Workers have come to expect employers to provide crisis support in the way of mental health care, flexible schedules, financial assistance, and backup childcare. As we emerge from the worst of the Covid-19 crisis and see new uncertainties ahead, including an economic downturn, the workforce is expecting companies not just to meet workers in the next crisis, but help them prepare for it.

“Sixty-eight percent of employees and 81% of the C-suite say that improving their well-being is more important than advancing their career. Maybe five years ago, that wouldn’t have been the case,” said Michael Heinrich, citing figures published by Deloitte in 2022. Heinrich is the founder and CEO of Garten, a company that stocks workplaces with healthy foods.

“Companies have a large role in supporting the mental health of their workers. In fact, times have shifted, and workers expect this type of support from their employers,” said Brandy Lappi, director of workforce health and employer onsite services at the health care system Kaiser Permanente. “Companies can start by providing resources that foster a psychologically healthy work environment.”

Heinrich and Lappi were a part of a conversation on how employers can prepare workforces for the next crisis, moderated by Vox’s Future Perfect editor Bryan Walsh, part of From Day One’s September virtual conference on “Stress, Anxiety and the Modern Company’s Role in Promoting Well-being.” Key advice from the five expert speakers on the panel:

Train Managers to Care for Employees’ Mental Health

Step one: Train people managers on mental health best practices. Mentally healthy employees are resilient employees, they said. “Get your managers general mental health and well-being training,” Lappi said. “You can do this by partnering with your employee assistance program [EAP]. If you don’t have an employee assistance program that can bring this training to your managers, partner with your health plan, they might be able to help.”

Distribute the workload, said Lappi. Employers’ expectations of managers are getting bigger, and it’s easy to overload them with the responsibility of protecting their employees’ mental health. Once managers are trained, get non-managerial staff involved.

“We establish wellness ambassadors so that all of the knowledge doesn’t stay in one person. We empower a broad network of other employees to be able to take that baton and help their fellow employees.” Lappi has found that an employee in crisis may be more likely to ask their colleague for help than a manager. In some cases, they may be more candid with a peer than a superior. “By distributing that work responsibility, it empowers the entire workforce,” she said.

Set Expectations for Self-Care

Heinrich encouraged employers to set new workplace expectations for taking care of oneself. Garten backs three pillars of health: mind, body, and environment. Heinrich said he inherited those values from his grandmother, a physician in his childhood hometown of Berlin. “Her message to me was very simple: Eat from my organic garden, go to bed on time, exercise regularly, and have a good friendship circle,” he said.

In the service of the three pillars, Garten reimburses its employees for activities like transcendental-meditation coaching, gives Fridays off to pursue well-being activities, and offers plenty of flexible time during the workday to get out and take walks, meditate, or “whatever it is that you choose,” Heinrich said. The company gives well-being bonuses to employees who participate. “Your job is to exercise, sleep well, meditate, eat well, because you show up in a specific way.”

Digital marketing firm Media.Monks has turned its offices into “hubs,” where employees can get work done and get enrichment programming that reinforces well-being of all kinds, like “learning how to buy your first home, learning how to eat better, learning how to meditate, or get some coaching,” said James Kinney, the company’s global chief diversity officer.

Media.Monks is rolling out a bicycle program at all of its office locations that encourages people to bike to work. The agency’s programs double as a means to attract workers back to the office. “We call them hubs versus offices, [and they] give people a reason to come into the office.”

Make a Menu of Your Benefits

To prepare the labor force for the next crisis, employers should plan with specific needs in mind, but solutions to specific problems–like financial crises, for example–shouldn’t be prescribed before the contours of the situation are known. Instead, make a menu employees can pick from. In the case of financial crises, this menu might include emergency relief funds, financial-counseling services, and earned-wage access.

“People’s situations are so variable, so if you start going down that personalization road, then you really need a lot of options. The danger is that you’re increasing complexity for the person on the other end, having to navigate, ‘Which of these things benefit me, and how do I access them?’” said Rachel Schneider, the founder and CEO of Canary, a company that manages emergency relief funds for workers.

The same is true for mental health benefits. “Mental health is not cut-and-dried, but on a continuum,” said Lappi. “Companies can support their workforces by making sure employees have access to a wide range of resources, from self-care tools to short-term interventions to specialty care for people who have mental health conditions or substance-abuse disorders.”

Keep the ultimate objective in mind, said Kinney. “There are so many different ways that we could slice this cake. It’s about honoring, respecting, and supporting those nuances.”

Set Up 24/7 Access to Crisis-Support Benefits

Employers can prepare their workforces for the next crisis by documenting available benefits and making them easy to access anytime, anywhere. Employees should be able to opt for help as needed, said Sheila Krueger, head of global benefits at Zoom Video Communications. Let people know “not just what you have, but how they can access that information around the clock as well.” Krueger called it “self-serve.”

She recommended two types of support: a point person available during work hours to answer questions about benefits and 24-hour digital access to help with instructions on how to use it. “I come from an era where customer service and that personal touch is really, really important, so even though it sometimes pains me to not be able to answer every question through chat, it’s nice to make sure that we’re building out a knowledge base for people so they can get the information whenever they need it,” Krueger said.

Zoom built a tool that “allows our employees to have 24/7 access to live coaches on a myriad of topics. It goes all the way from financial wellness and mental wellness to physical wellness,” she said.

All-hours access with instructions on independent use is another way to avoid prescriptive engagement, Canary’s Schneider said. “How do you locate the control and the choice and the trust in the individual who’s receiving the benefit? It’s great for us to say, ‘We think everybody should exercise, we think everybody should eat right, we think everybody should get a lot of sleep.’ But people have different life constraints, and they’ll each make different choices around that. That has to be okay, too,” she said. “We provide guide rails for what we think is useful for each other and we know that there’s variation within that.”

“The key is trying to make life as simple as possible in very complicated times,” Krueger added.

Create a Community That Can Weather the Next Crisis Together

Crisis support is best delivered through community. According to a paper written by psychologists at Nottingham Trent University in England, “The role of communities in providing social and psychological resources to residents is well-established in social psychology. The Social Identity Approach to Health demonstrates that a range of physical and mental health outcomes result from identification with social groups, constituting a ‘social cure.’ ... These community relationships are also critical during disasters because they motivate cohesive, prosocial responses and coalesce around a sense of solidarity and support.”

Kaiser Permanente’s wellness ambassadors, community-based programming at Media.Monks, human support for crisis benefits at Zoom—these are community supports put in place ahead of the next crisis. For Schneider, emergency-relief funds represent “a really important way to send a message that we’re a community, we’re all in it together, and we have each other’s backs.”

That’s how employers can cultivate resilience, said Kinney. “From a resilience framework perspective, when you allow individuals to have a contribution towards a solution that’s bigger than themselves, we find that engagement is higher and that communities are the keys to solutions.”

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Va. She writes about the workplace, DEI, hiring, and issues faced by women. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others.

Creating a Purposeful Workplace Experience

With the major threat of the pandemic behind us, the big question is unavoidable: should we all return to the office? If you feel like opinions are sharply divided, well, you’re right!“A recent survey from McKinsey found that 52% of employees prefer a mix of both: they love that hybrid workplace, valuing flexibility, but also recognize the benefits of working in person,” said moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company. “And research from Gallup shows that employees who feel engaged in their workplace are more likely to want to return to the office, particularly for team collaboration and relationship building.”Deloitte reports that organizations with a strong focus on employee experience see a productivity increase of up to 20% and it also helps with turnover rates. “Ultimately, it's up to the leaders to set the policy and model what the ideal workplace situation looks like,” Dishman said during an executive panel discussion at From Day One’s October virtual conference.Corporate leaders have been saying it a lot lately: We want to make the office a magnet, not a mandate. They can make that a reality by creating the kind of experience that re-engages workers with their leaders, their colleagues, and their roles. How can employers be intentional about the workplace as a welcoming community and place where workers can fulfill their need for connection and purpose, inclusion and belonging?Encouraging In-person InteractionIt can be hard to encourage in-person interaction, even when back in the office, when employees are plugged into a post-pandemic productivity mindset of sitting at a desk, powering through tasks, and then going home. Providing team leaders with additional support can help them facilitate the organic in-office interactions that so many of us have been missing.“We’re trying to guide leaders with tools. At CSL, we’ve just launched a series of tools called Moments That Matter,” said Kim Robbins, senior director, HR change and culture at CSL Behring. “It’s encouraging leaders to coach their teams about being intentional about the work that needs to happen.” The training helps them understand the difference between moments that require ‘heads down’ focus time alone in the office or at home vs. times when they should be providing face-to-face support, such as when onboarding new hires. “Could we be encouraging people to randomly meet for lunch or come together for events? We’ve positioned all this in a framework about planning the way you work, so that people could be intentional and do some assessments for who might be missing in their network that could really help them feel that greater sense of connectivity and belonging,” Robbins said.Executive panelists from JLL, HR Media & Co., CSL Behring, and Lam Research spoke about "Creating a Purposeful Workplace Experience" (photo by From Day One) Antoinette Hamilton, global head of inclusion & diversity at Lam Research, says that employee resource groups, which first came into prominence as a way to stay virtually connected during Covid, are now another structured way to encourage organic in-person interaction. ERG’s can “be a place to connect, meet some new people, and do something for a great cause,” Hamilton said.Taking an Empathetic Approach“Empathy is a foundational principle of making a workplace someplace you want to go to,” Dishman said. Much of empathy, says Judith Ojo, CEO of HR Media & Co., comes down to open communication. “Some employees are not fond of being in the office. Maybe they can’t get enough work done or they’re constantly interrupted,” Ojo said. Make sure you understand where your employees are coming from and what they are looking for, then respond in kind. For the issues Ojo noted, creating a quiet zone, collaboration space, or wellness area for meditation can go a long way to making an employee feel comfortable, seen, and supported. Such an adaptive workspace can be helpful for fostering inclusion.Empathy can mean different things for different people, and leaders need to be prepared to take the cue from the employees. “I think listening sessions are really important. The key is you’re not trying to solve the problem. You’re listening,” said Tina Leblanc, Ph.D., head of DEI, Americas at JLL. “You listen. You pause. You come up with a solution. And then go back and say, ‘What I heard was…And these are some ideas.’ And then also ask them, ‘What do you feel we can do as a team to be more inclusive?’ That way you’re not putting your own biases [onto it].” Regular employee surveys can encourage employees to come forward.Building the Ideal WorkplaceFor many employees, Dishman says, it seems like a hybrid environment is the ideal. But making organizations cohesive and productive in a hybrid setup can seem far easier on paper than it is in practice. “Building trust within hybrid teams is really crucial to ensure collaboration and productivity,” Hamilton said. Her team does this by leaning into their core values: clear communication, mutual trust and respect, and transparency. Her organization wants its teams to feel cared about, and have created a manager track with training that incorporates inclusive leadership.Senior leaders need to communicate goals and parameters, Dishman says, so that the office continues to be a hub of connection – and so that everyone doesn’t come into the office two days per week only to spend those days on Zoom. “One thing that we have is collaborative conversations, where we bring people throughout the whole office, and even in different buildings, together,” Leblanc said. The company also encourages group lunches on Mondays, coffee on Wednesdays, and desserts on Fridays. The key is to keep thinking, ‘How do I make this more enjoyable?’ to encourage people to get up, get dressed, and commute into work. Employees should leave feeling happy and productive, says Leblanc.Hamilton says managers should be given the tools to be able to articulate the benefits of on-site work. “You’ve failed if you walk into an office and everyone is on a Zoom call,” she said. “We have to be intentional about how we work differently when we come back into in-person environments,” she said. “Managers are the catalyst for getting that done in a consistent way across organizations.”Robbins’ office encourages employees to be intentional about their meetings and not jam their schedules unnecessarily through a collaboration audit. “Do you really need to still be a part of all these meetings? Could you just only attend when there’s an agenda topic relevant to you, where you're a subject matter expert or [the] person to move this goal forward? Or could you delegate it to a junior team member to give them exposure and have greater connectivity in the office?” she said.Her organization has also invited “puppy trucks” from local animal shelters to visit so employees can play with puppies during breaks. Such activities should feel organic, and companies must be careful to avoid scheduling what feels like “mandatory fun.” Again, employees will look to their leaders to set the tone, so managers should be the first ones to dive into activities and bring the team along, Leblanc says. Let them know attendance is optional, but if they do go, ask them to bring a friend. Such participation also makes senior leaders feel more accessible. “Humanize yourself,” Leblanc said.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.

The Flexible Workplace: Making It Fair for Employees and Effective for Companies

As remote workplaces become hybrid and hybrid ones adopt on-site requirements, how do companies ensure that opportunities are available to all? It’s a challenge for many. Workers made to return to the office may feel like they’re not trusted, and those who cannot report to HQ may feel like they miss out on opportunities afforded to their in-office peers.Distributed workplaces have their benefits and drawbacks, of course, but they can still be inclusive, equitable environments for all. This was the topic of conversation during a panel at From Day One’s October virtual conference on modernizing workplaces for a more flexible and inclusive era.Remote and hybrid work has expanded talent pools for employers and opened job opportunities for workers. But with dispersion comes isolation, said TJ Mercer, the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at biotech company AbbVie. He misses the interpersonal connections that form naturally in a shared office environment. “I’ve worked in the organization for two and a half years and never got to see anybody out of the blue Zoom box.” There is value in the passive time before meetings start, when people sitting in a conference room swap stories about their weekends or their families. “Some of that small talk just doesn’t happen as organically or naturally [on Zoom]. And I think that people do miss that from time to time.”Seema Bhansali, VP of employee experience and inclusion at Henry Schein, a company that distributes medical and dental supplies to healthcare providers, sees the benefits of remote and hybrid work for DEI. A lot of folks need to be able to work from home to care for a family member, for example. But she too knows that staying connected is a challenge and, sometimes, a problem. “You don’t really get to see people that often. And what does that do for your wellness in terms of relationships and relationship building? That is one of the balance issues we still have to work out.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the session about "The Flexible Workplace: Making It Fair for Employees and Effective for Companies" (photo by From Day One)To encourage workplace camaraderie, “we bring people together, either virtually or in-person, for ‘connection days,’” Bhansali said. Their most recent connection day was spent building care kits for colleagues who were affected by Hurricane Helene. “We try to do these across the globe in different, culturally relevant ways, with some frequency.” They also gather people virtually for games and good-spirited competitions. “We try to be really intentional about how we are setting the culture,” she explained. “What do we want people to experience? And how are we making sure it’s good for folks who are in person, folks who are hybrid, and folks who are fully remote.”At insurance company Aflac, where employees living within 50 miles of an office are on-site at least three days per week, VP of total rewards Kelli Henderson encourages managers to make the most of those in-person work days. “That’s the day that you have your team meetings,” she said. “There are things that you have to be really purposeful about. It does take a little bit more time, a little bit more coordination and organization, but we have seen the benefits.”Of course, Henderson has felt resistance from employees who don’t want to return to the office at all. “We announced last March that we were going to have a 60% return-to-the-office. Our executive team really saw the importance of bringing people together, having people work together, and we got a ton of pushback from our employees.” Many equated the mandate with mistrust since they have been working fully remote for years. “We had to have a lot of conversations about the importance of coming together to be able to collaborate,” Henderson explained. The company expected some workers to leave as a result of the change, but they ultimately lost fewer than a dozen. “I think as much as you hear griping and complaining, we do work really hard to show the importance of being in the office, so people understand.”Calling the workforce back to the office must be done tactfully, said Michael Watson, senior director at AI-powered talent intelligence platform Eightfold. “It can’t just be about ‘Well, this is the way it used to be, and I’d love to see you now, and I’m the boss,” he said. Such a mandate won’t land well. “That’s not the type of organization that I’d want to work in. But if the organization said, ‘Mike, love the work you’re doing. We would love to see if it’s possible for you to come back in. Let’s have individual conversations. Let’s understand everyone’s circumstances.’” With that request, he says, he may be inclined to change his tune. Allowances should be made discerningly for those who need them: Someone might be a caregiver and needs some flexibility, and employers need to be willing to help them out. “You just can’t have a blanket policy,” he said.If you do have a distributed workforce, managers must be careful to not favor on-site workers over remote ones if their results and productivity is the same. “Those intangibles are really starting to show up,” AbbVie’s Mercer noted. But overall, he’s been pleased with managers’ cognizance, and they’ve lately seen a number of women promoted within the company.Aflac examined the experience for remote workers and found it lacking in some ways, so Henderson and her team made adjustments. “We went as far as testing all of our conference rooms because we realized that it wasn’t [a great experience] for those that were remote–maybe they could see one person or they had trouble hearing–so we really had to beef up the equipment and technology. That’s important to do if you’re going to have a mixture of on-site and off-site employees, so that everybody feels that they have the same seat at the table.”Sponsorship and mentorship can also help level the playing field within a distributed workforce. “Sponsorship is taking somebody’s career under your wing, having the conversations about them in rooms where they aren’t and don’t have access to,” Bhansali explained, proud of their practices at Henry Schein.Mentorship can be especially helpful for the youngest members of the workforce, many of whom started their careers during Covid lockdowns and have little exposure to office environments. The Washington Post reported in October that office etiquette classes are increasingly popular.“How do early career team members really get some of the unwritten rules of the workplace?” Henderson asked. The company set expectations for both technical and soft skills all workers need, then encouraged both sponsorship and mentorship to reinforce those skills and behaviors. Early career development is not the task it used to be, she says. “I think the mistake people make is they just try to use what worked and keep going, and that is not functional today.”At Eightgold, Watson helps workers create a path between where they are and where they want to be, and the appetite is there. “That’s where our business is really booming with these large organizations–just getting a grip on what skills they have, and not just skills, but what skills adjacencies they have.”“Expectations are different than they’ve been in the past,” Bhansali said. “And that’s not just about the hybrid workforce. That’s about a generational change in the workforce.” New workers expect skill development and a chance to exercise those skills, and leaders expect support. “Those layer onto the hybrid conversation in ways that folks don’t realize, but we have to put all these things together.”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.

A New Model for Inclusive Engagement, Built on Trust and Innovation

Most people picture farmers on tractors plowing fields as part of traditional agriculture. However, now the use of iPads, drones, and AI can map fields and direct smart tractors. These solutions are easing the workload of farmers and attracting non-traditional talent.At From Day One’s October virtual conference, Courtney White, head of human resources at BASF, discussed several of these modern-day farming solutions that redefine agricultural work. His goal at BASF is to attract a wider scope of talent into the agricultural industry.“We think that this notion of feeding the world is amazing in itself, but a lot of folks don’t think about it that simply,” White said. “They don’t think about the technology that goes into it and the fact that we need people from a variety of backgrounds in order to deliver what we refer to at BASF as solutions to do the biggest job on Earth.”White discussed BASF’s employee engagement model, emphasizing that a foundational culture of trust is essential for sustaining productivity. Data and science-driven innovation opens up fresh opportunities to engage and attract both internal talent and non-traditional external talent, says White.Trust and an Employee Engagement ModelBASF’s effective employee engagement model comprises six fundamental values: safety, reward & recognition, development, empowerment, inclusion, and purpose.Courtney White of BASF was interviewed by Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton of the Denver Post (photo by From Day One)White reflected on an experience with a millennial employee, engaging with and navigating through their generational differences according to those values. “[H]ow do we lean into the freshness of what each generation brings to the table, and then where we have differences, the question is, how do we work through them?”Lastly, establishing rapport through transparent communication is the foundation of trust. White stressed that ambiguity challenges trust, making it essential to communicate with others. This employee engagement model upholds inclusivity, development, leadership, productivity, and trust.Sustainable Agricultural InnovationBASF is an organization combining scientific models with innovation to create sustainable solutions. Its services include agricultural innovation to help farmers overcome environmental and economic challenges while producing more sustainable food.By 2030, the organization will have implemented more than 30 major research and development projects providing seeds, crop protection products, and digital services for sustainable agriculture solutions, says White. The organization projects that farmers will have to feed 9.7 billion people by 2050 and that further digitalization will be necessary to achieve this.Some other examples of digitalization include a Smart Spraying Solution that “recognizes weeds and allows a precise application of herbicides, which maximizes productive land use and reduces the environmental impact by lowering the volume of herbicides applied.” BASF has also invested in indoor growing systems like hydroponic systems for growing lettuce in any location to avoid long transport distances and cut CO2 emissions.Modernizing agricultural work via digitalization involves the contribution of the non-traditional worker: this is why investing in the innovation pipeline through engagement and inclusivity is crucial to the organization.The company invests in externships and works with youth leaders to inspire people to consider agricultural work. Externships invite non-traditional talent to spend a week learning about agricultural innovation at BASF. Then, they are offered roles.Next, by engaging youth leadership in groups such as Agricultural Future of America (AFA) and Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Related Sciences (MANRRS), BASF invests in the innovation pipeline as early as elementary school and extends to college students.“They have the tagline, we’re changing the face of agriculture,” White said of one group he works with. “And I appreciate that so much because I think behind it comes this great spirit of, how is it that we can be a part of the change that agriculture is going through?”Stephanie Reed is a freelance news, marketing, and content writer. Much of her work features small business owners throughout diverse industries. She is passionate about promoting small, ethical, and eco-conscious businesses.

How Employers Can Prepare Workers and Managers for the Next Crisis

RELATED STORIES

Creating a Purposeful Workplace Experience

The Flexible Workplace: Making It Fair for Employees and Effective for Companies

A New Model for Inclusive Engagement, Built on Trust and Innovation