"Every employee contributes to the leadership culture"

Sika’s aspiration is to be the employer of choice. How do you plan to achieve this goal?

By focusing on four areas: attracting and retaining the best talent that fit our culture; sustaining the Sika Spirit, which embodies our culture and values; enabling our people to grow and acquire the skills they need for the future; and driving engagement and commitment.

All of this is impacted by the effectiveness of our leaders. Effective leadership drives engagement and creates a strong sense of belonging. Our success is reflected in the fact that people like to stay with us for a long time and unlock their potential. We strive to make everyone at Sika feel valued and empowered.

Diversity drives innovation, so we put a high focus on embracing an inclusive workforce, where you can be your true self and learn from each other.

How did the focus on people and culture further evolve in Strategy 2028? 

Sika is a people company. We acknowledge people as the heart of our success and that success is only possible if people are engaged and share a common purpose, strategy, and vision.

In our Strategy 2028 we will continue to build on the strong foundation of our corporate culture, Sika’s high ethical reputation, our commitment to strong leadership, high employee engagement, and a performance-oriented culture. Our commitment to developing our people also includes fostering digital engagement and strengthening the social dimension of our ESG strategy with a specific focus on diversity, inclusion, engagement, and health and safety. 

Our culture is our most important competitive advantage. It should create value for all our stakeholders – not just our employees, but also our customers, shareholders, and communities.

Attracting and retaining talent is vital. What would you say to encourage somebody to join the company?   

The key is our unique culture: the strong values and principles embodied in what we call the Sika Spirit. We are  committed to the Sika Spirit and an entrepreneurial way of working, emphasizing collaboration and relationships – not just among employees, but with customers as well.

We also foster a caring culture. By caring, we build trust. Coming together makes us stronger as a team in terms of speed, motivation, knowledge sharing, and driving innovation. Our passion is what makes us special.

We invest a lot in our people. The success of the company is the success of our people. We empower people as soon as they join the company. It is not hierarchy that counts, but your contribution. At Sika, people are encouraged to explore their potential in areas that cannot be taken for granted. This enables them to understand things from various perspectives, to be agile and open to opportunities. I am a living example of this. I trained as a lawyer and started my career at law firms. At Sika I started in compliance before moving into human resources, and very recently I took on the role of the company’s general counsel.

For the first time, the people- and culture-related non-financial targets under the 2028 strategy include employee engagement. Why is this so important?

Engagement is a key performance metric at Sika, reflecting the fact that emotional and intellectual involvement is key to employees’ contribution and motivation. We conducted our first global employee survey in 2019 to assess employee engagement. Going forward, we will be measuring this metric every second year. An engagement rate of over 80 out of 100 is considered exceptional. In 2019 our score was 86. Our target is to continuously achieve an engagement rate of above 80. 

High engagement rates prove that we have succeeded in the things we have been talking about. But the exercise also includes looking at areas for improvement and finding ways to navigate the downsides. We listen to our employees; their voices count.

What progress is Sika making in terms of diversity, and what are the future goals?

Every person is unique and we embrace and foster a diverse workforce in terms of gender, age, cultural background, and nationality. We are committed to providing equal opportunities for each employee and an attractive and inclusive working environment. Sika aims to have the same percentage of women represented at all levels of the workforce, right up to top management. The percentage of women is improving year on year. It is now 24.3% of the overall workforce. Our ambition is to steadily increase this ratio towards 30%. There is a strong commitment across the organization and the regions, with committees working on diversity and efforts cascaded to local initiatives. Naturally, it is also important to take account of cultural nuances. All countries are committed to improving and contributing to achieve our target at Group level.

Is there another topic close to your heart?  

Health and safety is an area where Sika is investing heavily. We want to protect our employees so they can go home safe at the end of the day. We aspire to build an interdependent safety culture where we take care of each other.

We want a workplace where safety is embedded on an everyday basis in our actions, decisions, and interaction.

The goal is of course to have zero accidents and zero fatalities. We have training and initiatives to make this happen and to set an industry leading benchmark for safety excellence. This involves constantly asking ourselves how we can improve. 

Sika is in the process of integrating MBCC, the largest acquisition to date. How do you consider the people factor in this process?

The people factor can make or break it. It is about making new colleagues feel welcome. We recognize that the integration is a big change and that staying motivated throughout the process is not always easy. We encourage everyone within Sika to support our new colleagues from MBCC, and everyone to be flexible and open-minded. The motto is “Take the best of the two worlds.” I do not have to look further than my own team for examples of how this is working in practice. We collaborate closely on all people-related projects. This enables us to consider employees’ concerns and views and to design appropriate integration programs.

Synergy expectations have recently been increased and the regularly conducted pulse checks show good results. This suggests that the integration is on track. To what extent would you attribute this to people-related factors? 

If people feel valued, engaged, and share the vision of integration, they will work towards its success. During the whole integration process, starting with the due diligence, we realized that the two companies were very complementary and that this would benefit customers. The value of the combined business really does amount to more than the sum of its parts. You cannot make this work if people are not motivated and enthusiastic. Teams collaborate and learn from each other, enhancing the knowledge and competencies of the Sika organization as a whole.

What qualitative feedback do you receive from employees with these pulse checks? What is working well and what is not working so well?

We gather feedback every six weeks. It varies by country and department. It is important to look at the trend. Some areas are working very well: MBCC people feel part of the team and appreciated, and there is praise for the inclusive culture and good working environment. They also recognize the many opportunities that have opened up thanks to the acquisition.

Not yet fully fine-tuned, but definitely making progress, is the IT integration. It is a complex matter and an additional layer in the digital transformation already taking place.

We need to keep up communication and increase the level of clarity and certainty. People will be motivated when they see MBCC leaders taking on senior roles in the integrated organization.

In light of the MBCC acquisition and the fact that Sika is a strong growth company, how do you preserve and reinforce Sika’s strong corporate culture? 

Communication is key as well as being authentic ambassadors of our culture at all level of the organization. We have our leadership commitment framework to inspire employees to live the Sika Spirit every day. By anchoring our leadership behaviors across the organization we can inspire our people to embrace our culture and create a strong sense of belonging for all employees.