Name: How Mary Dillon led Ulta Beauty through the pandemic
Uploaded: 2020-09-29
Duration: 2 min 24 s
Description: She joins Fortune’s MPW Summit to discuss.

 SPEAKER 1: One of the big challenges that people in your position faced, of course, was as you've dealt with this crisis, was you a lot of retailers had to furlough staff temporarily. There's a chain supply-- supply chain disruptions. How did you make sure that your troops didn't get freaked out by furloughs, or maybe lose some of them, or worried by COVID. I mean, how-- this is a leadership question, how do you make sure the troops are able to provide the company what it needs, and what's the message that you give your workforce? MARY DILLON: Well, Bill, I'm sure everybody in this meeting as leaders has encountered, has really reached into their souls to be the best leaders they can possibly be during this time. So in retail, we are in the human business, right. We have most of our employees, associates work in our stores or our distribution centers. We serve guests and customers. So the health and safety was paramount and so the decision-- we were-- we closed our stores and that was a very tough decision, and in some cases mandated, in some cases, we did ourselves but we needed to take the time to make sure that we had safe procedures in place for shopping to happen. When we made a decision to furlough associates, we brought many back. We also knew that the CARES Act at the time was going to help support them financially, but I would say that the main thing is your leadership approach and values really shine through. For me it's been about putting our associates at the center of everything we do, and really respecting them, with honesty, with transparency, and so when we did make the decision to furlough, which was very difficult, but our stores were closed, right, for several weeks, each associate that was furloughed had a personal conversation with their manager. Not an email, not a big phone call. It might sound small, but in the scheme of things, that was the kind of thing that really mattered to our associates. So I think it's about having the humility to say you don't have all the answers, but the human connection, and the trust, and respect to be as transparent as you possibly can. And lastly I would say it's about being decisive. I mean, we are going to be judged coming out of this crisis on how we treated our people, how we treated our customers, and how we set our business up for long term success. And so making big decisions, I think that's what it's all about right now as well. 

How Mary Dillon led Ulta Beauty through the pandemic

She joins Fortune’s MPW Summit to discuss.