This Thursday, October 24, we had the pleasure of welcoming Maria Elena Sanz Ibarra, currently director of people and communication at Bergé, an operator in multimodal logistics services. Elena is a mother of three children, mentor and passionate about nature. She has more than 30 years of experience in team management and a great dedication to making organizations inclusive and friendly environments. She has a degree in Psychology, a Master's Degree in Human Resources and a management course from IESE. Elena has professional experience in talent management and organizational development , leading teams in sectors as diverse as tourism, technology and energy.
Elena's hallmark is having been part of transformation processes in the large companies where she has worked. In particular, she has completed a large part of her professional degree program in Chile, where she had the opportunity to hold her first senior management position and develop large sustainability and social responsibility projects, facing important challenges that allowed her to understand the social role of companies. While in her position, she became aware of the influence of companies on the environment, so she committed herself to helping young women grow within organizations, and later focused on working to make organizations healthy environments for all.
Your Philosophy in People management :
1. Growth from Trust: the ability to build high performing teams is based on trust and active listening among all employees of the organization.
2. Proximity to the Business: Strong advocate of being close to the business. Believes that HR teams should support leaders and be facilitators of strategic change.
Governance and Accountability: the organizational structure should assign clear responsibilities by function and project, facilitating governance and well-being.
The Role of Communication as a Lever for Change
Elena highlights Internal Communications and externalInternal Communications as acore topic tool for organizational change. According to her, leaders must influence things to happen and must create environments where everyone can develop their capabilities to the fullest. We are left with a phrase of Elena's that helped us reflect on her purpose:
"Generating impact and creating inclusive organizations is not an easy task, but with commitment and empathy, great transformations can be achieved."
Among the lessons shared, we highlight the artisanal work that HR workers must carry out on a daily basis in order to provide value to the company. In many occasions, the Human Resources area tends to be perceived as a purely management assistant area , however, it goes far beyond that.
In the end, it is all about facilitating governance and bringing out the best in employees. In his experience, the key activities to achieve this consist of asking powerful questions, building trust and basing all actions on the principles and values of the business in order to achieve its objectives. In this way, we will not only achieve a good organizational design but we will also be able to enhance the professional degree program of those around us and thus be able to guarantee agents of change.
One of the factors that has helped him to succeed as a professional in both Spain and Chile has been his ability to adopt a learning attitude and to rely on his work teams.
Confidence and Adaptability
With her extensive experience, Elena emphasizes trust in order to foster the professional growth and development of her teams, encouraging a flexible and clear organizational development . This is supported by an effective and collaborative system of governance, establishing direct lines of communication with company directors and improving communication channels to establish real and tangible objectives.
At the end of the talk, Elena shared that one of the skills that has opened many doors and should be sought and developed, is adaptability. In a world as globalized and fast as the current one, it has become a core topic and differentiator for success in her degree program.
