For a company or organization to be successful, it needs a healthy team of employees and the ability to adapt to changing social and digital landscapes.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. knows this especially well, with the global IT leader working closely with its employees to get them settled into a post-pandemic work world while giving them an equal voice to drive the company’s innovation.

“You must give your team members an opportunity, not just to blindly follow whatever you’re saying. You want them to challenge it,” said Alan May (pictured), chief people officer of HPE. “That’s how you get people to think and to create and innovate and to change.”

May spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Dave Vellante and Lisa Martin at the recent HPE Discover, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed cultural workplace shifts, the increasingly popular hybrid work model, the “great resignation” and more. (* Disclosure below.)

Settling into a new normal — again

Like other companies, HPE introduced a hybrid work model, allowing workers to work from home for a few days a week. These introductions back to the office need to be purposeful — it’s not enough for staff to come into the office just for the sake of coming in, according to May.

“It means coming in to collaborate, to meet with customers, to celebrate, to innovate, to work with groups,” he explained. “We’re orchestrating those moments that matter for our team members, for a reason for them to be together.”

In an increasingly digital world, there are key skill sets HPE is searching for in its team. It’s not just math expertise and artificial intelligence knowledge the company is looking for; it’s the behavioral factors, including intellectual curiosity.

“They thrive to learn. They thrive to innovate. They don’t want to just do a job. They want to come in, and they want to create something big,” May said. “We look for people that have some resiliency. Have they, in their experience broadly in life, ever had to deal with stress and uncomfortable situations? Not because that’s our work environment, but because that’s the world. The world is an actively changing one.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for HPE Discover. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE