A bottle containing a hazy beverage makes an appearance in Kate Kennedy's Zoom window. Kennedy, who is the VP of employee benefits at USI Insurance Services, has been drinking a concoction that is one part orange juice to seven parts water as part of her daily wellness regime. Ever since her work at USI went remote, she and her colleagues have been taking care of their well-being by setting hydration goals–water with diluted orange juice tastes more interesting than plain water–and taking on weight-loss challenges.

Kimberly Young, the VP of global benefits at Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE), sees virtual fitness challenges as a way to keep employees engaged "as we find ourselves working remotely and not connecting for [over] a year," she said during a From Day One webinar titled “Fostering Employee Engagement in Healthcare Through Technology,” moderated by Fast Company contributing editor Lydia Dishman.

In fact, as we see employees embracing such challenges as keeping up 10,000 daily steps or escaping the four walls of their at-home workstations, it has become apparent that the workforce's health and well-being has become a priority for employers–and not just as a means to stave off worker isolation. However, many employees are unaware of the extent of their benefits, so they’re missing out on opportunities. One solution? A multi-pronged communication strategy rooted in data but with an underlying human component.

Making Delivery More Flexible

As each day of remote work became a “Blursday,” an asynchronous approach became a way to maximize engagement. Toby Fleischman, director of total rewards for Cleveland-based MetroHealth System, recalls that, once so many workers went remote, shifting the company's fitness classes from a live format to on-demand resulted in skyrocketing engagement. "That freed people from an office-hours schedule," she said. "Time becomes that variable that nobody has enough of. The more flexible you can be in the delivery, the more people will grab onto that."

While flexibility in health-care and benefit services is a good sign of the industry catching up with consumer trends, it's important to take an omni-channel approach. "There's two dimensions here: different consumers have different channel preferences," said Matthew Kaye, managing director at Deloitte Consulting. "There are also consumers that engage on multiple channels, and so it's important that health-care companies share data across channels, so that if [customers] call an agent, the agent is aware of a log, a chat exchange."

In fact, while a chatbot is ideal for a basic request with a complexity similar to tracking a package, there should be a human component when a situation is more complicated than that. "Making an inquiry regarding someone's benefits is a lot more complex than "track my package," said Kennedy. "The trick is making sure [there's] a real-life human and, once the issue gets to that degree of complexity, being able to pivot over to that."

Towards a Customer-like Approach

"People are looking more and more for a consumer-grade experience, [similar to] online/retail experience," said Eric Parmenter, VP of health solutions at League, a digital health-care platform. Parmenter observed that calling a customer-service hotline now often feels outdated and likely to breed frustration, since “unusually high call volume” now seems to be constant and callers are often bounced from department to department.

Like retail consumers, employees are more likely to use resources that are personalized, but that calls for a holistic approach: What is a consumer's channel preference? What is their socioeconomic situation? What is their location? "People with different conditions are more likely to engage in different ways," said Kaye. "If you have someone with a chronic condition requiring a daily engagement with their health, it's important to give them an app," he continued, taking into account the hurdle of behavior change. "Behavior change through a digital channel, if you're not already a digital user, is hard."

To find out more about employee needs and preferences, MetroHealth took a multi-pronged approach: handing out surveys to determine the social determinants of their health, having the surveys completed through the wellness program, and sharing the resulting aggregate data with community partners. "The most important thing is to make sure we close the loop, so that the data everybody gets can be seen by everyone," said Fleischman. "Platforms should be reactive to the info you put in. It's a constant dialogue even with a system. The best inputs we have are human, the voices of employees in the moment."

One of the biggest dilemmas for employers is how to invest their budgets: do they focus an overall communication campaign that can unify these programs and convey general information to employees? Or, knowing that 5% of 10% of employees have the most health-care claims, should employers take a more targeted approach to the high-needs group?

"We focus on the entire population, because high claimants will be different from year to year," said Parmenter. "Spreading the peanut butter is hard to do, but at the same time, that goes back to personalization–to tailor and curate a set of resources regardless of what their risk profile and demographics are, and engage them in a way they prefer to be engaged."

A "Brand Voice" Has its Benefits

Developing a voice is a critical component as health-care and benefit platforms seek to keep up with the times. "We started implementing bi-monthly communications, so employees can see benefits they can use when they're well, especially in daily life in the wellness sphere," said PAE’s Young.

In general, communication has shifted more towards preventative care. MetroHealth has taken a thematic approach to communication, which is meant to keep people engaged year-round, as opposed to just nudging them awake during open enrollment and then leaving them to their own devices the rest of the time. For instance, a “Women’s Health Month” will touch on such topics as mammograms and financial wellness. "We're very much focused on the integration," said Fleischman. "What we did for the pandemic was to pivot everything we had in an online repository that could be accessed any time."

An effective voice is also a more straightforward one. "If you need a separate slide just to explain acronyms, it's not a good start," said Kennedy. "I've seen greater usage of multimedia. We regularly embed videos. I am seeing ways we can embed multimedia into communication so people can better understand concepts and make things simpler."

Despite the upsides of personalization, choice overload should be avoided. "We do have to be mindful of too many choices, we have to be mindful of jargon, so that even though the choices may seem complex and overwhelming, if they're couched in a conversational manner, that goes a long way," said Parmenter, who advocates the use of decision-support tools. "Benefits are complex. Using the technology that's available to us to make it more clear is a step in the right direction."

Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Milan and Brooklyn.

Creating an Optimal Workplace for Hourly Employees: Essential Tips for Leaders

In an industry where employee turnover is famously high, what might keep a grocery store employee with the same company for decades?Mayerland Harris, group VP of talent at Texas retailer H-E-B, started at the company right out of college, taking her first job in store operations before moving into HR. She spent some time in the pharmacy department then held a few corporate roles where she oversaw all the centers of excellence for compensation, talent development, recruiting, and people analytics. Recently, she’s taken over HR for all store operations. Harris estimates she’s had a new role roughly every three years, and more than three decades later, she says the experience still feels fresh. Though Harris isn’t an hourly employee, the majority of H-E-B’s 160,000 employees are.“But the fundamental reason I’ve stayed all this time is the company has never really given me a strong reason to look outside,” Harris said during a From Day One webinar on creating an optimal workplace for hourly employees. “To take another job, you have to take that call from the headhunter, and you have to go on the interview, and you have to have some level of curiosity or dissatisfaction.” Harris just hasn’t felt that. “By the time I started thinking, ‘Hey, this doesn’t seem right,’ the situation would change, or my role would change, or that person would leave.”Lots of hourly workers start at H-E-B with a temporary summer job—then they end up staying, and it’s not uncommon for careers to last decades like Harris’s has. Some have been at the same store for 55 years. “I believe it is 100% the family orientation,” she said. “People will tell us they feel like when they work here, they’re a part of a family. Your [direct supervisor] is a big part of that, but so many people have best friends that are co-workers that they feel like they’re coming to, if not a reunion, at least a place that’s very, very comfortable.” Those who come from other organizations tell her they feel a genuine sense of respect from all levels of the team that they haven’t felt elsewhere.When Harris goes into the stores, she doesn’t put her title on her name tag, just her years of service. “The line employee or sweeping the floors or bringing the carts in is just as important as a manager or a leader, because it’s all about serving the customer.”Mayerland Harris of H-E-B spoke with journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza during the webinar (photo by From Day One)A good employee experience depends on having a good team. “We try to find people who are able to start and hold a conversation easily. There is an expectation that we’re talking to our customers as they’re going through the line or while we’re bagging groceries without being too intrusive about what you’re purchasing. We’re looking for people who genuinely like talking, who like interacting, especially for those roles that are customer-facing. Everything else, you learn on the job.”Growing the Careers of Hourly EmployeesAt H-E-B, even hourly roles can expand. There are career development tracks for those who want to be a specialist in their department. Hourly employees who want a chance at being a department manager can apply for a multi-week program called the School of Retail Management, where they gain both technical and leadership skills they still need for the job. Those who want to can keep going, progressing through the organization to become a top store leader or move into corporate. “We love when partners who start in hourly, non-management positions rise all the way to the top.”It helps that the company doesn’t contract with external companies for any of its store employees. That means they employ their own doctors and nurses for on-site health clinics. They also have pilots, engineers, and food scientists on the payroll. “We joke that we have every single career path in the world except for astronauts,” she said. “People see that and they feel like, ‘OK, I don’t have to be stuck here in this one role.’ There’s so much flexibility to do different things.”The operational implications for such a large organization are huge. Those who regard grocery retail as boring soon learn this isn’t the case. Front-end managers might be responsible for 500 or 600 people in a store that’s open 17 hours a day. Inventory and store experience has to flex with consumer preferences. “We’re always having to reinvent who we are, having to reinvent what we are providing. Do we do self-checkout or not? Do we provide meal solutions and all the different things people are looking for? You have to stay on top of that.” One TikTok video or news story can spike demand for a single item, and stores need to meet that need quickly. “That speed of change keeps everything pretty exciting.”Rewarding Excellent Work and Long TenureTo reward those with outstanding contributions, H-E-B has a company-wide recognition program where employees can nominate a colleague or a manager can nominate their direct report. The rewards are prestigious, she said. “You can win at your store level, your facility level, your regional level, or your division level, and then you can make it all the way up to the top person in the organization.”To get a sense of what it’s like to be an hourly worker, Harris uses the annual engagement survey to find a company baseline and identify aberrations, then address them at the store level with on-the-ground research and focus groups. “We have a whole department called customer insights, and these people are amazing at talking to customers and doing focus groups,” she said. “Well, now we’ve been using them to help us internally, because they are so good at asking questions and coming in with recaps. We use them also to spot-check and get feedback from our employees. And then we figure out what we can do to make the environment better.”One thing that makes the store environment so great is that the hourly workforce is so diverse, and that’s something employees really love, Harris said proudly. Hourly workers range from teenagers to octogenarians. “You’re not just working with people who have your same life experiences or your same background; the thing that you have in common is that store or that facility that you work in; the thing that you have in common is H-E-B.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Deputy, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Business Insider, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Support the Change: Why Menopause Should Be Part of Your Women’s Health Strategy

Did you know that signs of perimenopause can start appearing in women of childbearing age? Many of us are lacking crucial knowledge that can help us or our women colleagues navigate this time in their lives.Offering solutions to improve and support needs specific to women can also be an important factor to retention. But a new survey reports that only 1% of US women have menopause support as part of their employee sponsored benefits. What’s more, according to a new survey, 85% of women said they don’t know enough about menopause, and 83% experiencing menopause report that their symptoms impact their ability to work.During a From Day One webinar, panelists shared how employers can better support women experiencing the change, and the impact it can have on productivity, medical spend and retention.Often, the concept of “women’s healthcare” ends with postpartum. But Dr. Leslie Saltzman, chief medical officer at Ovia Health, says health care support for women of all ages is vital. “It’s so important to support women who are experiencing perimenopause and menopause because the symptoms aren’t just a nuisance. Evolving evidence is showing that severe menopausal symptoms, which impact a great portion of our population, also have long term health effects and accelerate cardiovascular disease and impact brain health. They’re having lots of negative impact in terms of quality of life and performance at work. We see women dropping out of the workforce just because of the symptoms that they're having,” Dr. Saltzman said.Juliet Vestal, corporate vice president, total rewards at B. Braun, says 50% of their workforce is women. “As our workforce continues to age, these are issues that we know are not being supported within the community by providers. And so we need to find solutions to help,” she said.Even younger employees are starting to ask about these topics, despite perceived taboos, says Melanie Baxter, director of global well-being at Alorica. “As a collective we stop women’s health awareness at motherhood. Opening a space of easy dialogue about any health issues when we're in the workspace can create a much happier workforce, can create longevity and can increase retention. It’s also just the right thing to do,” Baxter said. “It’s a way to communicate with our employees that, ‘Hey, you matter to us.’”Lisa Hammond, CHRO at Veradigm, says that she is answering the relatively recent call from employees to address this issue by providing webinars on the topic. “For me right now, it’s thinking about, how do we articulate menopause to our leadership, which is largely male, and help them get context for this in a way that’s not overly clinical or overly emotional, so that they can gain an understanding and become allies with us as we move through this next phase of our benefits programs and our culture internally,” Hammond said.Breaking Barriers to Healthcare AccessThere are a few issues that make it hard for women to get accurate and helpful information about menopause, says Dr. Saltzman. She cites a study from the Women's Health Initiative that “has been widely criticized [and] created a lot of fear” around the standard of care for menopause.The panelists spoke about the importance of menopause support in the workplace (photo by From Day One)This includes hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which is again now generally considered to be effective, though the stigma remains. Doctors also primarily experience “hospital-based training” tied to birth, and are less prepared for the one-on-one intimate office conversations necessary to discuss menopause. And lastly, the current shortage of primary care physicians means “we don’t have enough providers who are trained to be able to support the needs of women who are experiencing these symptoms,” Saltzman said. And when they do find a provider who can help, Vestal added, “there’s a six to eight month waiting period to get in.”Another part of the problem is the stigma and discomfort associated with simply talking about menopause. “For so many years, menopause and the symptoms were seen as, “a part of life and you just need to get over it and deal with it,’” said moderator Alice Park, senior health correspondent at TIME. “Are we getting close to really treating it as a medical condition in the same way that we treat conditions that affect men?”The unfortunate answer: yes and no. “Anyone who has experienced these symptoms themselves knows that this is not a psychological thing, and this isn’t something to be solved by dressing in layers or using a fan at night. But I still think that there’s a huge gap and lack of appropriate research,” Saltzman said. “As long as this market continues to grow, [with] more and more data supporting how important it is to treat women, there will be more and more solutions.”That means employers can help move the cause forward simply by being willing to address it. “The less we talk about something, the less people are likely to research it. My simple advice is to talk about it,” Baxter said. Since employees may be ashamed to bring it up themselves, leaders need to be proactive in making the service available to employees first, so they feel comfortable coming forward.Providing the Appropriate SupportProviding inclusive healthcare support that addresses menopause can make a workforce happier and more productive. “By not addressing these issues, people are suffering in silence and people are missing work,” Vestal said. The more employees and leaders are educated about the topic, the more they will be empathetic in their responses and in providing adequate support and planning. Additionally, Hammond says, the information will even be helpful to male employees whose partners or family members may be experiencing symptoms.A single point solution may not work for most organizations. “The experience of menopause varies dramatically from individual to individual, even when it starts,” Dr. Saltzman said. For some, it starts in their 50s, but others in their 40s, even those trying to conceive may experience symptoms. Therefore, raising awareness in general is most helpful, as is making sure there is access to healthcare providers with the appropriate training, including telehealth for easy access.Bringing in speakers is also beneficial. But be wary, as there’s a lot of misinformation. “If you’re looking for those resources, if you’re looking on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, make sure this is a licensed physician,” Baxter said.Especially given recent political developments in the U.S., panelists agree women’s healthcare education is more crucial than ever. “It’s a perilous time,” Hammond said. “We want to do everything we can within our organization to support women in making sure that, no matter what political party we are, we’re all humans. We all have bodies. We all should be able to maintain and enjoy power over our own beings.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Ovia Health, for sponsoring this webinar. Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

How to Use Skills Data to Power Development and Achieve Business Objectives

The skills required for success are constantly evolving and organizations are struggling to adapt without clear visibility of the strengths and skills gaps in their workforce. This uncertainty leaves talent management and employee development journeys to guesswork, resulting in lost opportunities and strategic missteps. Being armed with skills data and then acting on it is a key strategy to keeping employees happy, loyal, and developing.Organizations that utilize data about their talent's skills, or catalog and organize the skills workers currently possess, as well as identify the skills needed for future roles, are actively preparing their workforce to tackle new challenges as they arise. During a From Day One webinar, leaders discussed how talent skills data can transform your approach to talent management.As a first step, companies must identify which skills are the most relevant to their business’ present and future, the panelists shared. This decision should not be made just by HR, senior leaders, and stakeholders, but by employees at other levels too, says Marquisa Nash, Head of HR, performance materials at BASF. “[There might be a gap between] what leadership thinks is important and what people think is important,” Nash said.Tomislav Vujec, director of learning at Red Hat, says it’s easier for HR to get a buy-in from business leaders when discussing employee skills as opposed to competencies. “We get to be closer to their problems and we open a door to validate what we can actually do, which is develop a skill. As opposed to risking too much by promising a business change, which often does not only depend on the skill being developed, but other factors,” he said.The rapid changes brought about by the pandemic also emphasized the need to focus on skill-building, says Didem Onem, Head of TA operations and programs at Eaton Corporation. “That made us look at our talent and skills availability and ask ‘where are we headed – and are we ready for that?’ It meant bringing a new type of talent into the organization,” she said. For Eaton, this meant an initiative for upskilling in digitization techniques so that employees would be more prepared for a digital way of doing business. Her team mapped out the new skills plan based on manager feedback, honest self-assessments, and forecasted what would be needed down the line.Those self-assessments, though, can be tricky. “Oftentimes people are not terribly good at assessing their own levels of facility with certain things,” said moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company. “Is there a way to make sure that what people are reporting is actually where they are?”The panel of industry leaders spoke about "How to Use Skills Data to Power Development and Achieve Business Objectives" in a session moderated by Lydia Dishman of Fast CompanyLarger companies, especially, must work hard to not lose track of each individual’s growth. “With 600,000 employees all around the globe, it’s hard to know who can do what and what they are good at,” said Abbe Partee, VP, head of global certified learning at DHL. So DHL created a Career Marketplace, which integrates both its learning and performance system. It includes an individual’s skills data not just from self-assessment but also manager feedback, succession planning meetings, and the combined skill profiles of their current and previous roles.“We want to build a culture of learning and continuous education,” Vujec said. That begins at onboarding and continues throughout an employee’s entire career journey, regardless of their level. It’s also important to recognize, he says, that “the foundational skills of today might not be the foundational skills of tomorrow.” In turn, the onboarding itself should serve as a mindset shift to prepare employees for continuous learning, rather than the expectation that development will stop after a few months on the job.Skills data should be something that is embraced by employees. “We know employees want to grow with the organization, and skills is a great conversation to get that going,” said Lucy Beaumont, solution lead, manager and leader at SHL. The biggest shift she is seeing is that the skills conversation during reviews is less about how employees are succeeding in their current roles, but rather where they want to go in the future. “What is your skills potential, and therefore, what is the right career path for you where can you lean into those strengths? If you do have those gaps, and they're relevant to the job you're doing or the job you want to do, how can we get around that and support that?” she said.Post-pandemic, individuals are more acutely focused on whether they are happy in their current position, so it’s important for employers to facilitate those conversations early and help workers move and grow internally, rather than externally, to boost retention.Beaumont says organizations should not only be measuring skills as they stand, but also tracking how those skills gaps are then bridged over time. While pulse surveys are helpful, they can sometimes have a tough time measuring soft skills, such as leadership. Therefore, the hard data must then be analyzed with a human approach. “We do take broad strokes, but then that aggregate view allows us to prioritize and see what it’s hinting at,” Vujec said. HR can allow the data trends to drive what areas will require a deeper, more complex dive.Nash notes this “human skills” area is, ironically, where emerging technology can be the most useful during employee surveys. “We use AI to go back into the comments to extrapolate, to see what other additional data points we can obtain to understand what skills employees are looking for,” Nash said. Then those themes are linked back to the organization’s business strategy and core values.What skills do the panelists see as most valuable going forward? All of them are tied to transformation. They include data analytics, to boost agility in reacting to needs; digitization, to make business more efficient; a digital mindset when it comes to problem solving; and an overall change in agility. And lastly, the skill of learning itself is vital. “Re-skilling potential: what does it take to be willing and able to learn new skills,” Beaumont shared, is integral in today’s rapidly evolving workforce.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

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