My First Six Months at Avery Dennison

It was not an easy decision to leave an industry I love and join a totally different industry. I did it, not only because Avery Dennison is a global leader in label technologies, but largely due to the fact that the people I met during the interviews were too good to be true. Nowadays we talk about candidate experience a lot in talent acquisition and the candidate experience I had with Avery Dennison was warm, sincere, caring, refreshing, and even inspirational. 

It's my 7th month here this Jan and like always I get lots of questions from candidates about what the company culture is like and how I feel about working for this company so far. I've been telling them bits and pieces - never answered it very well. Here is my attempt to give a better answer:

If there is one thing that Avery Dennison 'wow'ed me, that would be the fact that people here never forget why they started. 

The company was founded in 1935 by Stanton Avery, a self-made American entrepreneur who, in my view, embodied many traditional American virtues and these virtues got carried on by the management team who inherited the company after he retired. "Being a preacher's son I was taught to care about people. I suppose that helped me to look at business in a different way. To make products that would help people, in a way that they had never been helped before." Words by Mr. Avery himself - I found him saying this from one discreet video on youtube made in 2009. 

TO HELP PEOPLE. That's the underlying unspoken value of this company.

The value was there when a young manager told me she had issues with a new role she took. She managed to perform well after a while and it was after a year she realised that people were helping her without her knowing it. Those issues didn't just disappear themselves - her colleagues gave her a hand and resolved some issues for her.  

The value was in the InVent Scholarship Avery Dennison gives in India to local young talents. What surprised me was that the guiding principle is we shall not target any of these students we sponsor for future hire. The intention is simple - TO HELP young talents to do what they want to do - encourage them to be entrepreneurial, be bold, and be the backbone.   

The value was in all the events we organize around the world to help local communities. Every couple weeks, some Avery Dennison team at some location somewhere is doing something for the community. They might be cleaning up the beach, renovating the neighborhood, preparing food for the homeless, planting trees, making donations to less privileged kids etc. Big or small, the help never stops.    

I am believer of a novel idea that the biggest charity in human society is creating a business and make it sustainable. The bigger the business is, the more families it is able to support. As an employee of Avery Dennison, I now believe that I shall try my very best, together with everyone in AD, to ensure that our company achieves sustainable growth year on year and continues to help people around the world, "in a way they had never been helped before" - yes Avery Dennison people never forget why they started.