Walgreens' HR chief says leaders need to 'take the wall down' and be open about themselves at work

• Holly May is global chief human resources officer at Walgreens Boots Alliance.
• May told Insider that being open about the challenges you're facing can make you a better leader.

Holly May believes opening up about who you are and the challenges you're facing outside the office can make you a better leader.

She told Insider about how she "really had to open up and be honest" about what she was going through when her son was diagnosed with autism at 18 months — all while she was adjusting to a new job and a new city.

"I didn't have a doctor. I didn't know how to get into a network of specialists," she said. "I had to really open up and be honest about what I was going through for the first time. And it unlocked this very new element of my leadership where I realized by, you know, being honest and authentic about who I was, my team members did the same."

May has been executive vice president and global chief human resources officer at Walgreens Boots Alliance since 2021 following roles at Abercrombie & Fitch, Starbucks, and Visa. At Walgreens, she said she's not only concerned about employees' well-being, but also that of their families and the communities the company serves. (The company has 325,000 workers globally; 240,000 are in the US.)

That's why Walgreens has expanded its partnership with Mental Health America with a youth initiative to create a back-to-school toolkit with resources that address a range of mental health challenges adolescents and youths face, including social media addiction and cyberbullying. It will be shared with more than 1,000 schools later this summer.

"We hear from a lot of the parents that we have within our workplace: 'What are the steps you take?' 'What are the warning signs?' 'How do you get in there and address the issue in the right way?' 'How are teachers looking out for this at school?' 'When you think about body-image issues, you're thinking about all the things that come from that?' 'What are the resources?' 'Who do you reach out to if something's going on?'" May said.

She said it's important to connect all parts of someone's life. "It doesn't matter what you say, as a leader, if you want your team to be honest with you or tell you about how they would perform at their best, they're not going to do so unless you take the wall down and you're open about yourself," she said.

"Whatever is happening in my day — if I arrived late because my son just spilled his breakfast down the front of my shirt — I'm honest about that. And I really believe that builds trust in a team. And when you have that trust built, you can really enable your people to perform at their best."

Insider recently asked May about her work in HR and meeting the needs of the company's large employee base.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What kind of challenges does a company like Walgreens face within HR?

I think it's about keeping our people motivated, both in our office, in the field, in our pharmacies and in our distribution centers. And we've done that by really developing our own people vision, which is to care for our team members as whole people. What that looks like is really listening to our team members, really trying to understand their specific needs — versus going out and trying to match what others do — and delivering that for them.

As you can imagine, on the heels of the pandemic, and just talking about the latest COVID surge, what our pharmacists — what the individuals in our stores are dealing with — extraordinary challenges. They've really risen to the task and we want to make sure we're delivering for each of them and meeting their needs — not only their needs, but the needs of their family members and their communities.

Walgreens has a lot of different employees. You have pharmacists, you have retail workers, and then you have folks in offices. How do you try to meet those various needs? Because each one of those groups is different.

We rarely do anything with a one-size-fits-all approach. I'll give you a great example. So we rolled out, not this past May but the one before, during Mental Health Awareness Month, a new mental-health program called Be Well Connected. It had three different components, because we really listened to our people and understood the way they receive mental health care, and the best ways of delivering that would need to look different depending on their schedule, whether they're in a store all day, whether they need to get support at night.

It's actually an app you go on and they have live and on-demand classes where you can really interact with those in the class to talk about a variety of mental health topics. It's taught by an expert. We also listened about the programming that they wanted through that so we actually delivered a class specific to mental health for pharmacists, and a class specific for individuals with children with special needs. So they really allowed us to customize.

The second part of that program is Indieflix — that's what we lovingly call our own Sundance Channel where we provide films related to different mental health topics that can be watched at any time. And then it's our EAP solution, and providing free mental-health counseling sessions, not only for individuals, but also for their family members. We're thinking about the whole experience. A person's life does not stop when they leave the office.

Do you have a policy requiring five days in the office given that the stores are open seven days a week?

We have a leader-lead hybrid policy. So depending on the needs of the business segment or the function, the leader is really determining which days in the office people would need to be there. That's based on moments that matter. So whether it be coming together for team meetings, to align on priorities and a way forward, or getting together even for a social event, leaders have really been empowered and are also accountable for bringing their teams in when needed to move forward our strategy and also keep the team engaged.

What are some of the challenges that you have faced and overcome as a parent but also as a person who wants to have a fulfilling and exciting career?

I am very fortunate to have a CEO who has been so unbelievably supportive of me and has also championed flexibility in the workplace to make sure that mothers of young children who have very hectic schedules inside and out of the workplace are able to be successful.

It's been so fulfilling to me and so important to me that even in this role, I've been able to make such an impact in the disability representation and inclusion space. I've gotten to kick off our first neurodiversity in the workplace — the first of neurodiversity-hiring program in our support offices and professional roles. I've been able to give back in my role and kind of use the challenges in my life to perhaps improve the lives of others.

I'm also the executive sponsor of our working parents and caregivers, BRG (benefits resource group), where we provide resources and support for other working parents within our company. So giving back for me has been very important and obviously nothing I do would be possible without a wonderful support network at home. But you also need to work for companies with leaders that really understand the challenges. Roz (Rosalind Brewer, the CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance) has two amazing children who are now adults but she gets it. She gets the challenges — the small things and the big things.

How has the HR suite and your job changed from before COVID to now?

I think HR looks tremendously different. I've stayed in contact with many of my peers at other companies. For some CEOs and executive teams, there are some companies that I think before COVID understood the power of HR and leveraged it appropriately. I'm proud to say Roz was one of those leaders.

But I think for other leaders, they're learning how important it really is. They're learning about how critical workplace flexibility is. You know, the expectation has changed forever. In my humble opinion we're not going to go back to the world that existed before. There's going to be a need to be more flexible, whether that be hybrid work or certain days in the office, it's going to look a lot different than it did and there's a very different expectation.

I think more so from Gen Z, but also from millennials about what the workplace is, therefore what an employer should be responsible for delivering to its people. I'm very proud of the work we've done in that space to really provide a differentiated experience, to really prioritize our team members — both their experiences in and out of the office — while delivering for the communities and the patients we serve. I'm really proud of how, in some ways, I believe we've led the charge in many areas to really operate differently and provide a different employee experience, which is what candidates are demanding.

What are some of the things that they're asking for that you've thought about adopting at the company?

They care about what companies stand for. When you think about our work in ESG, when you think about our support to communities — they care about where they shop, they care about where they work, and there's a different expectation about what we're delivering to them.

These generations value compensation less than any other generation before them. The studies are showing that. So what are we doing as an organization to support society? What are we doing actively to change the world? And that's how you attract talent in these new generations.

We've talked about pharmacists, retail, clinical, and then your corporate offices. That's a lot of different jobs. So what are the hardest jobs to fill? How are you working to fill them and where are your key areas of growth or hiring in the next 12 months or so?

I would say where our focus has been and will continue to be is pharmacists, pharmacy technicians — really all roles within our pharmacy. The pharmacy schools in the US today are graduating far less and have far less enrollment than they have in previous years. You can only imagine during the pandemic how that impacted things when pharmacists were being asked to do new things. With the testing and then vaccinations — over and above what they had been expected to do before.

We're really looking at that role differently, ensuring that we're taking the steps to allow our pharmacists to operate at the top of their license. And that means exploring healthcare services.

We're also exploring different ways to consider hybrid roles where maybe not every day you're in person; maybe there are days when you're working virtually.

We've done a lot with our micro-fulfillment centers in terms of the activity of dispensing medication, having that centralized, automated, and tech-enabled. And allowing more of that patient-interaction work. We've found and we've heard from our pharmacists that it's a part of the job that they went to pharmacy school for. It's about looking at the role itself and providing a differentiated experience that our pharmacist will see us as a place where they really want to work, where they want to be and be part of, with the health care we're delivering to our communities.

We still have a sign-on program. It does vary by region. We're continually looking at this and evolving it to make sure you know our attraction of pharmacists is a priority.

What is the one piece of advice you're telling Gen Zers entering the workforce?

I would say the importance of learning agility and exploring your passions. I am a very big proponent of not following a traditional career path — learning as much as you can in as many different areas as you can. You never know when it's going to come in handy. I remember when I started my career, one of the first areas that I was tasked with was really more of an internal-audit area, and I'm telling you to this day, that knowledge is still handy. So, whatever interests you, volunteer to be on different projects, even if they're not completely aligned with where you think you want to go, because you'll never know when the information will need to be raised up again.

What is your biggest worry about corporate America?

I think that we don't lose traction on what we learned, that we don't forget the learnings of the pandemic and the needs of our employees.

I think we ask a lot of people every day and, you know, I never cease to be surprised by the commitment, especially here at WBA of our employees to our business and our mission and what we're seeking to achieve.

But I think employers need to keep top of mind the needs of their people. And I think we learned so much and I hope as we move forward that what we learned in the pandemic — and what people really need and their support and how people need flexibility to be successful — I really hope that's not forgotten. You know, sometimes things get in the distant past probably too early, but I hope the lessons stick around.