Felicia Fields

There’s a renewed sense of energy and pride at Ford today. We’re no longer talking about our survival. We’re talking about thriving, growing and continuing to build an incredibly successful Company. At the same time, however, our leadership team understands that we can never be complacent. Our employees are committed to helping us maintain our momentum. They remain focused every day on helping Ford to deliver profitable growth so we never again have our backs against the wall.

As we have evolved into a truly global Company, we have refocused our priorities and changed the way we work. We have learned how to leverage our scale while better integrating each region of our operations. Even simple collaboration with colleagues in different time zones can prove challenging. Frankly, we couldn’t continue to work the same way that we always had, especially with fewer people and a leaner Company. But it is for the better. We never want to return to the days where individuals worked in silos.

From a human capital perspective, all of this means we must continue to push even harder to make Ford a great place to work – whether that’s through flexible working schedules or by equipping our people with technology that allows them to do their jobs in more convenient ways. We have revamped our performance management system to better clarify our expectations of employees and how their contributions affect other parts of the business and the Company’s overall success. We’re also working to be more candid and transparent about our Human Resources systems and processes than we ever have been before.

The ONE Ford strategy has been essential to our Company’s success over the last several years. Our CEO, Alan Mulally, created the ONE Ford strategy when he joined Ford in 2006. But our employees have been responsible for implementing it and making it real. ONE Ford isn’t just something that is written on a piece of paper. It’s the way our people think. It’s how they behave. And it’s how they align what they do every day with our Company’s plan. Through their “can do” attitude, our employees have brought ONE Ford to life.

This Company has long been filled with people who are extremely proud and loyal. So ONE Ford truly became a rallying cry, which quickly resonated with employees. It was easy for them to embrace this culture change because it was something they believed in and wanted to follow. ONE Ford not only gave us a goal and a plan, but it presented a set of expected behaviors that our workforce could put into action. It made everyone accountable for our Company’s success.

Our new “Go Further” campaign takes the concept one additional step. To understand how the two pieces work together, it helps to think of ONE Ford as the forward-looking vision, bridging what we do with how we behave. Go Further highlights the fact that we go further in everything that we do – whether it’s caring about each other as employees, delivering innovative products to our customers or serving in our communities. It’s not a new sentiment that we’re trying to embrace. It’s something we have uncovered about who we are and what makes us special as a Company.

After years of separations, we’re now hiring again and we’re focusing on ways to attract and retain talented individuals – through employee development programs that sharpen their skills, through opportunities to work in other parts of the world, and through competitive compensation and benefits, among others. Even in our darkest days, we knew that our Company would grow stronger as economies got stronger.

Our employees are our customers, too, and they can be incredible ambassadors for our products. The more we share with them about where we are going, the more exciting and inspiring it is for each of them.