CHRO Action Recording: How Land O'Lakes is Transforming its Talent, its Business, and its Industry - 12/11/20

 

 

In response to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and its unprecedented impact to business and employers, i4cp holds a weekly series of standing calls to help HR leaders navigate this unpredictable time. 

On i4cp’s December 11, 2020 CHRO/HR Strategy Action series call, HR leaders from a wide range of organizations were joined by special guest Loren Heeringa, SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer at Land O' Lakes, Inc., and a member of i4cp's CHRO Board. He was interviewed by i4cp Chief Research Officer Kevin Martin, with key topics covered including:

  • Heeringa noted the importance of a CHRO learning the language of the business in order to best leverage the human capital aspects of the business.
  • The Land O' Lakes CEO challenged Heeringa's HR function to be more agile, and so he responded by creating an HR "special ops" team that can quickly respond as specific issues or needs arise. The members of this group span all areas of HR and are very motivated to find solutions quickly.
  • Heeringa described how he has long been a believer in i4cp's People-Profit chain model. He was quickly convinced of the data that backs the model, which shows the correlation between particular KPIs in five domains (talent, leadership, culture, strategy, and market) drive end business results. In doing so, he was able to make the case that the management and development of talent needed just as much attention as other areas of the business. That is, a focus on people will ultimately drive profit.
  • To improve agility in the business, two focuses now at Land O' Lakes are on execution skills, but also innovation and ideation, and how to translate those ideas into commercial successes. They have a five-level approach to that process.
  • Several years ago Land O' Lakes was facing a talent shortage, particularly given their need for both technology and agriculture knowledge. So Heeringa led a multi-faceted talent ecosystem approach to solving the challenge. They received an i4cp Next Practices award for their efforts; see the write-up here for details: How Land O' Lakes Used Talent Solutions for Rapid Growth in Agriculture Technology.

In addition to this recording, please see the i4cp Coronavirus Employer Resource Center for new research and next practices to help address the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

 

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