July 7, 2025 • 39 mins
Bob Goodwin welcomes Gena Smith, North American CHRO for luxury powerhouse LVMH, for a masterclass in leadership development and cultivating excellence across iconic brands like Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Tiffany.
Gena shares her unexpected journey from small-town Texas to leading human resources for one of the world's most prestigious luxury groups. A pivotal study abroad experience in Greece awakened her passion for people and culture, establishing a personal benchmark that guided her career choices: "Any role had to have an international dimension and I had to be working with people." This philosophy ultimately led her to LVMH, where she now champions a culture built on creativity, innovation, excellence, and entrepreneurship.
Gena's conversation with Bob explores how LVMH maintains the delicate balance between preserving brand heritage while pushing creative boundaries. "We don't want our brands sitting in museums," Smith explains, highlighting the tension between honoring each brand's DNA while ensuring contemporary relevance. This balancing act requires diverse perspectives and trustful environments where creativity can flourish.
Leadership development emerges as a cornerstone of LVMH's success. Smith details their comprehensive succession planning process that examines potential leaders across all 75 brands, paired with targeted development experiences. She emphasizes that leadership must be approached with the same intentionality as any business objective: "You actually have to want to be a great leader. That has to be something that's important to you."
Looking toward the future, Smith discusses LVMH's "HR New Deal" initiative, which positions employees at the center of their career journey with access to opportunities across all brands. While acknowledging technology's growing role, she returns to a fundamental truth that transcends industry or era: "At the end of the day, we rely on talented, motivated, inspired, engaged people to drive our business."
Ready to discover what truly lights your fire professionally? Tune in to this insightful conversation about finding your passion, developing leadership excellence, and creating environments where people and creativity thrive.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's
most downloaded and sharedpodcasts designed for HR pros,
talent execs, tech enthusiastsand business leaders.
For hundreds more episodes andwhat's new in the world of work,
subscribe to the show, followus on social media and visit
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Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hey everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president of
Career Club, and welcome to aspecial episode of HR Chat
brought to you by HR Gazette.
Special shout out to my friend,bill Bannon.
Thank you so much for allowingme the opportunity to guest host
here for a bit.
Today is a special episodebecause we're very pleased to
have the North American CHRO forLVMH, gina Smith, with us.
(00:48):
If LVMH doesn't ring a bell foryou, I think there are iconic
brands like Louis Vuitton,christian Dior, tag Heuer,
tiffany might ring a bell.
So, gina, welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Thank you.
Thank you, bob, it's so nice tobe with you today.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
No, likewise.
You know it's funny because Iwas sort of writing that out a
little bit.
I think iconic brands is likemassively overused.
You guys are iconic brands.
That's a pretty and I didn'teven, but I didn't do half of
the amazing brands?
Speaker 3 (01:17):
No, we have about 75.
So you definitely did not comenear half of them.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
That's right, yeah but I mean just an amazing,
amazing portfolio of brands.
One of the things that I enjoywhen I initially met you was
just learning a little bit, andthis will help our listeners
just learn a little bit moreabout your career journey and
how you ended up in such a plumjob.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Thank you, thank you.
Well, yeah, I mean it's sort ofa strange story.
I mean, I grew up in Texas andI don't think I, you know, when
I look back on my career, itwasn't necessarily by design, be
a head of HR, and although Ihad always had an interest in
(02:04):
the fashion and luxury space, Imean, you know, I remember being
a little, you know, a littlegirl in Texas and looking at, I
had stacks and stacks ofcosmopolitan magazines and you
know, I was sort of, you know,passionate about fashion and and
dreaming about New York City,for sure, and certainly other
cities like Paris, but itdefinitely didn't feel
(02:27):
attainable to me.
And I was fortunate, when I wasin college, to have the
opportunity to do a study abroad, in Greece.
I went to Crete for the summerand it was really a pivotal
moment for me because it was thefirst time that I had really
been outside of Texas.
And you know, I always, Ialways say that you know, I was
(02:52):
confronted with this very, verydifferent alphabet, very
different language, very foreigncountry, and yet I never felt
more alive and, in a way, athome.
Alive and in a way at home, Iconnected with so many wonderful
Greek people and again workingat a five-star hotel in Crete,
(03:13):
meeting people from all overEurope, and I just felt alive
and I just knew that I wantedmore of that.
I didn't exactly know what thatwas, but I wanted more of that.
So I came back home, I changedmy major to international
business, I was able to changemy studies so that I was able to
go back and study in Athens atan American university, and over
the next five years I reallyspent a lot more time in Greece.
(03:36):
But I discovered during thatsummer that what I loved was
people and culture, and so whenI look back on that moment, I
think it was really thebeginning of my passion for
human resources.
Obviously, people and culture.
I just didn't realize it at thetime, and you know that became
(03:57):
the benchmark that I used forany job or career decision that
I made after that.
Any role had to have aninternational dimension and I
had to be working with people.
If it was a role, especiallyearly in my career, where I
would be sitting behind a deskand not having the opportunity
(04:20):
to engage with people and again,especially international people
I knew it wasn't going to besomething that I was going to be
interested or passionate about.
So I think it was a good guidefor me and helping me make
decisions that I think actually,you know, got me here
eventually.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Well, I mean, I think that's amazing.
One of the things that I reallyliked about your story is there
was an element ofexperimentation.
As young people, we youngpeople tend to not know what's
available to them, right, and soyou need to try new things, you
need to go to Greece and see ifthat lights your fire or not,
(04:57):
right?
But we sometimes we don't knowwhat all is available to us and
we just sort of get, you know,kind of railroaded into certain
things.
And so I'm a huge advocateAnybody who's a parent of a
young person, a young personthemselves go experiment, like
go see what's out there, trydifferent things, because, like
Jeannie, you just never know.
That's the thing that lightsyou up, and now you've got
(05:19):
direction of like now I knowwhat I want.
I love what you said.
I want more of that, exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Well, exactly, I mean , you know it's sort of a
process of elimination.
And how do you eliminate you?
You discover things that youlike and things that you don't
like.
And I agree with you, unlessyou're putting yourself out
there and you're testing, andyou're trying and you're
learning, there's no way for youto know.
And you do have to put yourself.
I mean, it was very scary forme to pick up and go to Greece
(05:49):
and be confronted with somethingthat was so foreign, literally,
but it was also so exciting andso liberating.
And then when you are able tosort of conquer that, that's
even more liberating and moreexciting.
And then you know that you cando more and more.
You continue to push andchallenge yourself.
But I agree with you.
I'm always encouraging peopleto try as much as you can,
(06:13):
especially in the early days,but actually always.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, exactly.
And just last little piece onwhat you said, because it really
resonates, which is as youstretch your boundaries, you
need bigger boundaries.
And so you learn hey, Iactually can't do this.
So what's next and you knowit's a little bit like you know
start running a mile Now.
I'm doing 5Ks Now.
I'm doing half a minute.
(06:38):
I'm stronger than I thoughtthat I was and I'm making myself
stronger than I was, and Ithink for women especially, you
know, like everything is anoption.
If you will, let it be anoption to you and go try stuff.
I'm going to be a proud papafor half of a second.
But I don't know if we've evertalked about this, gina, but my
(06:58):
daughter lives in Norway andinternational business and she
took a job in Oslo 10 years agoand hasn't moved back home since
and has built a life over thereand a family and but, like you
said, different language, a lotof different, some different
letters in the alphabet, buteverything was different and
(07:20):
when we go over there it's whatyou said.
You can see if she's thrivingover there.
That's amazing, yeah.
And so again, you know theexperimentation is good, but
part of it is, I think you justsaid, with the process of
elimination it's also a littlebit of a test for negatives.
Like I know, I don't want to dothat and I think, as a young
person, maybe that's the mostimportant thing At least figure
(07:40):
out what you don't like.
Exactly you may still be kind ofbuilding to what you do, get
fired up about, but at leastdon't go do stuff, like you said
, sitting behind a computer thatwould just like crush you Like.
If that's what I had to doevery day.
So let's keep going.
So, lvmh, if you had todescribe the culture of LVMH in
one, two, three sentences, whatwould you say?
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I mean, LVMH is really a culture built around
creativity, innovation andexcellence, I think, and
entrepreneurship.
So a few more words, but thoseare the values of the group and
I think those words reallyexemplify who we are at the core
of LVMH.
So how do those values come tolife at the company?
(08:30):
I mean, that's what we try tolive and breathe and make them
come to life every day.
So the goal, of course, is toembed each of those values in
the group, at the group level,which is where I sit at LVMH,
but also within each of thebrands and they really are the
values that bind all of these 75brands, all of these 75 maisons
(08:50):
together.
I think, in fact, when wecreated these values it was a
bottoms-up exercise and we didthis.
I guess now it's been about 10years.
We really went around the worldtalking to all of our employees
to take from them what did theybelieve LVMH was and what did
(09:12):
they want LVMH to be.
And we sort of came to thisboth from the top, coming
directly from the family, fromthe Arno family and from the
family of all of the founders ofour, of our brands, who are
creators and are innovators, butthen also from our employees.
And the way that it comes tolife is the way that we create
(09:35):
our product, the way that wedevelop our retail stores, the
way that we develop our HRphilosophies.
I mean, we try to embed each ofthose values in every single
thing that we do.
And you know it starts with howdo you recruit people that are
aligned against those values,right?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
You're anticipating my next question.
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Am I getting ahead of you?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
No, this is perfect.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
But you know, if you're not, if you don't bring
people into the organizationthat really align against those
values, aspire to embody thosevalues, you're not going to be
able to embed and to deliverthose values within the
organization.
So we put a lot of emphasis onthe type of people that we bring
into the organization.
(10:23):
In some cases we're looking forvery concrete experiences, but
in some cases it's much moreabout bringing people into the
organization that really sharethe values and live the values
of the group.
Because we can teach you aboutluxury we can teach you how the
LVMH way, let's say but we can'tteach you to have an
(10:46):
appreciation for excellence andto really care about creativity.
We can refine and hone that inyou, but if it's not something
that's important to you or thatyou value, if you don't really
care about it, excellence is allabout the details that go into
everything that you do.
And in our world it is about thedetails.
And that again, it doesn'tmatter if you're working in a
(11:07):
retail environment, where ofcourse it's all about the
retails, or if it's in a productenvironment or if it's in HR,
because for us, the way that weservice our employees, the way
that we come out with newproducts or, sorry, new
initiatives.
Again, there's a level ofexcellence, there's a level of
excellence, there's a level ofcreativity.
We're not trying to just takethings off the shelf.
We're really trying to buildprograms that are bespoke for
(11:30):
our culture and are deliveringsolutions that fit with the
needs of our business, thatsupport what we're trying to
deliver to our employees.
So it's really about trying toembed all of this into the
culture so that it comes aliveat all levels.
But it's you know, it's anongoing and very iterative
(11:51):
process, as you can imagine.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
How do you tease that out in an interview?
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Well, you can certainly look for very concrete
examples.
So we spend a lot of timeasking people to share with us
examples of how have youdemonstrated this.
Give me an example of whenyou've had to be creative, you
done that.
How have you demonstrated that?
(12:20):
Or even asking people how doyou define that?
What does that mean to you?
What does that look like foryou?
You know, again, excellence, Ithink, is another one, and I'm
always really careful when youtalk about the word excellence,
because we, you know, we try tostay very humble at LVMH.
We're never saying that we areexcellent.
What we're saying is thatthat's the aspiration that we
(12:43):
have is to deliver excellence.
Again, you know, we believethat our products and our brands
and our customers and ouremployees deserve that.
But if you want to be able todeliver that, you have to remain
very humble, because excellenceis it's it's ephemeral right.
I mean, it's something verydifficult to achieve.
So I think, when you're talkingto people, you're, you're,
(13:07):
you're trying to understand howhave they demonstrated that and
what does that actually mean forthem.
So, again, asking them todefine that and it's very funny
because you know, you can, youcould, almost I can.
I'll be kind of comical herefor a moment, but you could.
You could have the conversationwith someone who's telling you
how much they value it, but thenyou look at their CV and maybe
(13:29):
they have a lot of typos, forexample, on their CV.
You know, and you would know,that actually in fact you don't
really value excellence.
Right, that's a very cleardemonstration, and you don't
want to be hypercritical ofsomeone, but those are the
little details that actuallyreally matter and mean we're not
looking necessarily forperfection, but we are looking
(13:50):
for somebody who pays attentionand really cares about
excellence.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
No, I think it's awesome.
So, with creativity being veryhigh on that list, given the
nature of what you all do andwe've talked about this before.
But I think it's really aninteresting thing to go revisit,
which is when you've got againiconic, truly iconic brands that
have really deep roots and meana lot to people, not the least
(14:20):
of which would be, like, thefolks who own those brands.
I don't mean the consumers,which it does, but also, you
know, on the business side foryou all, how do you manage the
tension between creativity,entrepreneurship which I think
kind of goes, you know, adjacentto that, without breaking the
brand by accident?
You know it's because you'realways pushing boundaries being
(14:40):
created, that's the nature ofcreativity.
Yet know it's because you'realways pushing boundaries being
creative, that's the nature ofcreativity.
Yet at the same time, we don'twant to break the thing by
accident.
I can see there being somepretty interesting discussions
internally when somebody's verypassionate about doing something
that they believe is creativeand somebody else might feel
with their entrepreneurial genegoing.
I don't think that's a greatbusiness decision.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yeah, no, listen, it's very tough, especially
because the word creativity andin fact creativity can also be
very subjective.
Your creativity and yourdefinition of creativity and my
definition of creativity mightbe very different.
And we certainly have thosetensions in the group and I
(15:24):
would say that to a large degree, we encourage those tensions.
We think that those tensionsare actually really important
and in fact, those tensionsallow us to get to the optimal
answer, the optimal solution.
So you need to have and again,that's where and maybe I'm
getting I'm not trying to getahead, but that's where the
(15:46):
topic of diversity becomesreally, really important.
Because if you have, you know,if you have everybody that's
sitting around the table thatall have a similar background, a
similar understanding, asimilar set of experiences,
they're all going to bring sortof a similar point of view to a
creative process.
That isn't necessarily going toget us to maybe a disruptive
(16:09):
outcome or to sort of the nextiteration of what we need to do,
because we're also trying to.
We are an organization thatwants to be on the forefront of
creativity and innovation.
It's not just enough to becreative and innovative, but
it's about pushing thoseboundaries, as you said, and
really being on the forefront,and that's what's expected, I
think, in an industry like ours,which is bringing something
(16:31):
that should be timeless, but italso should be surprising and
delighting the customer andsomething that you've never
thought of before, you've neverseen.
So we have to.
You know, we always talk aboutthe tension between modernity.
You know the past and thepresent right.
(16:52):
So we have a lot of tensions inour environment, in our world,
and, again, how do we managethose tensions is the challenge
that we live with.
Manage those tensions is thechallenge that we live with.
A lot of it comes down topeople, because you need to be
philosophically aligned againand how you see the world and
how you think about the brands,and it always goes back to we
(17:14):
always revert back to the DNA ofthe brand.
We spend a lot of time goingback to the DNA what?
What really is the DNA?
When the founder created thebrand?
What was the spirit?
What was the DNA?
What really is the DNA?
When the founder created thebrand, what was the spirit?
What was the DNA?
What was the meaning behindthat?
We never want to be veeringaway from that Because, in our
experience, when you start goingtoo far from really the DNA.
(17:35):
That's when you start makingmistakes, that's when you start
confusing the customer orconfusing the brand, and it
doesn't make sense anymore.
Because the other tension, ofcourse, is you have to be
creative and innovative.
You want the brand.
As one of our executives hassaid many times, we don't want
our brand sitting in museums,right?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
That's a great line.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Right, we want them in museums, but we want them
living and being in the cultureof today.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
But also we need to make sure that they're relevant
for tomorrow.
So again, a lot of tensionsthat we have to manage through.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, and so I want to draw parallels for people who
are listening, who are not inthe luxury goods space.
I think everything you'retalking about holds true,
because you need to beinnovative.
Right, we have to constantly bereinventing the business.
Business models change,technology changes.
You've got new generations ofpeople coming into the workforce
(18:34):
like nothing is static, and soeverybody, in some form or
fashion, is in a state of air.
Quote creativity maybe with asmall C compared to a capital C
and LVMH, but creativenonetheless.
And in part of creativity andrisk taking is, things don't
always work out Right.
Sounded like a good idea, butit didn't quite work out the way
(19:01):
that we had hoped.
How do you create enough safetyfor lack of a better word that
allows people to push boundaries?
But also, heaven forbid, thisthing doesn't go the way we
think it's going to go.
You're not going to get firedor whatever.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Yeah, I think that creating a safe environment
where people feel like they cantake a risk, and and again,
that's probably where we're alittle bit fortunate Because,
again, we are a company and itdoes start with our owner,
founder, chairman, ceo, mrArnault, who believes so much in
(19:42):
creativity and innovation.
By the way, he's also anextremely pragmatic businessman,
which is part of the reasonhe's so successful.
It doesn't happen by accident,as we know, so he's very.
You know, there's a lot, a hugeamount of analysis that goes
into what we do.
I wouldn't necessarily sayconsumer research or customer
(20:04):
research.
It isn't that type of analysis.
That's not necessarily how wework.
But there are other types ofbusiness analysis in terms of
the way that we look at and tryto measure.
And, again, you have a number ofpeople that are trying to
really assess things that we'redoing, because there can be
significant cost in some of thecreative initiatives that we're
(20:24):
doing, because there can besignificant cost in some of the
creative initiatives that welaunch.
But I think that we spend a lotof time.
Again, it goes back to people.
So you're trying to bring inpeople that are aligned with the
values of the group aroundcreativity and innovation and so
part of their role is tocultivate creative teams and
(20:46):
creative environments.
Right, and how you do thatsuccessfully?
You can't do that successfullyif you haven't created an
environment.
You can't create an environmentwhere creativity can thrive if
you're not able to create atrustful work environment.
So for me, those two thingsreally go hand in hand.
We do spend a lot of timethrough many of our different
(21:07):
learning and developmentinitiatives, especially through
all of our leadershipdevelopment programs, talking
about empathy from a leadershipdevelopment, talking about the
importance of inspirationalleadership development programs,
talking about empathy from aleadership development, talking
about the importance ofinspirational leadership,
motivational leadership.
I mean we really embed that inall of our programming around
leadership and again, we'reassessing that as a criteria
(21:28):
when we're promoting leaders,when we're thinking about who
are going to be the next leadersof the organization.
That's embedded in all of oursuccession planning.
We're making decisions of whois going to be, who are going to
be our next leaders, based ontheir ability to drive
creativity, to build trustfulwork environments and teams.
But you know it's not a perfectscience and sometimes it doesn't
(21:51):
happen and I wouldn't want tosit here and tell you that it
works perfectly in all of ourbrands all the time.
But we try to react actuallywhen we see that it's not
working, because for us the costof not having creative and
innovative workforces in ourindustry and in our business is
(22:13):
far greater Because it's such adisappointment to the customer.
Our customer is not going topay a premium for mediocre
product or for the same productthat we've been delivering year
after year.
Right, that's not what they'reexpecting for us.
So the cost is reallysignificant on multiple levels
(22:33):
if we're not able to deliverthat.
So there's a lot of work thatgoes into trying to build those
types of leaders and those typesof environments in our
organization.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
I want to talk about leadership and people
development.
I think you know I do anotherpodcast with Johnny Taylor from
SHRM and we just did an episodeon.
You know there's a lot oflayoffs going on.
A lot of it's happening inpeople or middle management
rather, and so either you've gotpeople now hey, congratulations
(23:03):
Bob, you just inherited a team.
You've never managed peoplebefore.
Or congratulations, Gina, yourteam just went from 10 to 20.
And you're almost setting thoseteams up for failure if they
either don't have the skills tobe great people leaders, or just
their scope is so much nobodycan really do that, which
(23:25):
potentially fosters anotherround next year of layoffs,
Because now, unfortunately, someof those people are going to be
considered low performers, notbecause they are, but because
they weren't supported properly,and I would love to hear you
talk a little bit about how youall think about those things at
LVMH.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Well, it's funny, before I say that, I was at a.
I was at an HR dinner the othernight a couple of weeks ago and
one of the one of the heads ofHR was talking about I can't
remember if it was their companyor another company and they
they basically realized that youknow, there's a huge amount of
(24:02):
people that actually don't likeleading teams in general, they
really don't.
And so they actually had gonethrough and they had given a
number of their managers theopportunity to opt out of
leading teams.
They had basically just giventhem the chance to say, okay,
you can continue leading teamsor you can take a step back and
become an individual contributor.
And they had a huge amount ofpeople that raised their hand
(24:23):
and said I don't actually wantto lead teams anymore.
I would rather take a 20%decrease in my compensation and
not have to lead teams, whichwas, in a way, a bit scary if
you think about it, because Ithink the importance of leading
and managing is so important onmultiple levels.
But for us, I think we again, wetry.
We have so many leadershipdevelopment programs, and when I
(24:46):
say so many, it's not that wehave, but we really try to
invest a ton.
I mean, we have a very rigoroussuccession planning process.
We meet multiple times and wego through every single brand
and every single leadership team.
So we're really looking at theleaders, their direct reports,
we go pretty deep in theorganization and we go literally
(25:08):
person by person, and we talkabout the individual in the role
, we talk about all the peoplethat we believe that could be
successors, and we're sort offortunate because we can look at
successors within that business, that individual business,
within that business unit again,or within the entire spectrum
of all of the LVMH brands.
And then, of course, we'rereally talking about okay, what
(25:29):
are the gaps in terms ofleadership or in terms of skills
, capabilities, and then how dowe get that person ready?
If so, if we have, you know,these three leaders that we're
trying to prepare a successionfor, and we have these, you know
, six people that we believecould be candidates, just to be
concrete, and we think that thetimeline is, you know, three
(25:50):
years what do we need to doconcretely to get those three
people?
And so we have a number ofdifferent programs, we have
different experiences.
So we can, you know, we caninvest in their development
through our programs, throughcertain experiences, through a
number of different exposureprograms, that we have to give
them access to other leadershipmentors, coaches.
So we try to target it from somany different ways.
(26:13):
But it's definitely an ongoingchallenge and I always say to
leaders that when you're puttingyour objectives together, you
have to make leadership anobjective like any other
objective.
You actually have to want to bea great leader.
That has to be something that'simportant to you, that you
prioritize as much as any of theother objectives that you're
(26:35):
setting for yourself, because itdoesn't just happen by accident
.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
No, I think that's great and the fact that you guys
are very intentional, verydeliberate, you do it with
excellence, because you talkedabout, you're going pretty deep
into the organization, so you'regetting into the details, if
you will, you know, reallyresonates.
One of the things that we hearsometimes is maybe a little bit
of tension with finance on someof these things where the air
(27:01):
quote ROI is, you know, maybeless clear or you can't just
draw a short straight line towhy are we doing this.
What advice would you givepeople in terms of good
collaboration with finance andmaybe it can be specific to L&D
kinds of things or just morebroadly.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
I mean, of course, any way that you can show the
business impact, and it's notthat easy to show how the
business performance is directlycorrelated to learning and
development programs.
But I think one of the thingsthat we've been able to
demonstrate, for example, whichI think does help, is retention,
(27:46):
because we know that the costof turnover is significant for
any organization and wedefinitely are able to quantify
that.
And so we were able todemonstrate that just the
leaders that are going throughthe programs, the engagement,
the retention, the decreasedturnover and, by the way, which
(28:08):
now you're making me think,which we haven't tracked but I
think would be interesting Maybewe should look at the turnover
of not just the leaders buttheir teams.
Maybe the teams, the turnover ofthe teams, could also you could
see a decrease in that overtime, because I do think and we
hear it from our leaders, I meanthat some of the programs are
(28:28):
extremely intense and they havesignificant coaching for a, you
know, up to a year or even twoyears in some cases after.
So you know they come back withyear or even two years in some
cases after.
So you know they come back withvery concrete objectives that
they need to work on becausethey've had, you know, 360s
before they've gone into theprograms.
They come back, they work withtheir teams, they give them the
feedback, they share openly whatthey're working on and we see
(28:50):
very, very concrete changes insome of the leaders after they
come back, because the programsgo very deep with them and
they're pretty transformative,and I would imagine that you do
see a decrease in turnover ofsome of the teams because you
see change behavior in many ofthe leaders.
So now I'm going to I'm goingto see if that's another KPI
(29:10):
that we can look at.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Go ahead.
No, I was going to say butthat's always.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
The challenge is because a lot of it is
subjective, and so how do youprove, especially in difficult
economic environments whichwe're probably getting into
these days, how are we going todemonstrate the importance of
continuing to invest in ourtalent, which is-.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
And that's exactly, and that's exactly what I'm
getting at.
And I would suspect that if youdo do that double click on
these hypos that not only do wesee higher retention, but I bet
you will see that high potentialfolks be, get high potential
folks and so that you've gotpods all of a sudden, that kind
(29:55):
of crop up because you'veinvested in somebody who now
knows how to invest in thepeople under their care, right.
So, yes, retention is abaseline, or at least it didn't
leave.
But I would argue that youprobably see that they're
actually some of your bestperformers are coming from those
teams.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Yeah, I would certainly hope so, right After
making all of those investments.
And again, we know that it'stransformative because we see
the feedback, we hear thefeedback and then we see some of
these people go on and havethese incredibly successful
careers with the group.
So it's very powerful.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Well, that probably leads to another thing, which is
a form of retention, which isinternal mobility and again,
would you say, 75 differentbrands across the portfolio.
Clearly a lot of opportunity tomove around and learn different
parts of the business.
Is that something that you guysencourage and, if so, how?
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Yes, it's a huge part of our HR philosophy and we
track it.
So we have all the KPIs around.
Internal mobility at all levelsWe've always looked at with the
executive population, which isa sizable number.
I mean we have about 230,000employees around the world.
We've always excuse me we'vealways said that we want to have
(31:09):
at least two thirds of all ofour executive moves happening
internally.
So we always have felt thatit's important to have a
percentage coming externally,because we need new ideas, new
ways of looking at the businessand, by the way, we've been on a
pretty high growth trajectoryover the last few years, so we
haven't even been able todevelop people as fast as the
(31:31):
business is growing.
But in general, within thatwhole ecosystem of LVMH, we want
employees to be able to takeadvantage of the ecosystem.
So more recently we've beenmuch more deliberate.
We launched an initiative lastyear that's a global initiative
that we launched in a veryaggressive way.
(31:53):
It's called the HR New Deal,which is centered around this
topic, called the career compass, and the philosophy is that we
want to put talent at the centerand we really want our talent
to see LVMH as a marketplace fortheir career across all of the
brands to allow them to buildwhatever skills they either want
(32:18):
or need to develop, and we arein the process of launching a
talent marketplace.
It should be launched next year.
We're working and I'm part ofthe global task force that's
building that out and it'sreally a collective effort.
So what we're saying toemployees is that it's the
responsibility of you at thecenter.
You're responsible for drivingyour career, but you do it in
(32:41):
concert with HR and the manager,right, so everybody is there to
support you on that journey.
But making sure that employeeshave the tools to be able to
find all of the open positionsthat are available within the
group, have access to that, havethe freedom to pursue that,
which we're still working on.
We're not totally there becausemanagers are still sometimes
(33:05):
hesitant to let their people go,or timing is sometimes an issue
, but we're really in theprocess of opening up that
widely so that people all of ourtalents have the ability to
pretty much explore anyopportunity that they want, as
long as they're in good standingand have been in the role for
(33:26):
at least a year 18 months, Imean.
We wouldn't want people and themore senior you go.
Obviously there's going to be afew more criteria, but it's a
huge initiative that we'relaunching to really be able to
leverage our incredible talentpool that we have at LVMH.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, no, that all makes total sense.
I want to be mindful of thetime as we kind of look forward
and, as you said, we live invery kind of interesting times
these days and I like to saytoday is the slowest day of the
rest of your life because thepace of change, the magnitude of
change, like it's just becomingso pronounced that you just
(34:03):
don't know what a day is goingto bring.
But with all that, as you thinkabout the next few years and
how HR is changing I mean,somehow we've gone 33 minutes
without saying the word AI butI'm just sort of curious how you
see whether it's economics,technology, other things what's
(34:25):
the future of HR look like fromwhere you sit?
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Well, I mean certainly HR, AI is a big part
of it, and certainly everythingthat I just mentioned to you
around the talent marketplaceand the career compass and
everything that we're doing.
Ai is basically powering all ofthat.
But what I think is reallyimportant to remember is that,
at the end of the day, we playan important role, but it's, you
(34:50):
know, as an organization.
What we need and we can'tforget is that we rely on
talented, motivated, inspired,engaged people to drive our
business, and I think that it'sup to us as an organization to
(35:13):
make sure that we're cultivatingcultures and environments where
people can thrive, people cangrow, people want to work,
people feel engaged, people arecompensated fairly and
appropriately and people havethe opportunity to, you know,
realize their absolute bestpotential in an organization.
So, with everything that's goingon, I just think that we can't
(35:35):
forget that, at the end of theday, it's still about the people
, and they're the most importantasset that we have in any of
our organizations, and I thinksometimes it's easy to lose
sight of that.
I mean, I think now about allthe simulations and all the work
that's happening around thetariffs, but it's happening
because we have amazing peoplein tax and finance that are
(35:58):
making that happen.
I mean, yes, technology ishelping, but it's the brilliant
minds of our people that aredriving the process right.
So for me, it's always comingdown to people, and how are we
creating the right environmentfor our people to thrive?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Awesome, right environment for our people to
thrive Awesome.
I'm going to suspect that youmight have inspired a person or
two to think about how can Iwork at a cool company like LVMH
.
If somebody was interested inexploring career opportunities,
what's the best way to do that?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Well, there's two things I would recommend.
Number one is to go andregister on InsideLVMHcom, which
is a website that we createdspecifically.
It's really targeted to earlycareer professionals and it's
sort of a one-stop shop to giveyou access to masterclasses.
There's an LVMH luxurycertificate that you can take.
(36:47):
You can register for positions.
There are internshipopportunities available.
There's so much informationthere that you can learn, and we
continue to update that andprovide access to all of our
different brands and maisons.
And then, of course, there'sthe website.
There's the website where wejust updated our website.
You can go there.
You can look by geography, youcan look by function, you can
(37:09):
look by city and you can lookall over the world to identify
what types of roles that you'reinterested in.
Obviously, you can look allover the world to identify what
types of roles that you'reinterested in.
Obviously, you can reach out toany of us on LinkedIn.
We're very engaged, we'reworking a lot with LinkedIn, but
really, those are the twoplaces that I would start the
LVMH careers website andInsideLVMHcom.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Awesome.
This has been amazing, gina, isthere anything that we haven't
said that you would just want tomake sure that you leave the
listening audience with, orreinforce, no, again.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
I think we covered so many things and I always love
our conversations, bob.
I think again, it's just youknow, the world is in a very
challenging space right now andI think there's a lot of
conversation, so many differenttopics right now, especially
happening in North America, andwe see, you know, a lot of
things under attack in NorthAmerica in particular.
(38:03):
You know, at LVMH, you know wecontinue to stay very focused on
our values.
Our number one value is thatpeople make the difference.
You know we're very committedto all of our policies and
philosophy around diversity,equity and inclusion and our
commitment to creating theabsolute best environment for
all of our talent and our people.
(38:23):
And that could be mental NorthAmerica and beyond.
You know, continue and supportthese really, really important
initiatives and remember howimportant they are for our
(38:44):
people, our communities and forour businesses.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Awesome, Gina.
Thank you so much.
This has been phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yes, and thank you, HR Gazette, for the opportunity
to guest host another episode ofHR Chat and with that we'll see
you all on the next episode.
Thank you again, Gina.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Thank you, Thank you Bob, Thank you everyone.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show.
If you enjoyed this episode,why not subscribe and listen to
some of the hundreds of episodespublished by HR Gazette and
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Subscribe to the show, followus on social media and visit
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Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hey everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president of
Career Club, and welcome to aspecial episode of HR Chat
brought to you by HR Gazette.
Special shout out to my friend,bill Bannon.
Thank you so much for allowingme the opportunity to guest host
here for a bit.
Today is a special episodebecause we're very pleased to
have the North American CHRO forLVMH, gina Smith, with us.
(00:48):
If LVMH doesn't ring a bell foryou, I think there are iconic
brands like Louis Vuitton,christian Dior, tag Heuer,
tiffany might ring a bell.
So, gina, welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Thank you.
Thank you, bob, it's so nice tobe with you today.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
No, likewise.
You know it's funny because Iwas sort of writing that out a
little bit.
I think iconic brands is likemassively overused.
You guys are iconic brands.
That's a pretty and I didn'teven, but I didn't do half of
the amazing brands?
Speaker 3 (01:17):
No, we have about 75.
So you definitely did not comenear half of them.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
That's right, yeah but I mean just an amazing,
amazing portfolio of brands.
One of the things that I enjoywhen I initially met you was
just learning a little bit, andthis will help our listeners
just learn a little bit moreabout your career journey and
how you ended up in such a plumjob.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Thank you, thank you.
Well, yeah, I mean it's sort ofa strange story.
I mean, I grew up in Texas andI don't think I, you know, when
I look back on my career, itwasn't necessarily by design, be
a head of HR, and although Ihad always had an interest in
(02:04):
the fashion and luxury space, Imean, you know, I remember being
a little, you know, a littlegirl in Texas and looking at, I
had stacks and stacks ofcosmopolitan magazines and you
know, I was sort of, you know,passionate about fashion and and
dreaming about New York City,for sure, and certainly other
cities like Paris, but itdefinitely didn't feel
(02:27):
attainable to me.
And I was fortunate, when I wasin college, to have the
opportunity to do a study abroad, in Greece.
I went to Crete for the summerand it was really a pivotal
moment for me because it was thefirst time that I had really
been outside of Texas.
And you know, I always, Ialways say that you know, I was
(02:52):
confronted with this very, verydifferent alphabet, very
different language, very foreigncountry, and yet I never felt
more alive and, in a way, athome.
Alive and in a way at home, Iconnected with so many wonderful
Greek people and again workingat a five-star hotel in Crete,
(03:13):
meeting people from all overEurope, and I just felt alive
and I just knew that I wantedmore of that.
I didn't exactly know what thatwas, but I wanted more of that.
So I came back home, I changedmy major to international
business, I was able to changemy studies so that I was able to
go back and study in Athens atan American university, and over
the next five years I reallyspent a lot more time in Greece.
(03:36):
But I discovered during thatsummer that what I loved was
people and culture, and so whenI look back on that moment, I
think it was really thebeginning of my passion for
human resources.
Obviously, people and culture.
I just didn't realize it at thetime, and you know that became
(03:57):
the benchmark that I used forany job or career decision that
I made after that.
Any role had to have aninternational dimension and I
had to be working with people.
If it was a role, especiallyearly in my career, where I
would be sitting behind a deskand not having the opportunity
(04:20):
to engage with people and again,especially international people
I knew it wasn't going to besomething that I was going to be
interested or passionate about.
So I think it was a good guidefor me and helping me make
decisions that I think actually,you know, got me here
eventually.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Well, I mean, I think that's amazing.
One of the things that I reallyliked about your story is there
was an element ofexperimentation.
As young people, we youngpeople tend to not know what's
available to them, right, and soyou need to try new things, you
need to go to Greece and see ifthat lights your fire or not,
(04:57):
right?
But we sometimes we don't knowwhat all is available to us and
we just sort of get, you know,kind of railroaded into certain
things.
And so I'm a huge advocateAnybody who's a parent of a
young person, a young personthemselves go experiment, like
go see what's out there, trydifferent things, because, like
Jeannie, you just never know.
That's the thing that lightsyou up, and now you've got
(05:19):
direction of like now I knowwhat I want.
I love what you said.
I want more of that, exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Well, exactly, I mean , you know it's sort of a
process of elimination.
And how do you eliminate you?
You discover things that youlike and things that you don't
like.
And I agree with you, unlessyou're putting yourself out
there and you're testing, andyou're trying and you're
learning, there's no way for youto know.
And you do have to put yourself.
I mean, it was very scary forme to pick up and go to Greece
(05:49):
and be confronted with somethingthat was so foreign, literally,
but it was also so exciting andso liberating.
And then when you are able tosort of conquer that, that's
even more liberating and moreexciting.
And then you know that you cando more and more.
You continue to push andchallenge yourself.
But I agree with you.
I'm always encouraging peopleto try as much as you can,
(06:13):
especially in the early days,but actually always.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, exactly.
And just last little piece onwhat you said, because it really
resonates, which is as youstretch your boundaries, you
need bigger boundaries.
And so you learn hey, Iactually can't do this.
So what's next and you knowit's a little bit like you know
start running a mile Now.
I'm doing 5Ks Now.
I'm doing half a minute.
(06:38):
I'm stronger than I thoughtthat I was and I'm making myself
stronger than I was, and Ithink for women especially, you
know, like everything is anoption.
If you will, let it be anoption to you and go try stuff.
I'm going to be a proud papafor half of a second.
But I don't know if we've evertalked about this, gina, but my
(06:58):
daughter lives in Norway andinternational business and she
took a job in Oslo 10 years agoand hasn't moved back home since
and has built a life over thereand a family and but, like you
said, different language, a lotof different, some different
letters in the alphabet, buteverything was different and
(07:20):
when we go over there it's whatyou said.
You can see if she's thrivingover there.
That's amazing, yeah.
And so again, you know theexperimentation is good, but
part of it is, I think you justsaid, with the process of
elimination it's also a littlebit of a test for negatives.
Like I know, I don't want to dothat and I think, as a young
person, maybe that's the mostimportant thing At least figure
(07:40):
out what you don't like.
Exactly you may still be kind ofbuilding to what you do, get
fired up about, but at leastdon't go do stuff, like you said
, sitting behind a computer thatwould just like crush you Like.
If that's what I had to doevery day.
So let's keep going.
So, lvmh, if you had todescribe the culture of LVMH in
one, two, three sentences, whatwould you say?
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I mean, LVMH is really a culture built around
creativity, innovation andexcellence, I think, and
entrepreneurship.
So a few more words, but thoseare the values of the group and
I think those words reallyexemplify who we are at the core
of LVMH.
So how do those values come tolife at the company?
(08:30):
I mean, that's what we try tolive and breathe and make them
come to life every day.
So the goal, of course, is toembed each of those values in
the group, at the group level,which is where I sit at LVMH,
but also within each of thebrands and they really are the
values that bind all of these 75brands, all of these 75 maisons
(08:50):
together.
I think, in fact, when wecreated these values it was a
bottoms-up exercise and we didthis.
I guess now it's been about 10years.
We really went around the worldtalking to all of our employees
to take from them what did theybelieve LVMH was and what did
(09:12):
they want LVMH to be.
And we sort of came to thisboth from the top, coming
directly from the family, fromthe Arno family and from the
family of all of the founders ofour, of our brands, who are
creators and are innovators, butthen also from our employees.
And the way that it comes tolife is the way that we create
(09:35):
our product, the way that wedevelop our retail stores, the
way that we develop our HRphilosophies.
I mean, we try to embed each ofthose values in every single
thing that we do.
And you know it starts with howdo you recruit people that are
aligned against those values,right?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
You're anticipating my next question.
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Am I getting ahead of you?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
No, this is perfect.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
But you know, if you're not, if you don't bring
people into the organizationthat really align against those
values, aspire to embody thosevalues, you're not going to be
able to embed and to deliverthose values within the
organization.
So we put a lot of emphasis onthe type of people that we bring
into the organization.
(10:23):
In some cases we're looking forvery concrete experiences, but
in some cases it's much moreabout bringing people into the
organization that really sharethe values and live the values
of the group.
Because we can teach you aboutluxury we can teach you how the
LVMH way, let's say but we can'tteach you to have an
(10:46):
appreciation for excellence andto really care about creativity.
We can refine and hone that inyou, but if it's not something
that's important to you or thatyou value, if you don't really
care about it, excellence is allabout the details that go into
everything that you do.
And in our world it is about thedetails.
And that again, it doesn'tmatter if you're working in a
(11:07):
retail environment, where ofcourse it's all about the
retails, or if it's in a productenvironment or if it's in HR,
because for us, the way that weservice our employees, the way
that we come out with newproducts or, sorry, new
initiatives.
Again, there's a level ofexcellence, there's a level of
excellence, there's a level ofcreativity.
We're not trying to just takethings off the shelf.
We're really trying to buildprograms that are bespoke for
(11:30):
our culture and are deliveringsolutions that fit with the
needs of our business, thatsupport what we're trying to
deliver to our employees.
So it's really about trying toembed all of this into the
culture so that it comes aliveat all levels.
But it's you know, it's anongoing and very iterative
(11:51):
process, as you can imagine.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
How do you tease that out in an interview?
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Well, you can certainly look for very concrete
examples.
So we spend a lot of timeasking people to share with us
examples of how have youdemonstrated this.
Give me an example of whenyou've had to be creative, you
done that.
How have you demonstrated that?
(12:20):
Or even asking people how doyou define that?
What does that mean to you?
What does that look like foryou?
You know, again, excellence, Ithink, is another one, and I'm
always really careful when youtalk about the word excellence,
because we, you know, we try tostay very humble at LVMH.
We're never saying that we areexcellent.
What we're saying is thatthat's the aspiration that we
(12:43):
have is to deliver excellence.
Again, you know, we believethat our products and our brands
and our customers and ouremployees deserve that.
But if you want to be able todeliver that, you have to remain
very humble, because excellenceis it's it's ephemeral right.
I mean, it's something verydifficult to achieve.
So I think, when you're talkingto people, you're, you're,
(13:07):
you're trying to understand howhave they demonstrated that and
what does that actually mean forthem.
So, again, asking them todefine that and it's very funny
because you know, you can, youcould, almost I can.
I'll be kind of comical herefor a moment, but you could.
You could have the conversationwith someone who's telling you
how much they value it, but thenyou look at their CV and maybe
(13:29):
they have a lot of typos, forexample, on their CV.
You know, and you would know,that actually in fact you don't
really value excellence.
Right, that's a very cleardemonstration, and you don't
want to be hypercritical ofsomeone, but those are the
little details that actuallyreally matter and mean we're not
looking necessarily forperfection, but we are looking
(13:50):
for somebody who pays attentionand really cares about
excellence.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
No, I think it's awesome.
So, with creativity being veryhigh on that list, given the
nature of what you all do andwe've talked about this before.
But I think it's really aninteresting thing to go revisit,
which is when you've got againiconic, truly iconic brands that
have really deep roots and meana lot to people, not the least
(14:20):
of which would be, like, thefolks who own those brands.
I don't mean the consumers,which it does, but also, you
know, on the business side foryou all, how do you manage the
tension between creativity,entrepreneurship which I think
kind of goes, you know, adjacentto that, without breaking the
brand by accident?
You know it's because you'realways pushing boundaries being
(14:40):
created, that's the nature ofcreativity.
Yet know it's because you'realways pushing boundaries being
creative, that's the nature ofcreativity.
Yet at the same time, we don'twant to break the thing by
accident.
I can see there being somepretty interesting discussions
internally when somebody's verypassionate about doing something
that they believe is creativeand somebody else might feel
with their entrepreneurial genegoing.
I don't think that's a greatbusiness decision.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yeah, no, listen, it's very tough, especially
because the word creativity andin fact creativity can also be
very subjective.
Your creativity and yourdefinition of creativity and my
definition of creativity mightbe very different.
And we certainly have thosetensions in the group and I
(15:24):
would say that to a large degree, we encourage those tensions.
We think that those tensionsare actually really important
and in fact, those tensionsallow us to get to the optimal
answer, the optimal solution.
So you need to have and again,that's where and maybe I'm
getting I'm not trying to getahead, but that's where the
(15:46):
topic of diversity becomesreally, really important.
Because if you have, you know,if you have everybody that's
sitting around the table thatall have a similar background, a
similar understanding, asimilar set of experiences,
they're all going to bring sortof a similar point of view to a
creative process.
That isn't necessarily going toget us to maybe a disruptive
(16:09):
outcome or to sort of the nextiteration of what we need to do,
because we're also trying to.
We are an organization thatwants to be on the forefront of
creativity and innovation.
It's not just enough to becreative and innovative, but
it's about pushing thoseboundaries, as you said, and
really being on the forefront,and that's what's expected, I
think, in an industry like ours,which is bringing something
(16:31):
that should be timeless, but italso should be surprising and
delighting the customer andsomething that you've never
thought of before, you've neverseen.
So we have to.
You know, we always talk aboutthe tension between modernity.
You know the past and thepresent right.
(16:52):
So we have a lot of tensions inour environment, in our world,
and, again, how do we managethose tensions is the challenge
that we live with.
Manage those tensions is thechallenge that we live with.
A lot of it comes down topeople, because you need to be
philosophically aligned againand how you see the world and
how you think about the brands,and it always goes back to we
(17:14):
always revert back to the DNA ofthe brand.
We spend a lot of time goingback to the DNA what?
What really is the DNA?
When the founder created thebrand?
What was the spirit?
What was the DNA?
What really is the DNA?
When the founder created thebrand, what was the spirit?
What was the DNA?
What was the meaning behindthat?
We never want to be veeringaway from that Because, in our
experience, when you start goingtoo far from really the DNA.
(17:35):
That's when you start makingmistakes, that's when you start
confusing the customer orconfusing the brand, and it
doesn't make sense anymore.
Because the other tension, ofcourse, is you have to be
creative and innovative.
You want the brand.
As one of our executives hassaid many times, we don't want
our brand sitting in museums,right?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
That's a great line.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Right, we want them in museums, but we want them
living and being in the cultureof today.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
But also we need to make sure that they're relevant
for tomorrow.
So again, a lot of tensionsthat we have to manage through.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, and so I want to draw parallels for people who
are listening, who are not inthe luxury goods space.
I think everything you'retalking about holds true,
because you need to beinnovative.
Right, we have to constantly bereinventing the business.
Business models change,technology changes.
You've got new generations ofpeople coming into the workforce
(18:34):
like nothing is static, and soeverybody, in some form or
fashion, is in a state of air.
Quote creativity maybe with asmall C compared to a capital C
and LVMH, but creativenonetheless.
And in part of creativity andrisk taking is, things don't
always work out Right.
Sounded like a good idea, butit didn't quite work out the way
(19:01):
that we had hoped.
How do you create enough safetyfor lack of a better word that
allows people to push boundaries?
But also, heaven forbid, thisthing doesn't go the way we
think it's going to go.
You're not going to get firedor whatever.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Yeah, I think that creating a safe environment
where people feel like they cantake a risk, and and again,
that's probably where we're alittle bit fortunate Because,
again, we are a company and itdoes start with our owner,
founder, chairman, ceo, mrArnault, who believes so much in
(19:42):
creativity and innovation.
By the way, he's also anextremely pragmatic businessman,
which is part of the reasonhe's so successful.
It doesn't happen by accident,as we know, so he's very.
You know, there's a lot, a hugeamount of analysis that goes
into what we do.
I wouldn't necessarily sayconsumer research or customer
(20:04):
research.
It isn't that type of analysis.
That's not necessarily how wework.
But there are other types ofbusiness analysis in terms of
the way that we look at and tryto measure.
And, again, you have a number ofpeople that are trying to
really assess things that we'redoing, because there can be
significant cost in some of thecreative initiatives that we're
(20:24):
doing, because there can besignificant cost in some of the
creative initiatives that welaunch.
But I think that we spend a lotof time.
Again, it goes back to people.
So you're trying to bring inpeople that are aligned with the
values of the group aroundcreativity and innovation and so
part of their role is tocultivate creative teams and
(20:46):
creative environments.
Right, and how you do thatsuccessfully?
You can't do that successfullyif you haven't created an
environment.
You can't create an environmentwhere creativity can thrive if
you're not able to create atrustful work environment.
So for me, those two thingsreally go hand in hand.
We do spend a lot of timethrough many of our different
(21:07):
learning and developmentinitiatives, especially through
all of our leadershipdevelopment programs, talking
about empathy from a leadershipdevelopment, talking about the
importance of inspirationalleadership development programs,
talking about empathy from aleadership development, talking
about the importance ofinspirational leadership,
motivational leadership.
I mean we really embed that inall of our programming around
leadership and again, we'reassessing that as a criteria
(21:28):
when we're promoting leaders,when we're thinking about who
are going to be the next leadersof the organization.
That's embedded in all of oursuccession planning.
We're making decisions of whois going to be, who are going to
be our next leaders, based ontheir ability to drive
creativity, to build trustfulwork environments and teams.
But you know it's not a perfectscience and sometimes it doesn't
(21:51):
happen and I wouldn't want tosit here and tell you that it
works perfectly in all of ourbrands all the time.
But we try to react actuallywhen we see that it's not
working, because for us the costof not having creative and
innovative workforces in ourindustry and in our business is
(22:13):
far greater Because it's such adisappointment to the customer.
Our customer is not going topay a premium for mediocre
product or for the same productthat we've been delivering year
after year.
Right, that's not what they'reexpecting for us.
So the cost is reallysignificant on multiple levels
(22:33):
if we're not able to deliverthat.
So there's a lot of work thatgoes into trying to build those
types of leaders and those typesof environments in our
organization.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
I want to talk about leadership and people
development.
I think you know I do anotherpodcast with Johnny Taylor from
SHRM and we just did an episodeon.
You know there's a lot oflayoffs going on.
A lot of it's happening inpeople or middle management
rather, and so either you've gotpeople now hey, congratulations
(23:03):
Bob, you just inherited a team.
You've never managed peoplebefore.
Or congratulations, Gina, yourteam just went from 10 to 20.
And you're almost setting thoseteams up for failure if they
either don't have the skills tobe great people leaders, or just
their scope is so much nobodycan really do that, which
(23:25):
potentially fosters anotherround next year of layoffs,
Because now, unfortunately, someof those people are going to be
considered low performers, notbecause they are, but because
they weren't supported properly,and I would love to hear you
talk a little bit about how youall think about those things at
LVMH.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Well, it's funny, before I say that, I was at a.
I was at an HR dinner the othernight a couple of weeks ago and
one of the one of the heads ofHR was talking about I can't
remember if it was their companyor another company and they
they basically realized that youknow, there's a huge amount of
(24:02):
people that actually don't likeleading teams in general, they
really don't.
And so they actually had gonethrough and they had given a
number of their managers theopportunity to opt out of
leading teams.
They had basically just giventhem the chance to say, okay,
you can continue leading teamsor you can take a step back and
become an individual contributor.
And they had a huge amount ofpeople that raised their hand
(24:23):
and said I don't actually wantto lead teams anymore.
I would rather take a 20%decrease in my compensation and
not have to lead teams, whichwas, in a way, a bit scary if
you think about it, because Ithink the importance of leading
and managing is so important onmultiple levels.
But for us, I think we again, wetry.
We have so many leadershipdevelopment programs, and when I
(24:46):
say so many, it's not that wehave, but we really try to
invest a ton.
I mean, we have a very rigoroussuccession planning process.
We meet multiple times and wego through every single brand
and every single leadership team.
So we're really looking at theleaders, their direct reports,
we go pretty deep in theorganization and we go literally
(25:08):
person by person, and we talkabout the individual in the role
, we talk about all the peoplethat we believe that could be
successors, and we're sort offortunate because we can look at
successors within that business, that individual business,
within that business unit again,or within the entire spectrum
of all of the LVMH brands.
And then, of course, we'rereally talking about okay, what
(25:29):
are the gaps in terms ofleadership or in terms of skills
, capabilities, and then how dowe get that person ready?
If so, if we have, you know,these three leaders that we're
trying to prepare a successionfor, and we have these, you know
, six people that we believecould be candidates, just to be
concrete, and we think that thetimeline is, you know, three
(25:50):
years what do we need to doconcretely to get those three
people?
And so we have a number ofdifferent programs, we have
different experiences.
So we can, you know, we caninvest in their development
through our programs, throughcertain experiences, through a
number of different exposureprograms, that we have to give
them access to other leadershipmentors, coaches.
So we try to target it from somany different ways.
(26:13):
But it's definitely an ongoingchallenge and I always say to
leaders that when you're puttingyour objectives together, you
have to make leadership anobjective like any other
objective.
You actually have to want to bea great leader.
That has to be something that'simportant to you, that you
prioritize as much as any of theother objectives that you're
(26:35):
setting for yourself, because itdoesn't just happen by accident
.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
No, I think that's great and the fact that you guys
are very intentional, verydeliberate, you do it with
excellence, because you talkedabout, you're going pretty deep
into the organization, so you'regetting into the details, if
you will, you know, reallyresonates.
One of the things that we hearsometimes is maybe a little bit
of tension with finance on someof these things where the air
(27:01):
quote ROI is, you know, maybeless clear or you can't just
draw a short straight line towhy are we doing this.
What advice would you givepeople in terms of good
collaboration with finance andmaybe it can be specific to L&D
kinds of things or just morebroadly.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
I mean, of course, any way that you can show the
business impact, and it's notthat easy to show how the
business performance is directlycorrelated to learning and
development programs.
But I think one of the thingsthat we've been able to
demonstrate, for example, whichI think does help, is retention,
(27:46):
because we know that the costof turnover is significant for
any organization and wedefinitely are able to quantify
that.
And so we were able todemonstrate that just the
leaders that are going throughthe programs, the engagement,
the retention, the decreasedturnover and, by the way, which
(28:08):
now you're making me think,which we haven't tracked but I
think would be interesting Maybewe should look at the turnover
of not just the leaders buttheir teams.
Maybe the teams, the turnover ofthe teams, could also you could
see a decrease in that overtime, because I do think and we
hear it from our leaders, I meanthat some of the programs are
(28:28):
extremely intense and they havesignificant coaching for a, you
know, up to a year or even twoyears in some cases after.
So you know they come back withyear or even two years in some
cases after.
So you know they come back withvery concrete objectives that
they need to work on becausethey've had, you know, 360s
before they've gone into theprograms.
They come back, they work withtheir teams, they give them the
feedback, they share openly whatthey're working on and we see
(28:50):
very, very concrete changes insome of the leaders after they
come back, because the programsgo very deep with them and
they're pretty transformative,and I would imagine that you do
see a decrease in turnover ofsome of the teams because you
see change behavior in many ofthe leaders.
So now I'm going to I'm goingto see if that's another KPI
(29:10):
that we can look at.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Go ahead.
No, I was going to say butthat's always.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
The challenge is because a lot of it is
subjective, and so how do youprove, especially in difficult
economic environments whichwe're probably getting into
these days, how are we going todemonstrate the importance of
continuing to invest in ourtalent, which is-.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
And that's exactly, and that's exactly what I'm
getting at.
And I would suspect that if youdo do that double click on
these hypos that not only do wesee higher retention, but I bet
you will see that high potentialfolks be, get high potential
folks and so that you've gotpods all of a sudden, that kind
(29:55):
of crop up because you'veinvested in somebody who now
knows how to invest in thepeople under their care, right.
So, yes, retention is abaseline, or at least it didn't
leave.
But I would argue that youprobably see that they're
actually some of your bestperformers are coming from those
teams.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Yeah, I would certainly hope so, right After
making all of those investments.
And again, we know that it'stransformative because we see
the feedback, we hear thefeedback and then we see some of
these people go on and havethese incredibly successful
careers with the group.
So it's very powerful.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Well, that probably leads to another thing, which is
a form of retention, which isinternal mobility and again,
would you say, 75 differentbrands across the portfolio.
Clearly a lot of opportunity tomove around and learn different
parts of the business.
Is that something that you guysencourage and, if so, how?
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Yes, it's a huge part of our HR philosophy and we
track it.
So we have all the KPIs around.
Internal mobility at all levelsWe've always looked at with the
executive population, which isa sizable number.
I mean we have about 230,000employees around the world.
We've always excuse me we'vealways said that we want to have
(31:09):
at least two thirds of all ofour executive moves happening
internally.
So we always have felt thatit's important to have a
percentage coming externally,because we need new ideas, new
ways of looking at the businessand, by the way, we've been on a
pretty high growth trajectoryover the last few years, so we
haven't even been able todevelop people as fast as the
(31:31):
business is growing.
But in general, within thatwhole ecosystem of LVMH, we want
employees to be able to takeadvantage of the ecosystem.
So more recently we've beenmuch more deliberate.
We launched an initiative lastyear that's a global initiative
that we launched in a veryaggressive way.
(31:53):
It's called the HR New Deal,which is centered around this
topic, called the career compass, and the philosophy is that we
want to put talent at the centerand we really want our talent
to see LVMH as a marketplace fortheir career across all of the
brands to allow them to buildwhatever skills they either want
(32:18):
or need to develop, and we arein the process of launching a
talent marketplace.
It should be launched next year.
We're working and I'm part ofthe global task force that's
building that out and it'sreally a collective effort.
So what we're saying toemployees is that it's the
responsibility of you at thecenter.
You're responsible for drivingyour career, but you do it in
(32:41):
concert with HR and the manager,right, so everybody is there to
support you on that journey.
But making sure that employeeshave the tools to be able to
find all of the open positionsthat are available within the
group, have access to that, havethe freedom to pursue that,
which we're still working on.
We're not totally there becausemanagers are still sometimes
(33:05):
hesitant to let their people go,or timing is sometimes an issue
, but we're really in theprocess of opening up that
widely so that people all of ourtalents have the ability to
pretty much explore anyopportunity that they want, as
long as they're in good standingand have been in the role for
(33:26):
at least a year 18 months, Imean.
We wouldn't want people and themore senior you go.
Obviously there's going to be afew more criteria, but it's a
huge initiative that we'relaunching to really be able to
leverage our incredible talentpool that we have at LVMH.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, no, that all makes total sense.
I want to be mindful of thetime as we kind of look forward
and, as you said, we live invery kind of interesting times
these days and I like to saytoday is the slowest day of the
rest of your life because thepace of change, the magnitude of
change, like it's just becomingso pronounced that you just
(34:03):
don't know what a day is goingto bring.
But with all that, as you thinkabout the next few years and
how HR is changing I mean,somehow we've gone 33 minutes
without saying the word AI butI'm just sort of curious how you
see whether it's economics,technology, other things what's
(34:25):
the future of HR look like fromwhere you sit?
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Well, I mean certainly HR, AI is a big part
of it, and certainly everythingthat I just mentioned to you
around the talent marketplaceand the career compass and
everything that we're doing.
Ai is basically powering all ofthat.
But what I think is reallyimportant to remember is that,
at the end of the day, we playan important role, but it's, you
(34:50):
know, as an organization.
What we need and we can'tforget is that we rely on
talented, motivated, inspired,engaged people to drive our
business, and I think that it'sup to us as an organization to
(35:13):
make sure that we're cultivatingcultures and environments where
people can thrive, people cangrow, people want to work,
people feel engaged, people arecompensated fairly and
appropriately and people havethe opportunity to, you know,
realize their absolute bestpotential in an organization.
So, with everything that's goingon, I just think that we can't
(35:35):
forget that, at the end of theday, it's still about the people
, and they're the most importantasset that we have in any of
our organizations, and I thinksometimes it's easy to lose
sight of that.
I mean, I think now about allthe simulations and all the work
that's happening around thetariffs, but it's happening
because we have amazing peoplein tax and finance that are
(35:58):
making that happen.
I mean, yes, technology ishelping, but it's the brilliant
minds of our people that aredriving the process right.
So for me, it's always comingdown to people, and how are we
creating the right environmentfor our people to thrive?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Awesome, right environment for our people to
thrive Awesome.
I'm going to suspect that youmight have inspired a person or
two to think about how can Iwork at a cool company like LVMH
.
If somebody was interested inexploring career opportunities,
what's the best way to do that?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Well, there's two things I would recommend.
Number one is to go andregister on InsideLVMHcom, which
is a website that we createdspecifically.
It's really targeted to earlycareer professionals and it's
sort of a one-stop shop to giveyou access to masterclasses.
There's an LVMH luxurycertificate that you can take.
(36:47):
You can register for positions.
There are internshipopportunities available.
There's so much informationthere that you can learn, and we
continue to update that andprovide access to all of our
different brands and maisons.
And then, of course, there'sthe website.
There's the website where wejust updated our website.
You can go there.
You can look by geography, youcan look by function, you can
(37:09):
look by city and you can lookall over the world to identify
what types of roles that you'reinterested in.
Obviously, you can look allover the world to identify what
types of roles that you'reinterested in.
Obviously, you can reach out toany of us on LinkedIn.
We're very engaged, we'reworking a lot with LinkedIn, but
really, those are the twoplaces that I would start the
LVMH careers website andInsideLVMHcom.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Awesome.
This has been amazing, gina, isthere anything that we haven't
said that you would just want tomake sure that you leave the
listening audience with, orreinforce, no, again.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
I think we covered so many things and I always love
our conversations, bob.
I think again, it's just youknow, the world is in a very
challenging space right now andI think there's a lot of
conversation, so many differenttopics right now, especially
happening in North America, andwe see, you know, a lot of
things under attack in NorthAmerica in particular.
(38:03):
You know, at LVMH, you know wecontinue to stay very focused on
our values.
Our number one value is thatpeople make the difference.
You know we're very committedto all of our policies and
philosophy around diversity,equity and inclusion and our
commitment to creating theabsolute best environment for
all of our talent and our people.
(38:23):
And that could be mental NorthAmerica and beyond.
You know, continue and supportthese really, really important
initiatives and remember howimportant they are for our
(38:44):
people, our communities and forour businesses.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Awesome, Gina.
Thank you so much.
This has been phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yes, and thank you, HR Gazette, for the opportunity
to guest host another episode ofHR Chat and with that we'll see
you all on the next episode.
Thank you again, Gina.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Thank you, Thank you Bob, Thank you everyone.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show.
If you enjoyed this episode,why not subscribe and listen to
some of the hundreds of episodespublished by HR Gazette and
remember for what's new in theworld of work?
Subscribe to the show, followus on social media and visit
hrgazettecom.
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