Top questions
Our employees all over the world submitted hundreds of questions for DS24hours. Here are answers to some of the most frequently asked.
Why are our Purpose and Operating Principles important?
We go to work every day for a variety of reasons, but finding meaning in what we do is important. Our work is indeed meaningful. We’re transforming people’s lives. Our work empowers dentists to make people smile. In addition, each of our five Operating Principles guides our work and focuses on what is important to be successful in what we do every day.
What are our growth plans and drivers over the next years?
Our #OwnOurFuture Transformation focuses on returning our Company to growth. We have clear goals to deliver substantial growth over the next several years. We will achieve sustainable growth by putting the customer first, building a world-class portfolio of innovations and relentlessly executing at the commercial level. In the U.S. this year, we launched our new sales deployment model which will help us create demand and grow our revenues over time. In addition, we introduced our redesigned website to direct customers as part of our Digital Transformation, which enhances our clinical education, dramatically improves our online product catalogue and makes it easier for our customers of the direct businesses to buy from us online. Both initiatives are critically important for our future success as the world and our customers rely even more on digital. We operate in a vibrant and essential industry, and there is an increasing demand for oral care. Also, as the market leader, we need to make scale work for us. With a comprehensive and sustaining growth strategy, we can leverage the global scale and reach of our Company, and thereby expand our leading position in the marketplace.
What is the key area of future innovation and what is the Digital Endgame about?
The digital revolution will continue to impact the practice of dentistry at accelerating rates. By virtue of our hardware in many places, we have been the driver of the digitalization of dentistry – Imaging, CAD/CAM as well as software, like Sidexis, Atlantis, our CEREC software suite and our implant software to name a few. As we go forward though, the environment will increasingly demand that we integrate our hardware and software to facilitate treatment planning and improve the practice of dentistry. We conducted an inventory of software that has been developed by Dentsply Sirona. It is impressive. It was developed under our former approach, however, with each SBU developing its own platforms with very little integration and not much based in the cloud. Looking into the future, we have a clear opportunity to transform from a collection of individual programs to an integrated, powerful, seamless, simple and user-friendly treatment planning platform. We will harmonize all our software development activities relating to clinical practice into a more integrated ecosystem built around the key procedures our customers perform along the patient journey. Starting with the many important platforms we have today, we will begin to think more holistically and strategically about our hardware and consumables’ value propositions, treatment planning and future business model considerations. Chief Technical Officer Cord Staehler will lead our taskforce - called Digital Endgame - with support from Chief Segment Officer Bill Newell and Chief Strategy & Business Development Officer Matt Coggin. This taskforce also includes representatives from the Product Groups, R&D and our key regions. We see this as a driver for long-term growth and another step forward in putting the customer at the center of everything we do.
Why don’t we improve cooperation and collaboration across pillars and regions?
Cross-Company cooperation and collaboration are key to our success and we’re undertaking many efforts to improve in this area. With our new pillar structure implemented a year ago, we have made fundamental changes to how we work together. The new structure enables us to better leverage our global reach and scale. Our leadership team is committed to further improve cooperation and collaboration across pillars. Of course, it always takes some time for a new structure to work perfectly. Also, everybody – every individual employee – is responsible for contributing to this through team work, information sharing and strong communication. If everybody holds himself/herself accountable to that we will see significant improvements in this area.
What is our strategy to retain, develop and recruit employees?
We view our employees as one of our most valuable assets and a competitive advantage. Therefore, strategic talent management is an important priority at Dentsply Sirona and will continue to be a key area of focus for our new CHRO Lisa Yankie and the global HR team in 2020. In looking at the overall people strategy, we will also focus on total rewards and recognition of our employees. Our goal is to be known as an employer of choice more broadly, beyond the dental industry.
What did we learn from the engagement survey results?
Employee engagement is still below where we aspire to be however we did see a meaningful increase in two specific areas: “My supervisor or someone cares about me as a person” and “In the last 7 days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.” We also saw a noteworthy increase in collaboration as employees indicated that they feel there is better cooperation across departments. Clarifying roles and operational discipline continue to be areas of opportunity for improvement. Employees are looking for greater clarity around job expectations and performance standards in order to do their best work every day. It was not surprising that this year‘s results were similar to those of 2018 although we have already initiated many measures that will ultimately increase engagement as part of our #OwnOurFuture Transformation. Tremendous progress has already been made including: aligning our structure around our four pillars - Product Groups, RCOs, Integrated Supply Chain and Central Functions; launching the Bottom Up Planning process, executing our initiatives and tracking progress in WAVE; reinforcing our Operating Principles and Purpose & Mission and Vision with communication activities like DS24hours; focusing on changing mindsets and behaviors in the areas of role clarity and operational discipline; increasing leadership communication; and offering more opportunities for skill development. The many steps we‘ve already taken and that are currently under way will change how we work and, in turn, foster greater engagement.
Is the restructuring over?
While we have made steady progress, our transformation continues. We have already achieved a lot over the past year: we have successfully simplified our Pillar structure and created four Dental Product Groups; we have embarked on multiple growth initiatives, including a strong Sales Force Effectiveness program; and we launched major new products such as Primescan. These are just a few examples, and there are more than 1,000 initiatives also under way. Looking ahead, our focus now lies on our five cross-Company priorities: Supply Chain Centralization, Digital Transformation, Finance Transformation, Global Business Services, and Single Sales Entity (SSE).
What is Dentsply Sirona doing in the area of sustainability?
Sustainability is a key part of our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy and very important to us. We continue to work toward reducing our environmental footprint at all manufacturing sites and offices. We have several green initiatives in place that focus on energy conservation, and reduced carbon emissions, waste, and water usage. You can learn more about our CSR activities by reviewing our CSR Report, which is available on the DS Community. We will continue to reinforce our activities in the coming years and encourage all employees to support our efforts.
You will find answers to pre-submitted questions on our internal DS24hours website by this Friday, December 20th: www.dentsplysirona.com/ds24