Being in HR can be very rewarding and very challenging. Meet Teresita Quinones, Talent Manager North Latin America Operations, Kimberly-Clark. She knows all about the challenges of HR. From having to deliver layoffs to helping keep her Puerto Rican office together in the wake of Hurricane Maria, she has seen it all.
Teresita Quinones, Talent Manager North Latin America Operations, Kimberly-Clark
How has being in HR forced you to grow?
“I was looking at who I am professionally today and who I was 15 years ago, and a lot of things have happened. When you work in HR, one of the challenges that we have is that it’s a continuous learning process because we are the hand of the business and work with leaders as strategic partners. And business changes very quickly, so we must maintain the same rhythm. We also must show the leaders and the organization that we understand the company’s changes and needs. We must identify the best organizational structure in order to identify, attract, and retain the best talent for the company.
“I have had different positions in HR, but I always remember that every experience prepares me for the next step in my HR career. Last year, I was presented with an opportunity as talent acquisition manager for Latin America. It was something new for me. The majority of my career was as a business partner, an organizational development professional, and as a talent manager. It was a shock to be offered this new opportunity, but then I decided to accept it because this experience will make me a better HR professional and help me better understand the needs of the business. Talent acquisition is very critical to the business. This opportunity was really, really good for my development, and I also was exposed to a lot of leaders, company strategies, and new ways of working that I haven’t seen before.”
You manage employees located in a number of countries. How do you develop your approach to bringing so many diverse backgrounds together?
“First of all, listen to them and their needs and how they work. Then think how you can best work with them and build together. I used to examine each one of my team members in order to understand their level of knowledge and understanding of the assigned responsibilities.
“One of the first things in order to build trust with the team is to listen to them, examine them, and open the lines of trust between us. That helps to identify when they need me to be with them, and when they can work alone on a project and show me the results. They can also tell me sometimes when they feel they are comfortable working alone.
“First, listen. Second, have empathy. Third, build trust among the team and among the team members. For me it was worth it to have a lot of one-on-one conversations with the employees and also to have team meetings. So, we work on different communication ideas and make sure we can work together in a team leader/team member relationship, as well as make sure we can work together as a whole team.
“It’s challenging but I also mentioned empathy. It’s important to understand the culture, the country where they are, their jokes, how they have conversations, and the specific words and the meaning of those words. Because even though we speak Spanish or Portuguese or English when we use a word, the meaning can be different in every country. It’s important to understand those differences so I can correctly use those words. Then they feel comfortable when they speak to me.
“But most of all, understand the person. Understand their needs. Understand that as a leader, you need to be a facilitator for their job and their development in the company. For me that’s really important, and that’s just the basic part of my role leading a team, being with them, facilitating their job and being part of their development process in the company.”
What drives you?
“First of all, it’s my family, my kids, and my husband. When I leave for work in the morning, or when I work from home or leave them at the school, I think I am doing something great for them also and for the company where I am working. That drives me. I am also a very passionate professional, so I believe in the development of people. We can start with a person in one position and give this person all the tools that we have in the company and the development processes and build a better professional. I know this is true because I have seen a lot of examples of that, and that drives me. It drives me that I am making a difference, that I work in a company that works in essentials for a better life, that every product that we sell here is making a difference in the lives of the consumers of the products, that drives me. Also that as a professional woman I have my place and I can balance this with all my roles.”
It’s got to be really hard to let someone go.
“It’s hard, for them and for me. It’s really hard in terms of how you feel—how you are going to communicate something that is going to change the life of the person that is in front of you. You need to do it in a very respectful way, to have empathy, and you need to do it with dignity.
“About a year ago, I was working on a confidential project that would impact employees. I was an HR manager at that time. It was the beginning of the month, and for me it was hard to do the layoff because a lot of people were going to be let go. In that situation, we had a list of the employees that would be affected. By human error someone from my team sent the list to the wrong person.
“My team member told me right away, but it was too late to recall the e-mail. I was like ‘OK, I need to think fast because this is confidential and affects like 10 people in the office.’ So, I called my Leader at that moment and let her know about the situation and the decision was made to tell everyone that was on that list that they would be out of the company by the end of the month. I needed to move fast and together with the leader of the site made the communications. We said we would give them the whole month so they could prepare, could get their documents together, and start looking for new job opportunities. At the beginning of the month there was this big mistake, and waiting for me was a hard moment at the end of the month. When I went to the country and gave them their final packages and they signed their documents, each one of them thanked me for being so open and giving them the opportunity to have a month of transition to their new reality. It was hard in the beginning, but it was really worth it. Everybody told me thank you for the transparency and thanks for the time; thanks for being so caring with us. This is the company that I know, and this is the company that really thinks about people. I learned that sometimes mistakes can be a major benefit.”
What is something from work that you will never forget?
“This is a story of hope for me, and it involves Hurricane Maria. At the time, I was acting HR manager. I was here in Puerto Rico working with the people. We came back very early after the hurricane, and we started working. Every day we were looking for our people. We had a list of our missing employees, and there was no power, water, or communications. We needed to make sure that our employees were OK. It was really hard, but we found ways to communicate with them and check in on them.
“We opened our office to our employees and their families; we had kids everywhere. We ordered food in the only places that were open—only Chinese food or pizza, that’s it. And we would have different teams of employees helping: one team trying to find employees, one team helping with the kids in the office, another was going to stores and making sure that they have the products that they need to offer to the consumers, and another team in the warehouse working moving boxes to move them to the clients.
“In the end, we worked inside the company making sure that our people were good. I must say that the corporation sent a lot of food and water and water-filtration system, and we gave all that food, all that water, to our employees and their extended families. It was very hard for us those weeks, but at the end, the feeling was like a big family here. I can’t express with words how it felt. All the employees were asking to be here, canceling vacations, saying they miss work.
“I mentioned a list of employees, and I need to say at the end, 1 week after the hurricane, we were still looking for one employee. The corporation sent us a security task force to look for that person. We didn’t find him; he wasn’t at his listed address. He lived in the center of the island, so he didn’t have communications at that time. A week after the hurricane, you know what happened? We received an order from a store from that employee! He had left his house, went to his client, and he started working, and then he found a signal and used it to transmit an order, and that’s how we knew that he was still OK. That’s the level of compromise that we have here and that we have across Latin America. Every one of our employees was OK, though some lost parts of their houses. We helped them in the end.”
Would you like to be profiled in a future Faces of HR and share your experiences, challenges, etc.? Or, do you know anyone else in HR you think has an interesting story to tell? Write us at HRDAeditors@blr.com, and include your name and contact information; be sure to put “Faces of HR” in the subject line.