Annemarie Reed (37:06):

I'll add to that, my best tip, and we only started doing this maybe a few years ago. We start with last year's final. We start with last year's final. This is a continuous story as Kim just said, and they're all like chapters in a book. They're chapters in a book. So we have a talent ambition 2025 talent ambition will be launching strategy 2030 in several months. Talent ambition's not changing, very clear. So that level of is it, how do you keep it fresh? That's going to stay the same. The world markets, as Heather said, are always changing, and so what do we focus on or maybe dial up or dial down, but the programs and initiatives, maybe new policies, refined policies, and the testimonials of how that's come to life. That's what's different each and every year. But start with last year's final. Nothing's worse than staring down a blank sheet of paper and lean into AI, start using AI and play with it and see how that can help you in content gathering. And also speeding up your writing process.

Sarah Reid Fletcher (38:10):

I would say be flexible with your timeline. Give yourself more time than you may think just to refine, review and collaborate with all of your stakeholders.

Meghan Magette (38:24):

I'm just going to add, try to enjoy it. And I know that's hard in the moment, but as Sonya said, I've been at Hilton for 15 years, had done so many wonderful things and had different opportunities, but being able to be the chief storyteller of your organization is truly an amazing responsibility. And being able to collect the stories and again, the why of why you're a great place to work. I know we uncover so many stories each year that you're like, oh, we never would've known we were doing this, or that's how our hotels brought that to life. And to be able to be the steward of that is a really incredible responsibility. And so don't forget that you are that storyteller for your company and the representation of all the amazing things that your employees around the world are doing.

Heather Niebel (39:11):

I think one more thing, and you've sparked this for me, thank you, is and a great story could happen in one country that you find is not happening in another. That being that steward, you're also bringing these stories together. You're bringing the people together to actually expand that story as well. So that steward of storytelling, you're the steward of your people's voices as well, right? So put that in there

Sonya George (39:40):

Nuggets. Thank you nuggets. I hope you guys took notes, right? Because we evaluate this stuff and they have outstanding Culture Audits. So thank you for sharing that. Kim. There was a cheeky question that came in that I'm going to pose to you to wrap us up. At Great Place To Work, how do you evaluate the Culture Audit? Are there computers evaluating it or do human beings actually touch and read and review the Culture Audit? I have to say, when I started a Great Place To Work 13 years ago, one of the first things that I had to do was be a Culture Audit evaluator. And everyone who started when I started had to be a Culture Audit evaluator. Because if we're going to do the work, if we're going to understand the work, we have to understand it holistically. So Kim, I'll turn it over to you.

Kim Peters (40:21):

Sure. And in every country around the world where people are participating, we do have teams of evaluators who do read the Culture Audits and actually score them. In the US we have a team of about 10 people, give or take, and typically an evaluator, will read all of the companies in an industry so that they can compare because it's pretty hard to compare hospitality against professional services and be fair about it, for example. So we do that. We do evaluate them, we review the evaluations, and then we go through a practice of calibrating them essentially because we are comparing everyone against everybody else. And of course, the Turst Index scores are really still more than 75% essentially of the score that we end up doing. So the Culture Audit is a smaller piece, definitely, but it is the part that really helps us understand what we're seeing in your data and hopefully gives us the ammunition to be able to say, oh, wow, that really is outstanding, and to reward the companies that are the most outstanding.

Kim Peters (41:43):

So it is very much a manual process. Actually. It takes us quite a while to go through and do that, but that's the results, and it happens in every country around the world. I will say though, just to be clear, if you are centralizing and you are headquartered in the US, then we will evaluate your global Culture Audit here in the US and provide those scores to all of the countries around the world. They may calibrate them or adjust them themselves based on the climate in each country, which can be very different, obviously. So there's a process for that too. And it works.

Sonya George (42:29):

Thanks, Kim. Okay, housekeeping wrap up. We're at time. If your question wasn't answered, please see me. We'll make sure you get answers to your questions. I want to thank Meghan and Sarah and Heather and Annemarie and Kim. This was awesome and I hope you all got out of it what you needed. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.