The PepsiCo comms leader’s formula for becoming a trusted adviser 

Rebekah Metts-Childers began her communications career at PR21, now Zeno Group, when technology and dot-com companies were beginning to reshape the industry. Her first account was Cars.com — an early step in a career that would shape a core belief about employee communications: The work is never done alone. 

Today, Metts-Childers leads global employee communications at PepsiCo, focused on strengthening internal culture and corporate reputation. Before PepsiCo, she led the employee engagement practice at Brunswick Group. Earlier, she served on the executive team at Gagen MacDonald and spent nine years at Takeda Pharmaceuticals in corporate communications and business transformation roles.

For Metts-Childers, strong teams are essential. “Without a good team, it’s terrifying,” she told Ragan. That same belief shapes her approach to employee communications. “Employee communications can’t be done alone,” she said. “And if it is done alone, it won’t be successful.”

Metts-Childers will share more of these insights at Ragan’s Internal Communications Conference, where she’ll join a panel on how communicators can use data, business fluency and strategic thinking to earn trusted adviser status with leaders. 

What first drew you to employee communications? How did you know that was where you wanted to be?

I didn’t. At the time, it wasn’t even really a thing.  I think it was more tied to my personal experience as an employee than anything. I could see where leaders were really amazing at their jobs but weren’t communicating to the organization about what was changing or what needed to happen. And I remember talking to our HR team to say,  Whose job is it? Really trying to figure out how information about the company and why things are changing gets to employees?

There was not really an answer at the time. People were doing the work in different small agencies and kind of by mistake, I think, but it wasn’t as much of a career. You might write a newsletter, but you also do media.

I was lucky enough to have lots of clients where I would end up being the person raising my hand in the room a lot to ask how are we telling employees? Is there a way to reach out to employees on this announcement? We might be doing a bankruptcy, a Chapter 11 piece of work, and I’d say, but how are the employees being brought in? 

I think I’ve always been empathetic to the experience of the employee because everybody always focuses on the external, and that work’s always going to get done. But I think just being really intentional about it was exciting to me.

Which career experience so far has really changed the way you lead or left a mark on you?

It’s interesting. There are kind of four things. I was thinking about what has really changed me as a leader and what that makes me as a leader. Four things showed up to me immediately: transparency, predictability, appreciation and partnership. All four of those are things that are really important to me in the way I show up as a leader. I think it’s because there was a moment in my career with each of those, or a feeling with each of those, that I either got from a leader or I didn’t.

With transparency, we’ve all had the moments where we want to do our job, but we don’t have the information we need because somebody hasn’t shared it. The debrief didn’t happen. It’s so frustrating. It’s like, I want to be exceptional and help you and enable the work, but without the information, you have one hand tied behind your back. Or I want to be exceptional and I don’t feel like I’m meeting the mark, but I’m not getting the feedback I need to know what I could do better. I’ve been frustrated by those moments, so I try really hard not to keep things from the team. Even if they’re early, if I can share things, I want to.

Predictability: I parent like this, too. Nobody needs to not be sure what your mood will be each day or not be clear about what you’re looking for. I’ve had bosses where it’s like, we should put a color chart on their door. Are they in a red mood or a blue mood? I never wanted to be that leader. I’d rather people feel like they know what they’re going to get. 

Appreciation: People need to be valued, especially for the small stuff. How many times have you done something that really mattered, but it wasn’t sexy? Leaders who have either acknowledged those moments or haven’t — that’s been really momentous to me.

Partnership: I can’t ask my team to work hard if I don’t. I feel like moving barriers, doing the work with them. I’ve seen leaders who are like, I don’t know how you’re going to do it. Good luck. A lot of it has been what I wish I’d seen as leadership? Or when the moments happen from leadership, I’m like, I want that. I want to be that for people.

I’m curious to get some insights from your panel, From Data to Decisions: How IC Earns Trusted Adviser Status. What do you hope the audience takes away about employee data, influencing business decisions and that whole scope? What does that look like for them?

To me, the topic is like a perfect circle. How do you get data to make decisions? But the part tied to business decisions is probably the most important part, and really the trusted adviser status.

Do we understand what the business decisions are? 

Do we know the business well enough to really put work against that? I don’t think there’s ever a moment to start employee communications just with what the employee wants. It’s also really: What are we trying to achieve as a company?

How do you become a trusted adviser? That’s understanding business priorities and the metrics and measurement against those, then asking how we build the right channels, content and outreach, and how we measure if it’s meeting what we know the business needs. Is it actually helping drive our strategy, our culture, the outcomes? If not, data doesn’t matter anyway.

Sometimes data against things people love is great. Our most visited PepsiCo Viva Engaged channel is about pets. People love their dogs and cats. That’s actually good data to know.

What advice would you give to someone who wants a bigger seat at the table?

Know the business.

I think part of the challenge for employee communications is that if we sit at the table expecting people to educate us on the business, we’re not going to be invited back. Or if we’re raising things that seem inconsequential because we’re not able to connect them to business strategy.

We can come to the table and be invited to the table and take commands from people: Oh, can you put this in the newsletter? Can you put this on the internet?

But if we’re not able to have the banter of, well, we can, but how does that actually tie into the goal we have with the business? Because that’s really what the investors are focused on. The moment you have a discussion that thinks about their restrictions and their needs, they want you back.

I have a quote on my screen that says, “Your peers have to enjoy buying it from you.” And I think that’s true in stakeholders and peers. It’s not because I’m friendly that I want them to enjoy buying it, but because they feel smarter, they feel more prepared. Something came from us, our team, that they really wouldn’t have thought about regarding connectivity and interdependencies. If you just come in blind — and there are always ways, especially with AI, to understand the audience, the business, the stakeholders you’re sitting with. I also think doing the work. It’s not just about saying yes. It is enabling the work, but it’s also sometimes doing the work.

What have you found is the most useful way to measure whether employee communications are working?

Working is so subjective. I think it’s knowing what working means. There are so many ways. There’s reach, relevancy, and connectivity to the business. Those are, if you put it on paper, what’s a strategy around measurement? Those are the data-centric ways you’d think about it.

There’s also what’s important to our CEO, right? And how do we measure that? Risk, I think, is another one. 

But we have more than 300,000 employees. They all have different experiences, cultures, perspectives, jobs, and socioeconomic backgrounds. It’s so different. What’s working for each of them is going to be so different.

I think it is sometimes numbers. I think it’s sometimes understanding that method in our EMEA region is actually getting uptake and people are using those tools. And that is incredibly important to our EMEA regional head because that’s the way he leads. So that’s going to help drive business results versus this thing reached 200,000 people or they opened it for more than nine seconds.

We measure that, but that’s pretty imperfect data. I think there are so many layers. Maybe what’s most useful to measurement is flexibility and localization. How can we really be flexible in what we’re measuring, why it matters, and how do we target what we’re measuring and why it matters?

What helps you stay calm when the stakes are high and everything feels like it’s happening all at once?

The team. Being surrounded by competent people is all it takes for me to be calm.

We had a high-stakes global launch, and minutes before everything was supposed to go out — social media, internet, email from the CEO — a team member flagged a typo. It wasn’t the biggest typo in the world, but it was a massive launch moment.

Our content and video teams knew how to fix it; everyone adjusted the timing, and we coordinated across teams. The launch went out 22 minutes late, and literally no one cared. We all had flutters, but we knew it was going to be fixed. That, to me, is it. Without that team or that way of working, it would have been a really big moment. No one was upset or blamed anyone. If anyone else freaks out, I’m immediately crazy calm.

What is one lesson about people that has followed you throughout your career?

Early in my career, I would get feedback: You can get anything done, but you don’t take the people into account. I would run over people to get a project done. I was so focused on the outcome.

And I really feel like the moment I stopped completely doing that, I enjoyed the work more. I think I’m better at my job because I can actually think, well, what do the people need here? The stress kind of leaves a little bit because it’s like, are we doing what we need to do for the people? The team? 

That’s it.

The other piece: Get a really strong team under you.

My team knows how to do things I don’t know how to do. My team is better at things than me, for sure. I don’t pretend to be anywhere near as creative as the team, but I don’t have to be because they are. There’s such joy in saying, I don’t know, this feels really confusing, but I know so-and-so can fix it or drive it.

Join Rebekah and other comms leaders from the Gates Foundation, Newell Brands, CVS Health and more for the Internal Communications Conference at Microsoft’s headquarters, Oct. 13-15. Register now.

Isis Simpson-Mersha is a conference producer/ reporter for Ragan. Follow her on LinkedIn.