Three Ways I Continue to #ChoosetoChallenge (and so does my boss!)

Happy International Women’s Day! 

How incredible to think that a year ago, many of us were planning gatherings, balancing commute schedules, and trying to fit our lives into a work structure established long ago. Over the last two hundred plus years, women have defied, pushed, and conquered past limitations with the help of our sisters, our friends, and our allies. In the last 365 days - we have overcome these odds again and I want to celebrate every woman undertaking this tough journey.  

The coming together (by staying apart) through this pandemic has tested all of us further than we could’ve imagined. I have watched, impotent to help as my kids have battled with starting first jobs, having both their marriages cancelled and giving birth in lock down. These are genuinely difficult, isolating moments I have personally learned how to listen more deeply and thoughtfully, and….. have never felt more empathy or awe for the people at our company. With noted irony it’s strange to me that this moment has led to deeper conversations, a further pivot towards meeting the needs of our individual employees and helping make work and life easier in meaningful ways.

My career has been about enabling people. At Palo Alto Networks, we aspire to be the most employee-centric company in the world. I truly believe we can do it, and we took huge strides when we launched our FLEXWORK initiatives: focused on employee choice and individual needs. While the initiatives are meant to empower all, I’m particularly proud of how our women population is better served. FLEXWORK is one way Palo Alto Network’s is consciously choosing to challenge the status quo thorough creating employee experiences that make work and life easier for women. Here are three initiatives that our women employees tell us are particularly helpful:

1. Maximize time. It’s incredibly special to have talented people in your organization. They each bring their own unique skills and experience that help the organization. With this in mind, we pivoted our learning to be on-demand, and delivered in more micro-learning snackable bites. We need to maximize time and give more choice on how individuals want to learn, lead, and develop, recognizing everyone is unique and learns in different ways. 
2. Get to the individual. We know work and home became increasingly challenging for parents. This is why we added a flexible benefit to support parents from science apps for kids, tutoring, emergency care, meditation, and more. We know what each parent needs in this moment is vastly different and unique - so we changed the model to allow for more versatility. 
3. Commit to the future. We are re-thinking and re-building our spaces to help employees get what they need, and do the best work of their lives, safely, easily, and on their schedule. We know our companies need to plan for more than the moment we are in, by looking to the future. We’re always trying to identify how we can be more flexible for our employee’s - creating more opportunities to flex in and out of the office to meet the needs of their priorities and lives. 

We are energized to plan for a future of work that centers on each of us, uniquely. 

The concept of choice is fundamental to our FLEXWORK strategy. Not only because we believe it will create the most employee-centric workplace we can build, but because people need this now more than ever. Listen, try, act, listen, try, act - this is the heartbeat of my people team.

Happy International Women’s Day - and cheers to more opportunities towards true equality.