Corpay Co-Chief People Officer Mary McCorvey shares what she has learned about building company culture during her nearly 20 years at Corpay.
In this episode of Smarter Payments, Brennan Robison interviews Mary McCorvey about the crucial role of company culture in attracting and retaining talent. Mary shares insights from her 20-year tenure at Corpay, highlighting how culture shapes the company's success and employee satisfaction.
Key Points:
Definition of Company Culture:
Importance of Company Culture:
Challenges in Building Culture:
Measuring Culture:
Initiatives to Enhance Culture:
Scaling Culture in a Growing Company:
Integrating Acquired Companies:
Balancing Growth and Employee Satisfaction:
Future Improvements:
Conclusion:
The episode concludes with Mary highlighting the importance of leadership buy-in and consistent communication in fostering a strong company culture. She believes that continued efforts in transparency and employee engagement are key to Corpay's ongoing success.
Mary: Culture is one’s beliefs and how they show up the values in which they approach their job every day. And I think it's the very fiber of an individual.
Brennan: Attracting and retaining talent is getting more difficult for companies by the day. The key driver is company culture. A study by Deloitte found 88 percent of employees believe workplace culture is important to business success. On this episode of Smarter Payments, Corpay Chief People Officer Mary McCorvey explains why this is true and how companies can embrace culture as the X factor in building a productive and happy employee community. Here's our conversation.
Brennan: Hey, Mary. Thanks for joining us.
Mary: Thank you for having me.
Brennan: Certainly. You've been with Corpay for nearly 20 years. You've seen a lot of changes in that time. First if you would tell us what brought you to Corpay, it was then a new company called Fleetcor. What brought you here?
Mary: It was an opportunity. I had recently moved to Georgia from Alabama while my husband had served in United Air Force and wanted to relocate and saw the opportunity to join the organization as benefits administrator at that time. So I said why not?
Brennan: And it worked out. So in your current role as co-chief people officer, what does that role entail exactly?
Mary: Well, as a chief people officer, it is a role where I'm responsible for all of the HR strategic initiatives that supports majority of the group residents outside of our fleet vehicle payments business. It also entails ensuring that we are doing global engagement keeping our employees and what we have to offer as a business and ensuring for retention within our organization. The other thing is that we focus on I focus on leading the internal communication so we can keep our employees abreast of what we're doing.
Brennan: And part of that internal communication means managing the company culture.
Mary: Yes, big part of my role.
Brennan: And that's what we're here to talk about today. First, how do you define company culture? And how important is a positive company culture in attracting and retaining employees?
Mary: Company culture is extremely critical to any organization the focus on creating an atmosphere and a dynamic inside of an organization. Where your employees engage in what they're doing. I believe it allows them the opportunity to bring their best self. And that's what we are hoping for bringing your best self. But that you create products and initiatives for an organization to you to grow.
Brennan: What are the some of the challenges to building a positive company culture? And how do you overcome them?
Mary: There's lots of challenges right? We all come to work with different thoughts and plans. I don't see it so much as a challenge in that respect because diversity is important. When you have a diversity of thoughts in how you approach things, it always creates the opportunity to challenge one's thought process and how they approach things. Overcoming is more of setting the atmosphere inside of the organization where you can agree or you can disagree, but I think when you have disagreement, that allows the spark inside of the organization or try to do something outside the norm. When you approach things outside the norm you create something I think extraordinary in an organization. Culture is one’s beliefs and how they show up the values in which they approach their job every day and I think it's the very fiber of an individual. I don't see it necessarily as a challenge, but I do know that it takes everyone doing their part in order for it to be successful.
Brennan: Once you have set the tone and establish what the company culture is, how do you measure it ongoing? Are there a qualitative or quantitative ways to measure what is working and what isn't?
Mary: Yes. Absolutely. We do it in both ways. We do regular employee surveys we get an opportunity to have focus groups one-on-one interview stay interviews is what I love to do to see why individuals are staying inside of the organization when you do the quality with the employee surveys, that's the voices of the employees. The employees are giving you direct feedback on how you're doing and all the different things that encompass the engagement survey. When you're thinking about qualitative, you're looking at the metrics from a standpoint, how are the retention rates in the organization? Do we have a problem with absenteeism? Does our engagement score exhibit the culture that we want to create at the organization. I think when you're able to measure in that capacity and understand those numbers the kind of gives you a real big picture of what's going on and how you might be able to impact that in a positive way.
Brennan: So, Mary, what is a tangible effort or program that Corpay has employed to make employees feel like they do matter.
Mary: So, one of the great things that I'm super excited about is that we have introduced Gratitudes in our organization, and what is Gratitudes? It’s an opportunity for peer-to-peer, manager to employee, leader to employee, to say great job. It also allows us the opportunity to communicate across our global span of Corpay, not just regionalized. It’s something that is global that my partner over in the UK, Australia has done a fantastic job working on this project for me and or with me, and I I'd love to congratulate her. It also allows the leadership team to be in the driver's seat of recognizing tenure through it platform and also recognizing great work. I am so jazzed about it because the adoption rate and the leadership involvement has been more than I could have expected just launching it this past year. So, needless to say I'm super excited about it.
Brennan: Now we noted your long tenure at Corpay as it evolved from a regional fuel card company into a four-billion-dollar S&P 500 global payments leader. When you go from a small company where everybody knows each other to a global giant with offices all around the world, what are the challenges in scaling the ability to manage the culture and keep it consistent.
Mary: Well, that's a big question.
Brennan: It's a big company.
Mary: It's a big company (laugh). Let's take it in bite sizes. When you're thinking about starting off in a small organization where everyone knows everyone, I think you create those similar communities inside of a large organization as just a little more spread out. And how do we go about creating sustainability in that aspect? It's more around keeping the eye on the prize of making sure that our community and our culture stay together. It's also we have so many small communities inside of the different legs of Corpay that these communities help us thrive. Globally. I don't think you're ever going to touch every single employee every single day, but all the different Business Leaders and All the employees that make up Corpay help us sustain the continued growth inside of the organization
Brennan: And you mentioned growth and so let's talk about Corpay’s growth both organically, but also largely through acquisitions, meaning that the buying of established companies might have their own cultures. How do you go about integrating an acquired company into the larger company in terms of culture?
Mary: Oh, that's probably the probably the most exciting part I think about being in this role. I get an opportunity to see firsthand how other organizations do business with their culture. You take the part of what's worked so well for them, look at corporate and see how we align with that and then try to take the best of both worlds and create something that is going to be comprehensive sustainable and more of a positive direction integration. It's never 100% foolproof. You do get opportunities to see calendars along the way, but I think it makes us more of a better organization. You learn to reach acquisition how you something a lot differently a lot better. I think it's more of a also stay into the organizations that are being acquired. They had an identity before. Okay. We want them to take the best of that identity and bring that along to court by so we can have a bigger broader identity in the organization.
Brennan: When a company is looking at a potential acquisition target, when is the right time to get involved in terms of evaluating the targets company culture and whether it'll be a good fit or whether it will take some work how early should you get involved in that process?
Mary: In the very beginning. I think once we find out there's probably an opportunity for an acquisition or an organization, we're looking at it as, you know, diving in and just getting a sense of who they are as individuals to seeing. If it's going to be a good fit also, if there's going to be major differences in the very beginning, you cannot claim that during the due diligence period of time and then you can try to come up with a strategy at how you might be able to minimize the impact that possibly could be negative for the organization coming in, but more often than not we try to plan for that in the very beginning. So, once and if the deal actually goes through, we have a solid plan in place to make sure it's a positive integration.
Brennan: With Corpay being a publicly traded company, it's very much about the growing of shareholder value.
Mary: Correct.
Brennan: What are the keys to fostering a culture that does drive company growth and success while also making sure employee growth and happiness is a priority. How do you strike that balance?
Mary: I think it is fostering a culture that that also looks at the company growth and the employee happiness is aligned. I love how Dr. Bernie Brown says it's a clear kind for. It's ensuring that we have goals and values that are synced with individual goals that line up with the company goals. I think it's also allowing opportunities for each individual to have professional development. We don't want individuals to come in here and believe that they're just a body inside of a seat. We want them to know that they can grow and develop as individuals so that they can excel at everything that they do. And what does that do? It allows us to retain all of our top talent. It also allows our top talent to come witih great ideas on how to progress our products, ultimately showing up in our share price.
Brennan: So, Mary, how do you involve leadership in fostering a strong company culture?
Mary: The most important thing with leadership being involved with the company culture is that they’re bought in, right? They understand the impact of why it's important to be a front leaders in driving that culture employees like and enjoy, very much following a leader that is invested in the culture and the dynamic of what makes each individual important it also as a whole lot that we do have some amazing leadership inside of Corpay that as soon as the engagement survey is out, they are like so whatever our top three things. What do we need to work on? And I love the fact that they are very much invested in driving those initiatives throughout the organization and that says a lot. It's not an HR initiative. It's not an HR push, but it's a leadership, which they it's that, you know, I'm part of a team where my leader really does care.
Brennan: So kind of a not a tricky question. I hope not, but if you could do one thing to improve company culture, what would that be?
Mary: It is a tricky question. If I could do one thing and I had my magic wand it would be to continue enhancing transparency and communication. I believe when we're open honest, we give employees the opportunity to innovate their ideas that come and go the storyline of what corporate is and how that lines up with our company goals and mission. I think it creates a sense of inclusion for everybody. I believe, and I could be wrong with this, everybody wants to see their value, want to know that they can bring their best self. And I think that would be something I would make a priority and what are some mechanisms you might use to facilitate that transparency in give empowering employees. Share their thoughts about how things are going. I would continue to ask employees to show up and give us their voice on the engagement survey. We take that very seriously. It allows us to go behind the scenes and come up with strategies which each one of our group leaders on how they might want to progress their individual areas in which they lead frequent conversations or communications. It's more around making sure the employees know what's going on with the business if they have the Insider where we're thriving or striving for I think it gets them on the same page to want to make sure that they're successful so the organization can be successful and then also just making sure that they feel that they're heard right? I think the more opportunities of allowing employees to develop professionally or them to have a work-life balance for us to dinner what we do. Rounding engagement standpoint in our communities, it also says a lot about the organization as well and I think it all mixes up to make a perfect that may be a perfect as perfection is hard to get to you, but it definitely creates a solid and a positive opportunity for employees to feel like they are part of something great.
Brennan: Well, that is great. Mary McCorvey is co Chief People Officer at Corpay. Thanks, Mary.
Mary: Thank you very much.
Brennan: That's it for this episode of Smarter Payments. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow the show wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss an episode. Smarter Payments is a production of Corpay Incorporated, copyright 2024. I'm Brennan Robison. We'll see you next time.