Leading Through Change: Hannah Zaunmüller on the Role of HR at SIX

A key milestone was the transformation of HR to best support our company's growth strategy. We called it making HR fit for future growth. To achieve this, we established a Global People Relations Center, consolidated all administrative activities, and implemented a new, more efficient, and effective operating model.

HR plays a critical role in achieving our strategic business goals. Our strategy consists of three main pillars that address the needs of SIX: culture, leadership and transformation. First and foremost, we foster the right culture where people want to work, share our values and are inspired to perform. Secondly, we invest a lot of time and effort in leadership and development, which enables our employees to continuously develop new skills and build strong people leadership capabilities. Finally, SIX is constantly changing and our HR functions support the human element of large and small transformations.  

A great example of our work on culture is our Scale Up Map initiative, where every employee at SIX has the opportunity to participate in a gamified workshop to really understand our strategy and how they contribute. These workshops take place around the world in cross-functional groups, reflecting one of our core values – collaboration. Another successful program called Leaders4Leaders is aimed at people leaders and supports them in their very important role of leading and motivating global teams. This is a peer coaching program where leaders can discuss challenges and best practices with other leaders in small groups. We have found that they really benefit from this interaction with others and the opportunity to discuss real life topics such as leading diverse teams or supporting employee wellbeing. On a day-to-day basis our experienced HR Business Partners provide strategic advice to business leaders, for example on how to develop a strong pipeline of internal talent for future leadership positions, how to build a highly effective leadership team or how to plan for changes in roles and responsibilities as a result of technological advances such as AI. 

HR plays a crucial role in this context. A key pillar of our sustainability strategy is to be an attractive employer. This means attracting and retaining talent, investing in continuous development, creating an environment of well-being, and fostering diversity and inclusion. One example is our goal to have 25% of our management positions filled by women - a challenging but achievable goal in the financial industry.

At SIX, we have four core values: Collaboratioin, Trust, Ownership und Customer Focus. These are essential and must be lived throughout the organization. Our CEO, Jos Dijsselhof, plays an important role in shaping this culture, and we attach great importance to our managers acting as role models. Jos and myself are also part of what we call SIX Spirit, a company-wide network of people who identify cultural needs and drive initiatives to enable our strategy and remain a great place to work. 

Employer branding is a key element in attracting talent. We are present at technology conferences, promote women in technology and work closely with universities. Our recruiting strategy has also changed significantly - we proactively approach potential candidates through active sourcing.

Thanks to technology, we can automate processes and increase efficiency. We have recently launched our HR chatbot “Harmony” to help our employees with instant support for their HR queries, and there is more to come. I am excited about the possibilities that AI brings to us. 

An agile mindset is essential in all areas of HR, as is the ability to work with data. Change management and effective communication are also very important, as is lifelong learning.