Winning Secrets: Affirming a flexible, adaptable, and open culture at Cynosure

"Part of the culture we want to instil is that employees take ownership of their experience as much as possible. Every single individual is part of shaping our reality," Annekatrin Ott, VP, Human Resources, International, Cynosure Asia Pacific, shares.

Cynosure, a creator of energy-based aesthetic and medical treatment systems, develops and manufactures a diverse range of leading treatment applications for general skin pigment concerns, melasma pigment, acne, acne scarring, skin laxity, enlarged pores, fine lines, wrinkles, body contouring, and more. 

It believes in ‘beautiful energy’– what it calls a harmony that comes from balancing how you feel on the inside, with how you feel on the outside. And this belief, no doubt, rings true in the experience the company creates for its internal stakeholders: its workforce and management team.

At the Employee Experience Awards 2023, Singapore, Cynosure Asia Pacific took home the bronze award for 'Best Remote Work Strategy'. In this interview, Annekatrin Ott, VP, Human Resources, International, Cynosure Asia Pacific, shares the journey that led to this win –where the team believes in building a flexible, adaptable, and open workplace culture that can be authentically lived.

Q How do you ensure your employee experience initiatives are aligned with your business objectives?

As a small organisation, both in the implementation of our strategy and any employee initiatives, flexibility and adaptability are core ingredients. Our industry, of energy-based aesthetic devices, is driven by rapid innovation and growing quickly, therefore our work environment can change so fast that we cannot operate with fixed, long-term policies, but need to keep our eyes and ears to the ground to understand the ever-changing environment that we must adapt to.

The need to respond to COVID has only highlighted this. The required flexibility and adaptability can only be achieved by avoiding long, hierarchical decision paths. Often policies are too prescriptive and do not allow for special circumstances, needs and requirements of an individual, we therefore aim to provide ‘frameworks’ within which employees and managers can flex and find the best solution for both company and employee, as close to the ground as possible. By emphasising that a solution needs to fit both, we find that business and employee experience are linked.

Q Can you provide examples of how the organisation has invested in the employee experience?

Part of the culture we want to instil is that employees take ownership of their experience as much as possible. Every single individual is part of shaping our reality.

On this journey, we encourage speaking up and listening. An annual employee survey, regular townhalls with translation capabilities and smaller manager-led meetings are all channels through which the organisation receives feedback.

As an organisation that promotes remote and hybrid working styles, we often rely on offering online solutions, for example, for recognition, rewards, and learning inputs. The employee is in the driver’s seat, actively taking control of their own learning, ensuring recognition is shared fast and openly.

Another example is the calendar of themed webinars around employee wellbeing, in which external experts engage employees. The topic range is broad, from financial health to stress management and men’s health & wellbeing. Employees can choose what is most relevant to them and dial in live or listen to recordings at the time that is most convenient for them.

Through the choices employees make, we also receive feedback regarding what is key for them and then continue to shape the offering.

Q What are some of the key challenges that you faced in implementing your EX initiatives, and how did you overcome them?

We see all initiatives as part of creating a flexible, adaptable, and open culture that can be authentically lived. As such the biggest hurdle is always when the methods and implementation paths we choose divert from or are different from solutions offered in the past or in other, larger companies that our employees are familiar with.

We strive always to move employees from being passive recipients to active participants and co-owning solutions and success. Policies and verbal encouragement are easily ignored. We do find that putting a spotlight (i.e., additional, public recognition) on employees who begin role modelling the pro-active, self-owned approach helps create a broader sense of ‘it’s ok to participate’. Peer acceptance of an initiative is the best reference.

As we recruit, it then has become increasingly more important to not hire for ‘current culture fit’ but find individuals and leaders who already are role models for what we want to achieve.

We can now start seeing leadership teams and middle management levels more naturally being involved, hence diluting the sense of ‘this is all corporate and does not suit this country/this culture.’

Q Do you have processes to measure the effectiveness of your EX initiatives, and what metrics do you use to evaluate success?

As this is part of a culture journey, we will continue to leverage the data sources we have, e.g., active attendance in townhalls, use of available tools. This data is used by the core APAC leadership team to assess whether leaders are communicating and role modelling enough. We have only begun to think about establishing fixed metrics, we will look to balance our drive for flexibility vs potentially rigid metrics.

Q Finally, what role do leaders and managers play in driving a beautiful employee experience, and how are they held accountable for the success of these initiatives?

In cultures that tend to rely on hierarchy, it is important to achieve a critical mass of visible and vocal role models in managers and leaders. As a small organisation, we have strongly relied on bringing in external talent in critical roles to act as multipliers. Training and learning initiatives complement this.

Whether new to the company or a loyal, long-term employee, all managers and leaders have in 2023 a clear people component in their annual objectives to highlight our core belief that successful people management and engagement takes time, careful consideration and effort. To complement this, our HR managers have in their objectives explicitly – again to emphasise the focus - the responsibility to support managers with relevant data on all people initiatives to ensure timely execution and if needed course correction.

As part of regular reviews, we will evaluate if the 'what' of this people component is achieved and as importantly 'how' it is achieved. If done correctly, performance review and ‘holding to account’ conversations can lead to greater insight and empowerment.

Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets' section!

All photos / Provided by Cynosure