Employee loyalty ain’t dead: How the HR leader for Cisco’s sales org climbed the telecom giant’s ranks

Employee loyalty is only getting rarer and rarer these days.

The median tenure for US workers is currently 3.9 years, down from an average of 4.6 years in 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But Sara Morales, an SVP and people partner of sales & marketing, country, and employee relations at Cisco, has been at the telecommunications tech company for the majority of her career.

In her current role, Morales oversees a team of 150 people who support multiple HR functions at Cisco. Morales is an HR business partner for the company’s go-to-market organization, which helps sell and market Cisco’s products. She also oversees a team that assists VPs and directors who do not have dedicated HR business partners with talent management projects and provides non-payroll and administrative HR support to sales leaders in other countries. Morales also leads Cisco’s employee relations team.

If you’re thinking, “That’s a lot of hats to wear,” you’re not alone. Morales says she relies on a global team to manage the work, adding that she finds juggling multiple responsibilities fulfilling. She said that drive, and a circle of mentors who’ve encouraged her to take on big projects, helped her grow in her career.

“I feel fortunate to have such a breadth of experiences that I’ve had primarily here at Cisco, and coaches and advisors along the way that have not only given me the opportunity, but helped me believe that I could do it,” she said.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked?

When Russia invaded Ukraine, I was part of a team that thought about how we handle that and how we make decisions from a place of, what our business drivers are, how it aligns to our culture, [and] how this might set a precedent for what may come in the future. One of the things that I started to lead with is a set of guiding principles. Now, every time I go into a big, challenging problem, I always start with: What are our guiding principles? What are going to be the things that are going to be the compass for us that we can lean into when we’re unsure of a decision? I feel proud around the work we did to support employees in Russia as we exited that country, how we also leaned on supporting our Ukrainian employees, but tried to find the things that led back to those three key drivers of driving the business.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?

I think the common misconception is that people in the people field or in HR love people and that it’s fluffy. I do like people, and I love the relationships and connections, but that is actually not the driver for me in this work. The driver for me in this work is solving big, challenging problems that help the business and that we do right by our culture and by our employees.

What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why?

One of the things I’m most excited about is AI and how we can leverage it.

There’s a couple of different reasons. One is having the ability to approach things in a much more data-driven way. I love to roll my sleeves up in a good spreadsheet every now and again. I think having better access to better data to make more informed decisions is only going to be goodness.

I also think…about the size and scale of the sales organization at Cisco. If you were to take a step back and think about how we support all leaders, I [picture] a three-legged stool: We support them through the people team, we support them through programs, whether that’s leadership programs or learning and development, and I think there has to be a digital element to that is being more informed and more driven by AI, whether that be bots or we're in conversations with a company that we partner with around potentially leveraging AI in coaching for leaders at scale.

What trend in HR are you least optimistic about? Why?

The thing that I am overall least optimistic about is return to office.

Every company has to make the right choice for them based on what their work is, what drives the work, and what their culture is. This forcing of the system, and demanding that employees do something that they are fundamentally against, I feel like it’s only going to cause tension. Again, every company has to make the right decision for them. I do think the curiosity around it, the data-driven approach around it, is insightful and helpful, but I'm least excited about the “you must” mandates, which I’m proud to say Cisco has not had, and likely will never have.

Correction 10/29/24: This piece has been updated to clarify Morales’ views on RTO at Cisco.