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Carmen Muñoz Pérez: "We must treat our employees as customers".

By: Ruth Criado, María García and Bosco Schroeder

On November 8, Carmen Muñoz, director of human resources at Repsol, gave the session: "My experience managing people", to the students of Master's Degree at Personnel Management Service in Organizations. With a 25-year career at Repsol, she focused the conversation on the challenges she has had to face, as well as the current transformations of the company. All of this focused on the impact on Personnel Management Service. 

After dedicating a large part of his professional degree program to business strategy and development , two years ago he was entrusted with the responsibility of piloting area human resources. "New experiences push you to improve as a person and a professional," she said.

One of Carmen Muñoz's main challenges is the transformation of the energy sector. In 2020, Repsol announced its commitment to be carbon neutral by 2050, following the European directive. The business in this sense aspires to become a leader in the sector in decarbonization and digitalization issues, which is impacting the human capital strategy.

One of the main changes that the professional has integrated into the strategy of department HR is the importance of leveraging decision making on figures: "against perceptions: data" . The professional considers that the management of talent has to be anticipatory, and this is only achieved through the data analysis.

On the other hand, he explained the objectives that the human resources Departments should have in order to guarantee the development of talent and the good functioning of the organization. He advised to follow three critical elements:

  1. Seek to develop "client-focused" sensitivity. This means "treating employees as customers, meeting their needs and providing them with the right services". It is very important to always keep in mind that employee is the center of the organization.
  2. The priority is to be close to the employees and transmit a sense of proactivity, so that they understand the process and do not interpret it as an imposition. The department of people must be a facilitator between management and employee: "We are not the protagonists, we are the accompaniment of the businesses so that they make the transformation", assured the executive.
  3. The department must provide value and be a business function. Projects cannot be started without first ensuring that they will be profitable for the company and reliable for the employees. The core topic is to focus on transforming the organization as a whole, not just the department.

Finally, she encouraged us to be "engines for change". However, thanks to the example and bequest of professionals like her, every day we are getting closer to an agile, objective human resources function that adds value to the business.

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