Pax8 Culture Unveiled: A Transformational Journey for HR Excellence

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The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11am ET / 8am PT. On this week's call, i4cp's Marshall Bergmann, VP of Advisory Services, and Tom Stone, Senior Research Analyst, facilitated a conversation with special guests Lori Frasier, Chief People Officer, and Janie Lee, Senior Manager of Strategy Initiatives, at Pax8. Here are some highlights from the call:

Pax8 is a leading cloud commerce marketplace to buy, sell, and manage cloud solutions. In around ten years, they have grown from a startup to having 22,500 employees, located all around the world.
The HR team at Pax8 is structured into Regional COEs for talent acquisition and employee experience (HRBPs), and Global COEs for talent development, total rewards, and social impact (DEIB). These are supported by foundational global functions for people systems, analytics, and compliance.
Frasier and Lee shared details of the culture renovation journey that they have been leading at Pax8. They started by noting that their culture was already relatively healthy, so a key element of the renovation was to not mess up what was already good about it.
They followed the 18-step culture renovation process that was developed in i4cp's Culture Renovation research, and further detailed in the book by i4cp CEO Kevin Oakes, Culture Renovation: 18 Leadership Actions to Build an Unshakeable Company. These 18 steps are grouped into three stages: Plan, Build, and Maintain. (See slides and recording above for details.)
The first step of the process is to develop and deploy a comprehensive listening strategy. Pax8 did this under the banner "Your Voice, Our Future," starting in December, 2022. Their initial survey in February 2023 saw an employee engagement score of 81%, with a participation rate of 85%. They also did focus groups and executive interviews (conducted in partnership with i4cp). Throughout 2023 they proceeded to report out their initial results, perform a double-click survey in June, 2023 dig deeper in certain areas, and then report out those results along with analysis and action planning for managers.
Some of the key elements of Pax8's culture renovation that they targeted included fortify foundations, identify any vulnerabilities, value the heritage, adapt and evolve to modern needs, update with market trends, and expand their footprint.
Some tangible outputs they have created so far have included created the Pax8 behaviors model, launched LinkedIn Learning, launched global stock options, raised $33,000 by Pax8ers for good causes, removed quarterly reviews and replaced with career conversations, established new 1:1s that put employees in driving seat of careers, launched adaptive growth training, and established compensation in Pave.
Frasier and Lee noted several of their key culture renovation wins thus far as being multi-tiered listening/feedback, excellent leadership involvement/commitment, new organizational insights and focus, through action planning and follow-up, and high participation and passion.
Where they are now on this culture renovation journey is to refocus and rebrand the effort by going slow to go fast, making the listening strategy a core business practice, and updating the program's branding. There are also key education and involvement aspects they are working on, such as positioning the survey as holistic listening followed by action, and increasing executive leadership's involvement.

Links to resources shared on the call:

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