Meet Martha Vilchis – Employee Experience Manager at OXXO

What does Latin America, specifically Mexico, has to offer that is different in employee experience? This interview covers the discussion with the Employee Experience Country Manager at the largest chain of convenience stores in Latin America – OXXO.

Martha’s original answers were in Spanish, we hope that the passion for people and EX has not been lost in the translation.

Give our readers a brief introduction, who is Martha Vilchis?

I am a Human Resources professional with a Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Psychology, and I am certified as a life coach. I am passionate about people and how we can make every day an experience that helps them to feel more connected to the company for which they work.  As a professional in this area I have had the opportunity to work in a variety of industries: retail, food, advertising, financial services, and costumer service.

Five years ago I embarked on a new adventure in both my personal and work life and joined the OXXO company where I still work today.  I began my employment working in one of the regional offices, and two years ago I was invited to collaborate in the role of “Employee Experience and Operational Enablement for Stores,” which has been a challenging and fulfilling experience.

At OXXO something we are working on is the idea that the workplace experience is the responsibility of everyone, not just of one person or team.

Martha Vilchis, Employee Experience HR Country Manager at OXXO

OXXO has over 160.000 employees. How is employee experience managed for such a large workforce?

At OXXO something we are working on is the idea that the workplace experience is the responsibility of everyone, not just of one person or team. Today the we have a centralized management structure, and one of the main objectives is to implement strategies that will help us to listen to our employees, understand what motivates them, identify their main concerns, and then define the path that leads us to a mutually beneficial outcome. 

The Human Resources teams throughout the different regions work to follow this process to provide clear feedback from our partners, and through these centers of expertise, we work to utilize what we have learned from them. It is clear that the areas of the organization which have embraced this work have made the daily work experience more enriching for everyone. We have made a lot of progress through the use of multidisciplinary teams in building an environment that makes every project that reaches our store associates more enriching.

How do country EX/HR managers coordinate across the continent? Do you have a mutual EX goal?

We use NPS as a goal or baseline; however, as an organization we are committed to making the experience of associates a reality, and for this reason we are not exclusively focused on improving the NPS.  In areas like operations, the indicator helps all of us to have a clear message and to stay on task. 

As we measure our retention and onboarding stages, we share these results so that each area can understand our partner feedback and thus be included in the planning.  Quarterly reviews are made of the different initiatives being developed to assess the impacts they are having on our people.

4. What’s the biggest challenge in improving experience for such a large number of employees?

The biggest challenge we have is to remain agile in the design of our initiatives that enrich the experience of our people in-store.  

Being such a large organization, we continually strive to conduct pilot tests so that we can quickly adjust and make implementations that we consider to be in the best interests of our people. It requires a lot of discipline, collaboration and communication between regions and expertise teams to keep the employee’s voice present. Planning and execution also become a fundamental part of being successful in improving experiences.

What makes your job easier?

I would definitely say that the first thing that makes my job easier is having a team that is passionate, trustworthy and focused on people. Having a team with a great capacity to collaborate with others is the best resource one can count on when working in an area that requires both experience and the ability to design the solutions that improve the operations of our stores.

My coworkers are resilient and hardworking,  and without them my work would be no easy task. We certainly have the technological tools that help us listen to the customer, but there is still work to do in terms of technology and tools that will give us a faster and more agile communication with each of the more than 160,000 store associates.

What’s the next step for EX?

As a next step we seek to work on the correlation between the NPS client indicators and the NPS employee, but we remain aware that the elements of the customer experience are the ones we must continue to improve.  Managing the relationship between costumer and employee satisfaction is a delicate and complex task. We are still at an early stage in our work to improve this area.  

While we already have several dashboards that tell us how the experience is progressing, we must continue to refine how the different initiatives progress and to what extent the indicators benefit both the client and the employee.

Your message to our readers?

HR skills are a matter of consistency, collaboration and commitment to each individual person, and these elements must be at the center in order to build any initiative or solution.

Martha vilchis

We must build solutions with the customer in mind, seeking to be flexible in delivering value so that we can successfully implement the necessary changes.

The commitment at all levels of the organization and the link with customer analytics is what will allow us to leverage not only the value to the person but also the value to the business.

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