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The finalists for WashingtonExec’s Chief Officer Awards were announced April 15, and we’ll be highlighting some of them until the event takes place virtually May 27.
Next is Chief Human Resources Officer Award finalist Tammy Kness, who’s vice president of human resources and communications at GDIT. Here, she talks key achievements, primary focus areas going forward, career turning points and more.
What key achievements did you have in 2019/2020?
We work hard every day to make GDIT a place where all employees can thrive. The uniqueness of each member of the GDIT community, and the diverse perspectives and experiences they bring, are invaluable to our culture, our customers and our business.
I’m particularly proud of our continued efforts to embrace early career talent. While the disruption brought on by the pandemic required us to quickly pivot to an all-virtual internship program last year, our commitment to attract the best and brightest and offer a meaningful experience did not waver. As many companies halted their programs, we moved forward, hosting 115 interns last summer.
All of GDIT leaned in to ensure the virtual experience was engaging and rewarding and that our interns would be excited to choose GDIT post-graduation. Our program encompassed challenging work assignments with business impact, opportunities for professional development and mentorship, and occasions for interns to network with leaders across the company and engage virtually through various social events and team building activities. Fully 100% of our 2020 interns shared they would recommend GDIT to their friends.
This summer, we are building on our success to offer an even greater virtual experience, and we’re excited to welcome 130 interns to our 2021 experience next month.
What was a turning point or inflection point in your career?
I began my career as a software engineer and progressed into program management, P&L leadership, and operations. In 2018, I had the privilege of taking on the chief HR officer role at GDIT. With over 15 years with the company at that time, pivoting to HR from an operations role was most certainly an inflection point.
As the HR leader, I have the opportunity to partner with the business as we look to evolve and strengthen our culture with programs that empower our employees to thrive, help position our customers to fulfill critical missions and enable the business to succeed. Every day, I draw on my operational background and business insights and lean on my highly talented team of HR professionals to work together to make a difference for our people and our business.
It has been a challenging and incredibly rewarding journey, and I am excited for the future of GDIT and all we will accomplish in the years ahead.
What are you most proud of having been a part of in your current organization?
I am immensely proud of the resilience, agility and commitment of our GDIT employees through this exceptionally challenging year. At the start of the pandemic, we more than doubled the number of employees working remotely practically overnight, and thousands more continued to go into customer sites and GDIT offices to deliver mission-critical services and keep our business moving forward.
Our leaders worked tirelessly to keep their teams engaged, connected, productive and supported. Meanwhile, everyone had to deal with their own COVID realities away from work.
I learned you never know how flexible the members of an organization can be until they have to be. I am impressed by the initiative and innovation our teams demonstrate on a daily basis, and I am inspired by the amazing stories I hear every day of how our teams step up to support our customers and each other.
What are your primary focus areas going forward, and why are they so important to the future of the nation?
Developing, enabling and empowering our skilled workforce, especially around core technologies like cyber, artificial intelligence, cloud and enterprise IT, is a priority for GDIT and a national imperative. By focusing on skill development and continuous learning, we are able to innovate and deliver for our customers, supporting the continuity of their missions.
At GDIT, we actively promote and support career development and internal mobility. We’ve launched a variety of technical learning and certification programs to prepare our workforce for the future needs of our customers. We’ve introduced toolkits, communications campaigns and resources to help our employees own their careers. Our internal mobility teams partner with employees across the company to help them explore opportunities and embrace their next challenge.
Underlying all of our organizational priorities is our sustained commitment to diversity and inclusion. D&I is fully integrated into how our leaders lead, how we build high-performing teams and how we engage in our communities through philanthropy and volunteerism.
We offer our employees opportunities to connect in meaningful ways. For example, our nine employee resource groups sponsor programming allowing employees to explore the experiences of diverse colleagues and enable them to be active allies. Our ERGs also positively impact our business results by supporting recruitment, retention and professional growth. A diverse, engaged, skilled workforce is foundational for our nation’s continued growth and prosperity.
How do you help shape the next generation of government/industry leaders?
When I think of leadership, there are certain attributes that are essential to guide the next generation of our workforce. We’ve learned in the last year that flexibility — particularly in terms of how we approach the way our teams work and how we balance the needs of our employees with the requirements of our customers and our business — is key.
As we look to the future, we are adjusting our approaches and policies to enable flexibility and we are empowering leaders to be thoughtful and open-minded in collaborating with their teams to look differently at how they work. From hybrid schedules to meeting etiquette to a more relaxed dress code, if it allows our people to be their best, it’s all on the table for consideration.
Leaders must also adapt to ensure inclusivity, lead with empathy and compassion and trust their people. Our teams are resilient, collaborative and creative problem-solvers, more capable of moving quickly and doing things differently than we could have imagined and we are focused on sustaining this momentum moving forward.
This is an exciting time to be a leader — in government and industry. We have an opportunity to reimagine how we work, enhance the employee experience, advance inclusivity and collaborate with customers in creative new ways to address our nation’s most pressing challenges.
Working together, government and industry leaders are forging a path for the next generation of leaders to succeed. It’s an honor to be a part of the journey.