Three months in: The verdict.

I recently joined SC Johnson as Senior Director for Global Talent Acquisition. SC Johnson is one of the world’s leading makers of household brands. I grew up with many of the SC Johnson brands: Pledge for polishing the living room furniture, Mr. Muscle in the kitchen, Raid in the summer to fend off flies, Glade air sprays and Kiwi shoe polish in the garage when my dad cleaned his Police boots religiously each weekend. I’m also pretty sure my mum has an peculiar addiction to Ziploc bags, which has only deepened since I joined.

We are a 130-year-old family company, and our trusted products can be found in homes around the globe. We employ approximately 13,000 people globally and generate $10 billion in sales. Our company is headquartered in Racine, Wisconsin, USA where it was founded. We have operations in over 70 countries and sell products in virtually every country around the world. The company chairman and CEO is H Fisk Johnson and he is the fifth regeneration Johnson to lead our company. I have not yet had the pleasure to meet Fisk, but his presence, passion and integrity is felt throughout the company. 

I have been blown away by the welcome, the heritage, the innovation and the deep sense of collaboration across all functions and levels of this company. I feel a deep sense of belonging here. Here’s a few highlights for me:

Leadership

I met my leader very early in the hiring process (via Skype video call prior to interview) and he inspired me with his pedigree as a HR leader and his style as a potential future leader. In the assessment process he was sincere, authentic and challenging. Three months in, our relationship is based on mutual respect and he allows a perfect balance of support and freedom to perform my role with autonomy and true ownership. Flexibility, trust and respect. It’s refreshing!

Team

Once I accepted the offer, I was quickly connected to a peer whom became my “pre-hire buddy”. We spoke and text each week and these conversations allowed me to ask questions about the culture, leadership, history and people. This relationship was with someone who joined within the past year and he was a recent new starter to appreciate how I might feel. This allowed me to “hit the ground running” when I joined and I truly felt that I had a "head start" in my role. We still connect and he helps me channel my thoughts to ensure I’m as successful as possible. He's become a therapist of sorts. I’m surrounded by truly talented HR professionals on a global scale and have connected with colleagues globally since joining - including the UK, Switzerland, Argentina, Malaysia, South Africa, Poland, Italy, Canada, USA and the Netherlands. These people are passionate about the rudiments and artistry of HR - to drive value to our colleagues, customers, candidates and community.

I am fortunate to have a talented team of TA stars in my team that are humble, hardworking, customer focused and hungry to be the best that they can be. Many of this team are new, like me, and they will only get better. I look forward to helping and watching them grow to reach their potential. There are various global vendor partners that operate as an extension of the team - pushing us to be successful and be one team.

Values

I learned through my research prior to joining that SC Johnson established its core values in 1927 and this was reformed to the basic principles: This We Believe. SC Johnson is a private family owned company and compared to my last three companies that I’ve worked for (Amazon, Caterpillar and Randstad) it is not stock market listed and can be perceived as operating in a less public manner as a result. To me - the culture is diverse, innovative, energized, compassionate and results focused. I’ve worked in places where I feel like a “cog in the machine”, devoid of any real autonomy. I had never heard the expression “bring your whole self to work” before, but at SC Johnson it is commonly used because we want to embrace everything about each person. This authentic approach drives transparency, honesty, empathy, support networks and genuine relationships.

Products

I mentioned some of our products earlier that stick with me, but there are so many more (Draino, Scrubbing Bubbles, Duck, Windex, ecover, Method, Mrs. Meyers and more). I have a passion for production facilities and we have world class, safe and lean manufacturing operations. The innovation, craft, consideration and quality thinking from the various teams that ideate new products through to distributing that product is immense. We have great products and the marketing behind these products is really cool. Check out the video link from Method flagging a crucial hygiene topic and this video poignantly revealing the research partnership between Glade and the University of Florida. We choose ingredients using our SC Johnson Greenlist? process and we also recently established an ingredients transparency through a new family campaign, which smartly emphasizes that ‘everything is chemistry’ 

It’s a fusion of many things that have made my first three months rather cool and I have covered a selection of my initial observations for life at SC Johnson. I should also add, it’s not perfect. But, I like that there are problems to fix, processes to evolve and challenges to compromise upon. I am genuinely looking forward to helping this great company hire top talent and as member of the leadership team - make SC Johnson that bit better each day. It’s good to work at SC Johnson!

Thanks for reading.

Mark

https://jobs.scjohnson.com

The postings on this site are my own and don’t represent SC Johnson & Son, Inc.’s positions, strategies or opinions.