Michael Hawkins

Michael Hawkins

President and CEO

Netizen Corp.

Hawkins has been in his position for 10 years. He currently oversees all operations of a rapidly growing cybersecurity company whose primary markets are large commercial enterprises and the federal government, including branches of the military. Along with the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), Hawkins is responsible for strategic decision-making and day-to-day management of other executives, project teams, and other executive tasks.

Hawkins said coming out of the pandemic has been an interesting time. “We find ourselves in an ever-shifting landscape of new employee and employer expectations, requiring us to be more competitive than ever for scarce talent. It has changed the way we operate at a human capital level; leading us to review and revise all of our current retention incentives such as flexible working arrangements and opportunities for training, education, and career progression. We now compete directly for talent with immense Fortune 500 organizations, which necessitated an adaptation of our prior models of hiring and retention so as to offer what these large companies often cannot or will not for their candidates—flexibility,” he said.

“The culmination of this has been a hybridization of our almost our entire workforce, meaning task-dependent combinations of in-office and remote work,” said Hawkins. “We’ve even had to convince some of our largest customers, such as the federal government, of the benefits of this approach and have made much progress in that area. The end result for us has been a superior customer-centric focus, vigorously renewed employee engagement, increased motivation to see the company and our customers succeed, a larger available talent pool from which to pick the best of the best candidates, and enhanced overall productivity.”