When Jill Wrobel joined Brunswick Corp. as vice president, enterprise human resources and transformation leader in 2020, the native of the Chicago suburbs had earned an undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois; spent eight years in a variety of human resources roles with Walgreens Boots Alliance; and served in several roles with Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
In December 2021, Brunswick promoted Wrobel to executive vice president and chief human resources officer. She and her husband, Jeff, became Freedom Boat Club members, and share the pastime with their two sons, John, 12, and Jaxson, 8, and the family’s 14-year-old wheaten terrier. They spend much of their off-time in youth sports programs, while Wrobel has immersed herself in the diverse culture at Brunswick and its subsidiaries, including Mercury Marine, Boston Whaler, Sea Ray and Heyday.
Brunswick chief executive officer David Foulkes has made a priority of having a diverse mix of leaders throughout the Brunswick family of companies, and Wrobel is making sure the workforce continues to have a positive experience. Soundings Trade Only caught up with her to discuss a variety of subjects.
Women are well-represented at the executive level at Brunswick Corp. Did that attract you?
We have great female representation. Two out of our four business presidents are women, which is Brenna [Preisser] and Aine [Denari], and our functional leaders that are both commercial in nature as our chief technology officer Alex [Cattelan] or our chief marketing officer with Lauren Beckstedt, and myself in the H.R. role. There is a big passion at Brunswick to build a high-performance team and to do it in a way where it’s inclusive and gives opportunities to all sorts of talent. Dave [Foulkes] is deeply committed to women in leadership and diversity in leadership.
What are some other ways Brunswick promotes diversity in the company?
We have executives sponsor employee resource groups. For example, Dave sponsors the Brunswick Black Professionals Network. He partners well with them for ideas that are generated for specific ways to continue to attract, retain, develop and make our Black employees feel included. He talks about the initiatives that we’re doing, and it really is a call to action for others to get involved by modeling that himself, by saying, “I’m not only going to ask you to do it because I think it’s the right thing. I’m going to show up and really be an advocate for these important initiatives and make decisions that align with those values that are visible for others to see.”
It seems that Brunswick’s culture acknowledges ability and achievement.
I mentioned Aine Denari before. She’s a business president and a highly accomplished engineer who has an incredible technical skill set. She also has a business consultant skill set. She grew up in Ireland, and yes, she’s a woman in leadership, and we are proud to profile and celebrate her. I think it’s great for people of all types to see a leader. It’s a great illustration of the concept, “If you can see it, you can be it.”
Another great example is Perissa Bailey, our head of electrification for Mercury. She joined us about a year ago and came from a long career in automotive. In fact, she and David share a lot of stories about growing up at Ford. She was active in electrification there, both the design and the strategy. She’s been a phenomenal add to the team.
Brunswick has employees all over the world. What are you doing to acknowledge the different international cultures?
In May, we launched a new program that was the idea of a few of our people. It’s called United People of Brunswick. A couple times a year, we want to highlight a culture and a country with a program, and expose some experiences that highlight traditions or food or unique celebrations. For example, if we focused on the country of Brazil, we might have a Brazilian meal in the Mercury cafeteria in Fond du Lac, Wis. What we often find is there are so many similarities between different nationalities and international cultures regardless of where you work that it brings our people closer together to celebrate something that feels unique but also makes it that you can feel seen and heard.
What is the breakdown of employees within the Brunswick family? Where are the most people working?
We have 300 to 400 in Illinois and about 4,000 to 5,000 at Mercury’s headquarters in Fond du Lac, Wis. We just published a report of the economic benefit that Mercury brings to the local community. I would estimate that 60% of our workforce is in the U.S., and we have a sizable presence in Florida with Boston Whaler and Sea Ray, and we have Freedom Boat Club and Navico Group.
How does Brunswick track its success with its diversity initiatives?
We did a couple things recently, including starting with a new employee opinion survey vendor, Glint. What I like about them is they take a people-science approach to the questions that are asked, down to the specific worker, and then allow you to benchmark yourself against other companies in the manufacturing sector.
For example, for companies of a similar size, people like to feel included and like a sense of belonging, regardless of whatever industry or size company that they work in. What the Glint team has done is partnered with us based on the answers to questions that are intentionally designed to get at the heart of inclusion and belonging.
If there is a question or an area that maybe a specific team didn’t score very well on, Glint will provide proven strategies in terms of video vignettes or training courses or articles to read or questions to ask or strategies to think through that could make a difference in that area. So it also helps me help my people and my leaders think about how they can create a more inclusive work experience.
Diversity is a little easier to measure because it might just be: Are you diverse in terms of gender? Diverse in terms of race? Or diverse on other criteria? But inclusion and belonging is a bit more nuanced, but we did think about that and set out with our engagement partner to say, you know, “How might we answer this question?”
Some employees have been with the company approaching 50 years. How do you build retention?
We’ve always had values, but we refreshed it with our new Brunswick brand. We have a new logo and new tagline. We did that in concert with using language that focused on values, and thought through questions that could get at the heart of how people behave when they work. It gives me a bit of a heat map of how things are going. We’ve won many awards as a best place to work, and we’ve placed well in the Glint benchmark top 25%.
Are there examples of multiple generations of the same family working, say, at Mercury, for example?
There are, and we’re proud of that, particularly in the Fond du Lac community. There are either multigenerations or extended families that work together and feel very proud of that brand, but also others. I don’t have at my fingertips exactly how many families or something like that, but I do know the workforce feels very proud of their time at the company, and they also articulate their personal and family connections to the brands.
How are you attracting new employees?
We certainly continue with the tried-and-true kind of basics on a community level. For some of our markets, like Fond du Lac, for example, being a real member of the community and doing it in a way where we can rely on our brand reputation as an employer of choice always helps us attract new people of all types. That could be things like career fairs and open houses to partnering with local media about job opportunities, chamber of commerce events, getting into the school systems. I love when our people are out in community colleges, high schools or even grade schools talking about our brands.
I think on a broader level, you know, the world has moved digital, and it’s important for us to get clear on how our brand shows up in places like LinkedIn.
Are you focusing on other digital platforms and areas?
Handshake is an online platform similar to LinkedIn, but it’s focused on kind of college students and diverse, so it’s great for new graduates and new entries. We find some of our new-graduate talent and our new-diverse-graduate talent through that kind of digital medium.
Depending upon the type of role that we’re looking for, we’re also intentional about partnering with associations, colleges and trade groups. Some examples are recruiting at historically black colleges and universities. Another partner example is the Society of Women Engineers, or SWE. The University of Wisconsin-Madison SWE chapter partnered with the Mercury Group on boat design, and they designed a boat that those who are disabled or differently abled could experience boating in a way that accommodated their disability. They presented their ideas at the national SWE conference and placed third. That energized and excited a new, diverse set of engineers.
What are some other ways you’re reaching out to potential job candidates?
When we went to the Consumer Electronics Show, we brought our talent acquisition team. We had the opportunity to engage with a variety of not only students who came through, but also just those that might be interested in learning more about our innovations.
And we did convert some people who we met there. They were interested in some job opportunities and applied and have since joined our organization. A person attending CES might say, “You know, I never thought about innovation or technology or solving complex business problems within the context of marine. That wouldn’t have shown up on my radar.”
Does Brunswick encourage employees to apply for opportunities that might be outside their skill set?
We provide opportunities for new and existing employees to navigate their careers. It’s been fun to watch internal employees choose to take opportunities provided to them through their Brunswick experience, whether that’s maybe taking a step and trying a new area focus by moving from one area of the business to the other. It creates a culture that encourages learning, so you could start by working on engines, and then you might be able to work on boats.
When Mercury president Chris Drees moved on, John Buelow was ready to step in. Does Brunswick have a succession plan for executive roles?
I think it plays nicely into this idea of providing people opportunities to continue to grow and continue, you know, continue to grow and develop, enroll for wherever their passions might take them. It’s an opportunity for us not to lose any steam, that we want people to continue to grow in their careers and, yes, succession planning. Dave is very committed to it, as am I. Chris was a great president of Mercury, and John is doing a phenomenal job.
Tell us about your boating background.
I am new to boating since I joined Brunswick. My family became Freedom Boat Club members, and the closest marinas for us are in Chicago. We go to a church in the city, and then we go to the Streeterville Freedom Boat Club location on the Chicago River. Last summer, we also made our way up to Maine and enjoyed some time on Sebago Lake. We stayed at Migis Lodge on the lake and had a fantastic couple of days with the boys there. They were very helpful with teaching the kids to water ski. We also took the boys to San Diego and took a boat out there to explore the coast of California.
Has Freedom Boat Club made it easier for a newcomer like you to get into boating?
I think Freedom Boat Club is fantastic, and we’ve really enjoyed a nice introduction to the water through that, not having prior experience. I can articulate not growing up on the water and being new to boating, and understand some of the customer pain points or maybe the barriers to entry that are solved with Freedom Boat Club.
Does Brunswick use Freedom Boat Club as a way to acknowledge achievements or offer incentives to employees?
We do have an employee discount program to join a Freedom Boat Club. Its structure is a reduced one-time entry fee into the club. There’s a number of employees who have joined the club and really value the membership in general.
Do you see similarities between your work at Walgreens and Brunswick?
I feel like the spirit of the Brunswick role harnesses the best of what I had at Walgreens also, which was forming a great relationship with the leadership team, turning visions into reality, finding a way to do things that have never been done before and, at the end of the day, feeling inspired by the mission to delight customers, leveraging the expertise of a team to come up with better solutions. That is for those that we serve internally, which are employees, but also externally, our customers and the communities in which we have the privilege to work.
How about differences?
I think retail healthcare at a Fortune 20 company that had 500,000 employees does feel different than manufacturing and technology at a $7 billion organization with 19,000 people.
Most of my experience at Walgreens was on what I would call special projects. We were looking for a bit of a SWAT team to come in, work with others to figure out a business initiative that we’ve never done before, whether that was buying a company or selling a company or partnering with an external entity, and assembling a high-performance team, a coming together to accomplish something that felt very innovative, maybe even inspirational.
What are your biggest challenges looking ahead?
My biggest opportunity is making sure that we sustain the initiatives that we have, by retaining focus and allowing leaders to lead us at an individual level. It feels important and privileged to be at this company at this time, and doing everything possible to help our people with whatever they’d like to do next.
This article was originally published in the June 2023 issue.
