Member interview: Lucinda Warren, Chief People and Culture Officer, Vitaco Health Group
Wellbeing is central to Vitaco Health Group, the company behind well-known nutrition and supplement brands Musashi, Aussie Bodies, Nutra-Life, and Healtheries.
So much so, Vitaco’s vision of empowering healthier lives has extended to a 6 Ways to Wellbeing program for its employees.
Here we interview Growth Faculty Pass member and Vitaco’s Chief People and Culture Officer Lucinda Warren about the company’s wellbeing program, its goals, and which Growth Faculty event Lucinda has found most valuable for her professional development.
Free Download: How to Create a Culture of Accountability in 2023
GF: What are the aims of Vitaco Health in 2023?
Lucinda: In 2023 Vitaco aims to leverage the momentum we have experienced across Australia and New Zealand to further expand our international footprint.
Our brands, particularly Musashi, Healtheries and Nutra-Life, continue to accelerate domestically, and we’ve begun the next wave of investment in our manufacturing capability and capacity to support this growth.
GF: What is most important for you this year as Chief People and Culture Officer?
Lucinda: There’s been so much change over the last few years in how we work, where we work, and what we work on.
So, I see 2023 as the opportunity to inspire our people on how these experiences enable them to achieve both a growing, successful business and fulfilling personal development, faster than ever before.
It really is taking that sense of excitement, optimism, and purpose, and replicating it throughout our business.
GF: What are a few things Vitaco does to ensure its people thrive at work?
Lucinda: We take our Vision and Values very seriously and they inform our leadership practice and business decisions. Vitaco’s Vision is to Empower Healthier Lives. This Vision is a contributing reason why people join Vitaco and stay with Vitaco.
We have a comprehensive wellbeing program called our “Six Ways to Wellbeing”.
The Five Ways of Wellbeing are well researched as key elements to support mental health :
· Keep Learning - Encourage new experiences, see opportunities, surprise yourself.
· Be Active - Do what you can, enjoy what you do, move your mood.
· Take Notice - Remember the simple things that give you joy.
· Give - your time, your words, your presence.
· and Connect - Talk and Listen, be there, feel connected.
At Vitaco, we have added:
· Nourish - Fuel to be at your best today and all your tomorrows.
as this reflects the DNA of our organisation.
Our program has a diverse range of initiatives - some arranged by Vitaco, and others led by team members sharing their individual talents, diverse backgrounds and personal experiences.
In addition, Vitaco headquarters are in ANZ. This means we retain agility and flexibility to change and adapt our business practises for the benefit of the company, our culture, and our people. The combination of proximity and transparency enables all our team members to recognise their direct contribution to the success of our business.
GF: What skills do you think are most important in business leaders right now?
Lucinda: Agility, communication, and decision-making are my top picks for 2023.
The list of vital skills must also include the ability to enhance and enable modern collaboration techniques, as well as consistent (cultural) identification of opportunities to optimise, change and achieve faster time to goals.
GF: And what are some of the challenges for the leadership team at Vitaco?
Lucinda: Supply chain assurance, speed to innovation, and retaining skills amid the war for talent. From an international perspective, distance from the new markets.
GF: How much emphasis does Vitaco put on staff learning and development?
Lucinda: Development of our people at all levels of the organisation is a strategic priority. Not only does it support retention of our talent, it is building our future capability. Based on these business imperatives, and engagement surveys with our people, we are increasing our focus on personal development and training.
GF: What 3 things do you most like about Growth Faculty as a provider of leadership development?
Lucinda:
· Flexibility of access – business cycles and priorities are not always conducive to our leaders being available for live sessions. Access to recordings is really important to ensure all our leaders’ appetites for learning can be accommodated.
· Range of topics – between events and on-demand resources, there are provocative and supportive sessions and materials that are highly relevant for leaders.
· Support resources, summaries and templates that enable team members to engage with each other on topics.
GF: How do you get the most out of your Growth Faculty Pass?
Lucinda: Regular team discussions at Executive and Business leadership levels – about what we’ve seen, what’s coming up, and opportunities to share insights with our up-and-coming talent.
GF: Which event has been most helpful to you so far?
Lucinda: Liz Wiseman’s masterclass on Impact Players - identifying them, hiring them, leading them, developing contributors into impact players, and ensuring we are Multiplier Leaders, not Accidental Diminishers.
The importance of Impact Players and how they respond to messy problems, unclear roles, unforeseen obstacles, and unrelenting demands really resonated with me – it’s absolutely how I describe the world of People & Culture teams.
What a jam-packed session – truly a Masterclass.
GF: Why is Growth Faculty Pass a good investment for the Vitaco leadership team?
Lucinda: The range of topics and material, the formats, flexibility of access, tools and templates really makes sense in our geographically spread, time-pressured environment. And it allows our leaders to customise their learning priorities in an efficient, and budget-friendly manner.
GF: What are some key goals for you personally in 2023?
Lucinda: Vitaco are doing more and more work to increase our sustainability performance.
Leadership and its influence on making change for the health of the planet is a relatively new dimension for me, so I’ll be dipping into some learning material on this subject in the year ahead.
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Images supplied by Lucinda Warren and Vitaco
