Over the past few days, I dug into three standout Fortune-recognized companies—Hilton, Cisco, and PwC—to see how their HR practices reflect the theory from our professors lectures. What I found both confirms many textbook ideas and also inspires how I hope to lead.
At Hilton, employees consistently praise the company’s focus on recognition, internal mobility, and a caring culture. Their HR seems deeply invested in career pathing and employee development, which mirrors what we learned about retention drivers and motivation (e.g. Maslow’s growth needs, Herzberg’s motivators). Hilton’s recurring #1 ranking suggests they walk the talk by embedding recognition and feedback loops into daily routines and promoting from within. Great Place To Work®
Over at Cisco, flexibility and work-life balance are frequently mentioned to contribute to an employees overall engagement in their role. By offering remote options, generous leave, and a culture that supports employee autonomy, Cisco practices job enrichment and contextual performance support. These align with organizational behavior concepts about reducing burnout, increasing intrinsic motivation, and enhancing psychological safety. Not to mention our world post “pandemic” and how it has evolved to provide more flexibility for staff involved in operations/business or self-guided roles in a company.
PwC has recently climbed to its highest Fortune ranking (#20) by leaning into feedback systems, learning culture, and employee voice. Their HR functions appear to collect ongoing employee input (surveys, feedback forums), then adapt training, leadership development, and reward systems accordingly. This connects back to our lectures on performance management cycles and continuous improvement models. PwC
From this, I reflect on the kind of manager I want to be: supportive, growth-oriented, and feedback-driven. I see my role as enabling team members to stretch, recognize their contributions, and giving them autonomy grounded in trust. The HR functions—like training & development, performance feedback, reward systems, and culture-building—will be essential tools in my toolkit. Consequently in my current Supervisor Role at Sharp Healthcare we leaders partake in a daily High Reliability Organization huddle that entails going over essential information at our regionals including: ER patient holds, staffing, forecasting discharges for the day etc. This daily practice I would like to also establish in my teams as the Float Pool often is hard to communicate information to since they work variable shifts and some are benefited vs. per diem.
The biggest challenge I anticipate is balancing consistency with flexibility. Ensuring fairness in rewards, processes, and evaluations while adapting to individual needs and circumstances will test me. Also, translating HR strategy into day-to-day behavior (keeping HR from being abstract) is another challenge: it’s one thing to have great policies; it’s another for them to be executed in everyday interactions. Consequently as a new leader in a now union environment in healthcare, this comes with new practices and policies when it comes to investigatory meetings and corrective action. The cultural shift after election has been prominent, and my goal is to also pick up the pieces so to speak and resume our comradery as I feel the union completely divided our dynamic.
In sum, these companies show how HR is strategic—not just administrative—and that the best managers work in tandem with HR systems to cultivate engagement, growth, and sustained high performance.