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When Tracy Edkins joined Splunk four years ago, there were slightly more than 1,000 employees. Today, Splunk is hitting 5,000 employees and Tracy is right in the middle of this explosive growth as Chief Human Resource Officer.
At Splunk, values and culture are the two main drivers for all hiring decisions and it is what Tracy believes has made the company so successful. First, there is an emphasis on diversity inclusion, not just when it comes to gender and ethnicity but as it pertains to the whole person. Tracy asks, “how can we all bring all that we are, all of our different selves into the workplace and not feel like we have to have a life separate from who we are at work?’” The idea was put into practice with the Million Data Points platform, which celebrates all that Splunk employees have to offer in addition to gender and ethnicity.
From diversity inclusion to employee development, Tracy’s goal is to create trophy experiences for Splunk’s employees. “A trophy experience to me means that when you look back on your career, you were able to do something here that you are super proud of, you were able to try a new role, or you had a manager who leaned in and helped you to get into a new swim lane.”
On today’s episode, Chad and Tracy discuss what data points Splunk looks for in the hiring process, tips for how managers can better lead their teams, and how Tracy is creating trophy experiences for Splunk’s employees.
Quotes from Tracy:
“One of the terms that we use within Splunk is ‘do-ocracy’ and it really refers to this idea that we are a roll up your sleeves environment. If you see a problem, you don’t stand around the water cooler and worry about and kvetch about who is going to fix it, you roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.”
“When we think about diversity inclusion, we have evolved so much from thinking only about gender. Gender is important and it is a journey that we still continue to be on, but we’ve moved that to how are we doing in increasing our underrepresented minorities. But there is a whole vast landscape out there that really speaks to these million data points and our need to be more inclusive in general and that can include educational background, cultural experiences, where you are from, your personality type, etc. There is so much out there that we need to be able to address and million data points platform is wonderful at allowing our employees to bring that conversation into the workplace.”
“One of the things that we talk a lot about within Splunk is this idea that as a manager you have a responsibility to be developing your employees. It’s not just that you have a team of people that you now get to delegate to, it’s that you have to be thinking about ‘What is their career trajectory?’ ‘What do they need and what do they want?’ We do say that employee development is employee owned but manager supported and we take that manager supported piece seriously.”
