SBC August Newsletter
A story from Simone Bobolz, Recruiting Director for Davita Dialysis Division
Late last year, I met three incredible Recruiters at a learning forum we hosted in Seal Beach. We were training Recruiters to expand their consulting skills so that they were more proactive in helping their clients make the best talent decisions.
Our three guests from the Davita corporate office in Denver brought so much passion to the group discussion; I had to learn more about this team, their culture and their leader Simone Bobolz, who is the Recruiting Director for the Davita Dialysis Division. “We call ourselves a village,” says Simone. Imagine a 46,000 employee organization seeing themselves as a village with a mayor (the CEO) who lives the company’s values every day.
You may not know that Davita is a “Fortune Most Admired Company” now for eight years in a row. They enjoy impressive awards and recognition for their culture and innovation. They are committed to superior patient care and exemplifying their Core Values. Here is what Simone shared about this unique team and highly successful organization.
Sherry Benjamins: Tell me about your role at Davita.
Simone Bobolz: I’ve been at Davita for six and a half years. My current role is the Director of Recruiting, but it has changed drastically over this time. When I began here, talent acquisition was entirely different. We didn’t have an organized recruiting team so we focused on creating a recruiting model that would provide a clear operating structure, defined roles and consistency of process. Overtime, I was given the opportunity to lead this team. We oversee the entire talent acquisition department, which consists of about one hundred people including recruiters, talent branding and innovation.
Sherry: Your Recruiters shared such great stories about the Davita culture. What is it about this culture that captivates your employees?
Simone: Our culture is unique and intentional. We celebrate our history and honor traditions. We call ourselves a community, a village, and not just a company. Our CEO is the mayor of the village. Our culture’s structure is so un-traditional. Symbols play an important role in fostering our culture, for example, we use the Three Musketeers as a metaphor for collaboration and teamwork. You may hear the call, “One for all!” and “All for one!” from a team meeting. Our CEO wears his Musketeer uniform to corporate events. The culture spreads 100% from the top and is lived out at all levels. You can see that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. “Fun” is one of our key values. This turn around in organizational culture started twelve years ago. The top leaders collectively decided on our company values and “having fun” is not only a value it is part of the job.
Sherry: Tell us about initiatives that you’re tackling this year.
Simone: We’re deliberate about the work of developing our strategic plans. Lately, we’ve been working towards a three-year plan, charged with building and strengthening our team capability and capacity. It’s incredibly important to our growth and commitment to patient service.
Sherry: Well, everyone is trying to do more with less these days. Are you as well?
Simone: Our mantra is to focus on time and quality. These are two areas that we believe have the most impact on the business. We have some really smart people around here that crunch all the numbers and figure out the hard benefits of improvement initiatives. You could say we are exceptional in the measurement area.
Sherry: How many employees does Davita hire per year?
Simone: We hire around 14,000 employees per year, 10,000 of which are external.
Sherry: Can you tell me about the machine that can actually facilitate 14,000 hires a year?
Simone: We developed clear recruiting roles from scratch so we didn’t have a lot of bad habits to overcome. Because we could outline roles and responsibilities, we were able to build a recruiting machine from the ground up. It is always an evolution, but we embrace continuous improvement and trying new things. It is ok to make mistakes here, we learn from them. We have the machine working now, but we are always working on tune-ups. We are particularly proud of our new web site – it is the culmination of very creative and out of the box thinking that we had fun with and know it set a high standard for us.
Sherry: What were the challenges in starting a Recruiting function from scratch?
Simone: We tried a lot of things that didn’t work! We had lots of questions. Do we need to hire contractors? Outsource work? Hire entry level recruiters? Or do we invest in high level recruiters? We tried all these things in many combinations and it was pretty crazy for a while. We eventually arrived at the right formula through trial and error. What we found was because our culture was so strong, we created roles that could function as stepping stones for our recruiters coming in from either entry or mid-level positions.
Sherry: When I met your recruiters last year at our workshop I was incredibly impressed. They were more energetic, curious, and frankly more business astute than most.
Simone: I’d hope that everyone on the team would display qualities like that. Part of that has to do with the environment and culture that we operate in. It’s not just about me as a leader, but the whole environment and what is best for the team and the company. People know we believe in them.
Sherry: How do you help your recruiters to understand Davita’s business?
Simone: We fully emerge them into the business. We get them to attend meetings, and have them participate. We walk them through steps on how what we do changes the lives of our patients. We strive for an open relationship between what our business does and how recruiters facilitate that. For example, we host “voice of the village” calls where our Mayor begins by sharing current clinical results. It’s not just about shadowing people, but fully understanding their impact in the business and understanding our priorities.
Sherry: What are you most proud of?
Simone: Because of the intensity of the work environment, we truly build off each other. We work really hard and get a lot of the right things. We’ve won industry recognition (ERE and Taleo awards) and we love that reinforcement. We surprise ourselves too. We put investments into recruiters and recruiting leaders, not just to go out and do a job, but to share ideas, learn and be involved.
I am proud to be in an environment where trying new things is valued. Six months ago, we put together a history for our employees called the “Heritage of Recruiting.” New hires then will know where we’ve come from or how we have been recognized for doing what we do. This history shares valuable information. It surprises me the amount of things that we’ve tried; initiatives and contests, scorecards for recruiters, and assessments. We’ve developed sales training for our recruiters with a program and certification process. We did one thing called “Secret Shopping” where we pretended to be a potential client for a recruiter so we could get a good idea of how our recruiters were working with a candidate.
Sherry: So as a company culture, are you risk takers?
Simone: Yes. We celebrate failures if they happen. It’s absolutely safe to do that.
There are not many organizations that I know where it is safe to make mistakes. This is our village culture. The leaders support this, they aren’t above or embarrassed to share their own failures and what they learn from it.
Sherry: What do you suggest other talent acquisition leaders consider when building a team?
Simone: You have to roll with the punches. Try crazy things. It’d be unfortunate to try to do that in an environment that wouldn’t support you. You just have to keep trying. It’s talent acquisition, not rocket science. There’s a process to it. Think out of the box and look for likeminded people. You’ve got to have your innovators. These are the folks that drive the company to new and crazier ideas. You don’t need everyone to be like that, but at least some.
Our recruiters have technical knowledge and sales skills. We value having a sense of urgency because we work in this crazy environment where things move fast. You have to be a continuous learner. Not just show up, but be active in wanting to learn and drive for results. There’s got to be a passion for talent acquisition, recruiting and people. We measure everything. We can certainly identify where something isn’t working so if our candidates are not driven by improvement opportunities, then it may not be the right choice for them.
Sherry: What do you love about this business, Simone?
Simone: It is all about the culture. We have incredibly strong leadership and we make investments in our people. The team that I work with is fantastic. I’m engaged here because of the pace and how it’s encouraged me to try new things and make mistakes along the way. I love asking questions and for me, talent acquisition is about having an innate curiosity.
In closing this segment, think about how curiosity shows up in your team? Do you observe your employees creating quick versions of innovations with the expectation that later success will require some early failure? Let us know your trial and error methods and ways to encourage idea generation. Crazy can be fun too as we have seen within one company’s culture to succeed.