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Why Being “Fiercely Authentic” Is Part of a Company’s New Set of Values

Marta Pateiro, head of organizational development, diversity, inclusion and culture at Pernod Ricard, cites her immigrant background as being instrumental in her approach to corporate culture. Her mother arrived in the U.S. from Spain with an infant Marta, just $200 in her pocket, and little understanding of the English language.“That cultural perspective and growing up with a family that struggled early on but did everything they could to live that American dream is what shaped me and how I think about culture – always appreciating people’s perspectives, where they come from, understanding who they are, how they were raised, and what’s important to them,” Pateiro said.Now, Pernod Ricard, a long-established company, is rolling out a new set of values to define its culture, based on employee feedback and its corporate evolution. During a fireside chat at From Day One’s September virtual conference, Pateiro spoke about how inclusion, connection, and a passion for challenge are being woven into the fabric of the organization.Seizing the Current Cultural MomentPateiro has always been drawn to companies that encourage authenticity. “I always think about aligning myself to organizations that give you that opportunity to show up as who you are, and that celebrate differences,” Pateiro said. But pre-pandemic, that was harder to achieve, she says. “We were living in a time where it was a very different mindset,” Pateiro said. During and after Covid, technological advances in corporate communications and connectivity have allowed employees to engage on a deeper level and access services that can be more personalized.Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton of the Denver Post spoke with Marta Pateiro of Pernod Ricard during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)Corporate values are also becoming increasingly important to job candidates, especially younger generations. “We hope that drives more candidates to us,” she said. One way the organization brings its values to life is through videos on its career website to make sure it’s attracting the right talent.Launching Updated Corporate ValuesPernod Ricard recently launched its new set of corporate values, while also reminding the team that some of them are not actually so new, referring to them as “legacy values.” “They’re still tied to things that are important to the business, but they're updated to reflect where we are today in this global economy. It’s an evolution,” she said.Pateiro suggests that most companies review their values every five to ten years, just as Pernod Ricard did. It’s important to ask questions like, “Does this actually match up with what we’re doing today? Is this aligned to our business priorities? Do they align to our people?” she said.For the bottom-up approach, they collected employee feedback in a uniquely personal way. “They asked employees to send videos of a day in the life as a Pernod Ricard employee,” Pateiro said, citing videos that came from the factory floor, corporate offices, and work-from-home set ups. Over 3,000 videos came in, with employees citing how they feel about the company and what is most important to them.For the top-down approach, “the leadership team got together to say, ‘Where do we see ourselves in the next three to five years, from a business strategy standpoint? And so, in order to be successful, what does that look like?’” Pateiro said.After data collection and intense brainstorming and analytics, the company came up with four core values:Grounded in the real. “We are a business that has soul,” Pateiro said. The phrase also cleverly refers to how the liquor company literally makes its products, with plants that come from the ground. Fiercely authentic. “Everyone was proactive in sharing how important it was to feel like they could bring their whole selves to work. That was a key theme that came up in almost every video,” Pateiro said.Connected beyond borders. Employee videos came in from 770 locations around the world. “We are global, and that's important. We need to make sure that we are open to the world and open to understanding the different diversities and perspectives that come with that,” Pateiro said.Passion for challenge. “It is a different time coming out of Covid,” Pateiro said. “There are different socioeconomic changes that impact how we are doing business today.”Becoming “Fiercely Authentic”“What does it mean to be ‘fiercely authentic’ on the job?” asked moderator Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, neighborhoods reporter for The Denver Post. It doesn’t mean workers can just boldly say whatever they are thinking without consequence. Instead, “it just gives them the permission to feel psychologically safe,” said Pateiro. “We still have our integrity around respect for one another, understanding that we are still colleagues, and we still need to be professional, but making sure that they feel empowered.”The word choice for the values was carefully aligned to the language used by employees in the videos, reflecting the intention and emotion behind their feedback.Measuring the ImpactPateiro said Pernod Ricard is scheduling pulse checks over the next few years to monitor the success of the new value system. After launching the values at a town hall, a survey was immediately sent out to see if employees understood what was happening. “In the coming quarters [we’ll ask], ‘Is this living up to what you were expecting?’ How are you receiving it?’” Then a new category regarding culture will be added to the annual employee survey.Defining, launching, and monitoring values is not a communications department task, Pateiro says, but instead falls into the category of change management. “It’s [about] how you change mindsets and how you change your customers’ perspectives,” she said. “It’s living it through the products, the solutions, the things that you’re offering, as well as how you’re showing up in the marketplace.”Ultimately, Pateiro emphasizes, the values should be driven by the employees – whether you are working with a long-established corporation or a startup. “It’s your workforce that makes your culture,” she said. “The organizations that do the best are the ones that tie that cultural framework to every part of the ecosystem.”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.

BY Katie Chambers | October 02, 2024

Full-Cycle Recruiting: How to Hire Top Talent With a Holistic Approach

The U.S. labor market has trailed expectations this year. The number of open jobs has been sinking since the beginning of 2024, and it’s getting harder to find a job, applicants say. Job seekers are frustrated not only because there are fewer open roles, but because hiring processes are so poor. LinkedIn is full of users writing about their terrible job-seeking experiences with confusing or unusually protracted hiring processes, fake job postings, and ghosting recruiters.Kim Stevens is the manager of talent acquisition at Lever, an applicant tracking system. She’s spent a decade in talent acquisition, working across industries, and at both B2B and B2C companies. She says it doesn’t have to be this way, and employers have an obligation to do better–by their recruiters and their applicants.“Full-cycle recruiting is a holistic approach,” Stevens said during a From Day One webinar on how full-cycle recruiting can help employers hire top talent. “Instead of passing candidates from one recruiter to the next to move them through the process, there is a single recruiter managing the process from the initial job requisition all the way to how new hires are integrated into the company.”Many companies have already adopted a full-cycle process, but some are still stuck on old models, like a sourcing-led path where one recruiter brings in the talent then candidates are passed among the team; very early on, the hiring experience is interrupted. For job candidates, full-cycle recruiting should be unnoticeable. “Having one person manage all of it does create a more seamless transition for the candidate and one point of contact. If it’s done well, it’s very good as far as the candidate experience goes.”Kim Stevens of Lever by Employ led the webinar (photo courtesy of Stevens)A full-cycle approach is important now because the labor market is so tight, she said. “We have so many [job seekers] in the market, and we can empathize with that and embed that in our thought process when we’re creating processes within our [applicant tracking system] to not only manage the volume, but to focus on all of the different parts of the process. We should ask ‘How can they work for us, and how can they work for the candidate?’ And you really have to do that with automation.”Stevens spent a year on the job market as a candidate herself and saw how brutal the process can be for job seekers. “It made me think about all the times where I could have done my job better; I owed it to candidates to give them a better experience. I needed to reset and really value what my job is and the impact that it can make on people, their lives, and their livelihood.”She also felt the importance of having a single point of contact at the hiring company. “I saw the good and the bad and the ugly when it came to the candidate experience.” Whether it was being passed around among a recruiting team or having to create a username and password for every application (even if it was at the same company).“Being in the job market is stressful enough. If we can mitigate some of those steps and automate and customize, it’s such an important way to create that seamless experience for the company and for the candidate. There are so many different layers within your ATS that you can customize, like candidate communications, ensuring that they’re not only getting followed up with after they apply but that they’re getting updates about where we are in the process.”Full-cycle recruiting teams, juggling multiple activities and multiple candidates at once, have to be really good at time management. New adopters may require training before they’re ready to fly solo. A good applicant tracking system, and maybe even a little artificial intelligence, can help with multitasking, but “technology should be viewed as an enhancement, not a replacement for that human interaction,” Stevens said.For instance, full-cycle can be enhanced by some smart, time-saving changes. “It was ingrained into me by a previous leader of mine, that if you’re having to do something more than once and it’s the same task: Automate it,” she said. “If you’re getting the same questions about–let’s say, benefits–then create something that’s automated, where you can just reply with a signature.”The recruiting process is often the first impression a company will make on job seekers. And if it’s a bad one, the relationship can sour–or solidify–as soon as it begins. A good ATS doesn’t solve all problems. Other factors, like a company’s employer brand will make it easier–or harder–to recruit the workforce you need. Stevens recalled working in university recruiting for a past employer whose employer brand was so strong that when she walked onto the University of Texas at Austin campus, she felt like a celebrity. Students wanted to see what the company would do next, they wanted to talk to recruiters. Of course, recruiting is a huge part of that reputation.Every step of the process is an opportunity for thoughtful interaction with job candidates. It’s a reflection of your company and what the employee experience is like. “There’s so much to say about a full-cycle recruiting process, but also an ATS that enables that process and makes it more streamlined, especially given how many candidates in the market are already stressed. It’s so important as leaders and as companies to keep that in mind. The reality of our market is that we have so many people in it–how can we really make sure that our ATS is working for them too?”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Lever by Employ, 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, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

By Katie Chambers | October 01, 2024

Beyond Birth: How Employers Can Invest in the Postpartum Period

More and more organizations are realizing that providing fertility benefits is essential to support and retain employees who are looking to start their family-building journey. However, a key period may be getting overlooked in the process: postpartum. How are organizations supporting employees after they give birth and return to work?During a From Day One webinar, experts from Ovia Health discussed the pregnancy and postpartum risk factors that can influence long-term health outcomes, as well as the ways employers can invest in meaningful end-to-end digital health solutions that support employees throughout their entire care continuum.Health in the ‘Fourth Trimester’Moderator Sarah Begley, director of member content at Atria, says that the postpartum period is often referred to as “the fourth trimester.” This time can require just as much special care and attention as the months of pregnancy. “The government has expanded [the postpartum period] to 12 months,” said Corrinne Hobbs, general manager and VP, employer market organization at Ovia Health. This is a significant and relatively recent change in thinking.“When we originally thought about postpartum, it was geared toward the six weeks after birth, whether that was vaginal delivery or C-section,” said Leslie Saltzman, chief medical officer at Ovia Health. “At the end of that period, the mother would go back to their OBGYN or their nurse midwife, be cleared and told ‘everything’s fine. You can go back to your normal life.’” In reality, Saltzman says, the first six weeks, when everyone is giving the mother time and attention, is the easy part. It’s what comes next that can be the challenge. “The exhaustion in those periods after can be worse,” she said, as can the complications that appear later after the stress-test of childbirth.“In the U.S., many of us have heard about the high rates of maternal death that we have compared to our peer nations. 65% of those deaths actually happen in the postpartum period,” Saltzman said, noting that fatal complications can arise when mothers are back home and more or less alone. She notes infections, high blood pressure, cardiovascular complications like cardiomyopathy or blood clots, and mental health issues like postpartum depression or psychosis are conditions that need to be monitored and addressed during this period. And complications diagnosed during pregnancy such as preeclampsia or gestational diabetes can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in women for the rest of their lives.What Postpartum Care Looks LikeThe American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology recommends that every person that has a delivery has contact with their provider, whether that's OBGYN or a midwife, within three weeks, with ongoing care as needed up until a final visit at around 12 weeks. “What that’s translating to for most people is a phone call followed by a single visit,” Saltzman said. Only about 60% of people even go to that postpartum visit, Saltzman says. Many people don’t even have 12 weeks off for parental leave, making it even more challenging to attend the appointment. Most daycare centers won’t even accept children until they are at least six weeks old. “You’re still trying to figure out how to feed your baby at that point,” Begley noted. And because we’re living less and less in multigenerational homes, Salztman says, essential knowledge in baby care is not being passed down.Leaders from Ovia Health spoke with Sarah Begley during the From Day One webinar (photo by From Day One)Among those that do attend the checkup: “After you have that visit with your OBGYN and you get clear that your cervix is normal, your incision looks okay, and talk about ongoing needs for birth control… New mothers are then left in the system where it is their responsibility to identify if they have a complication and try to figure out whether that needs care or not. And then have to make the appointments and go,” Saltzman said. “This is where the existing system doesn’t really meet the needs.”How Digital Solutions Can Bridge the GapDigital healthcare programs through an employer can provide structured and personalized access to information on health and baby care at this crucial time in a parent’s life that gives them, Hobbs says. A digital solution can help a person record their symptoms and then provide insight into what might be happening and whether to seek care, potentially saving them the time and expense of a doctor’s visit, Saltzman says.These digital solutions, Hobbs says, should include information on physical recovery and support, postpartum depression screenings, lactation coaching, sleep training, and appointment management for the parent and the baby, including vaccination schedules. “A tool that can help you manage all of that while you're going through this physical, emotional, and mental transition would be tremendously helpful,” Hobbs said.Ovia Health’s Postpartum SolutionIn addition to the digital solutions mentioned above, Hobbs says Ovia Health’s platform also provides information on potential pregnancy complications and associated risk factors, such as atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, which is “one of the most expensive health conditions.” The platform incorporates all potential aspects of life tied to pregnancy. “Our solution addresses reproductive life, planning and contraception, pelvic floor recovery, return to work, social and financial planning, social determinants to health and equity, and navigation of care,” Hobbs said.“Our solution starts with recovery, so we are meeting people where they are in their individualized journey,” Hobbs said. Symptom trackers encourage people to engage with the platform’s dashboard daily to provide checklists and guidance along every step of the way. Behind the tracking are clinical algorithms primed to notice an impending issue. Critical alerts let the person know right away if something is abnormal, with care team members, who are licensed clinical staff, ready to respond and guide the parent through next steps.The platform also encourages a segue back from OBGYN care to primary care and routine screenings since. Mothers often neglect their own basic non-pregnancy related healthcare once children arrive, Saltzman says.Building an Inclusive Postpartum PolicyEmployers, Begley says, should be “shifting their workplace culture to be more inclusive of those returning from maternity leave, parental leave, or being a new parent.” This includes several key factors, as described below.Paid parental leave is crucial to postpartum recovery. “It really helps women to overcome or traverse the physical, emotional, and mental needs of being a parent,” Hobbs said. “Living in the United States, there's not a standard or universal paid parental leave requirement. So, employers are left to decide whether they can and will offer that.” This means women especially are often required to return to work during those first 12 months when they are still physically and mentally recovering. It’s worth noting, Hobbs says, “that women who take paid parental leave have lower rates of postpartum depression. And women of color are more likely to have jobs where paid leave is not offered at all.” Employers looking to cultivate a diverse workforce would do well to invest in paid parental leave whenever possible, for as long as possible.Flexibility and inclusivity in spaces also matters. Physical space for pumping and breastfeeding also builds a welcoming and safe environment for employees who are in-person. Flexible scheduling to allow for childcare, healthcare appointments, and other issues is another way employers can support new parents–without cutting into their sick time.Management training is important to make sure leaders understand parental policies and how to interact with workers in an inclusive manner, regardless of their family situation, can ease the process for the whole team. In turn, employees also need to be trained on how to communicate their needs.Lastly, transition plans should be put in place to allow employees on leave to be able to ensure their continued professional development and assignments. “We're often afraid to step away because we feel like it might set us back. Adjusting the culture to support the employee and having that manager training to create that inclusive environment related to situations like this are critically important,” Hobbs said. “It really improves the workforce culture around [pregnancy] and postpartum.”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.

Employees Have Higher Expectations for Career Development: How Companies Can Respond

Can companies rooted in tradition and rich cultural legacies adapt to today’s work culture and meet employees’ expectations? “One of the misnomers of longevity in companies is that they’re stuck in their ways,” Cindy Ryan, the head of human resources at MassMutual, told Harvard Business Review’s editor in chief, Adi Ignatius. “Companies with longevity are the ones that must be agile. We have to meet the changing needs of our policy holders and our employees.”Ryan spoke with Ignatius about workforce agility and development during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Boston conference. At MassMutual, one of the ways they stay agile is by fostering an environment where people are encouraged to learn and continually look for ways to improve and challenge the status quo.This creates an environment of learning and growth in which employees recognize that mistakes are part of the process and that their efforts are appreciated. “Whenever we do something, we often say, ‘How could we have done this better? How can we do this differently in the future?’ That’s a big piece of it,” Ryan said.This mindset directly impacts how leaders are trained, especially in the wake of Covid, which shifted employee and leadership expectations. “I think the pandemic put into perspective the things that were most important to [employees] and how they wanted to grow,” said Ryan. Post-pandemic, “most workforces are now dispersed, leaders must introduce new techniques and technologies into the way the lead as employee expectations are different. Setting clear accountability and expectations are key; coaching becomes super important,” she said.The Power of ConnectionTo help support workers through all the changes post-pandemic and support the desire for flexibility, MassMutual worked on a new approach to their hybrid schedule. Employees report into the office three days a week, with two anchor days and one day of their choice. Every Friday the entire company works from home. Additionally, each year there are three company-wide work-from-home weeks, and for four weeks out of the year, employees can work from anywhere, says Ryan.Cindy Ryan, head of HR at MassMutual, was interviewed during the fireside chat While workers appreciate the flexibility, they also understand the importance of connecting. “There’s power in community, power in celebrating, power in being physically together, there’s power in coaching,” said Ryan. “The piece that isn’t talked about enough is development as some of the most effective ways that people learn are through coaching and by learning from others. During the pandemic we were focused on running the business and now [development and learning] are a more important piece of the conversation.”Employee Well-Being Is Top of Mind Our leaders are encouraged to better understand the well-being of employees. “Leaders need to listen to what’s important to the individual, to understand employees have different needs,” said Ryan. “We’re meeting people at various life stages.”MassMutual offers a well-being wallet, a set amount of money per year for the employee to use for qualifying well-being related needs. Another way leaders can advocate for the well-being of their direct reports is to stress on the importance of PTO and encourage them to use the benefits that are provided.Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Boston and Milan.

Building a Culture of Well-Being in the Workplace

Several high-profile employers have lately dropped their hybrid work policies and are calling workers back to the office, and some are doing so in the name of culture. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is facing a potential “employee revolt” after he announced in mid-September that all workers would have to be in-office five days a week starting January 2025, reversing a policy in place since the pandemic. In the official announcement, Jassy claimed the decision is intended to strengthen the company culture.His reasoning may be misguided. According to research from Gallup, the way employees are managed is four times more important than their work location when it comes to employee engagement and well-being. “Essentially, it’s the relationships workers have–with their coworkers, managers, leaders and organization–that are significantly evolving,” Gallup’s report reads. “Many organizations are radically retooling the ways they do business, leaving many employees, including managers, stressed and disconnected.”The employee experience is felt at the team level, said Steve Arntz, co-founder and CEO of workplace social connection platform Campfire. “Probably 70% or more of what you experience from a culture standpoint is built on your team, with your manager, with the people you work with directly.”Arntz was part of a discussion on cultivating well-being through workplace culture during From Day One’s September virtual conference, where panelists discussed preserving culture during major disruptions and how to find opportunities for reinforcing well-being.Protecting Employee Well-Being During Times of Great ChangeGuiding and preserving company culture is especially difficult during enterprise-wide changes, like mergers and acquisitions or major leadership overhauls.Cile Lucas is the director of culture and team member experience at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. When HPE prepares for acquisitions, she works with the M&A and the corporate development teams to assess how the workforces will mesh. Using standardized questionnaires, they assess both HPE and the incoming company, “so we know the potential issues we could have when those employees join, and we can put mitigation plans in place.” Lucas said that, most importantly, she focuses on what the teams have in common, not what separates them.HPE is slated to acquire networking firm Juniper Networks later this year, bringing in 11,000 new employees. “There’s been a huge culture assessment,” Lucas said. “We sent an extensive survey to our employees, talking about our specific culture. We have a culture workstream that’s part of the integration team to talk about, ‘How do we marry those two? How do we need to rethink what our culture looks like based on their behaviors?’”VF Corporation–the company that owns a cache of footwear and apparel companies including Timberland, Vans, and The North Face–saw a major leadership change in the last year, and in the headwinds, the HR team held fast to the company values, trying to maintain a sense of consistency for employees. “Talent can be an incredible way to embed, support, and elevate culture,” said Lauren Guthrie, the company’s chief belonging and talent officer. “It’s really important to make sure we’re building leaders that are culture-builders as well, that they’re thinking about the culture of their most immediate teams, and that they’re considering their leadership development and acumen an important part of their performance–just like any other easy-to-quantify aspect of technical performance.”Listening to Employee Resource GroupsAt one of the world’s largest data center operations, Equinix, the VP of global rewards Todd Cowgill works with employee resource groups to improve the company’s benefits packages and make them more user-friendly.“Some of our groups were having challenges utilizing the services,” he said. “So for key problems and situations, we built out use cases and storyboards.” For instance, for employees dealing with long-term health matters, Cowgill’s team identified all sources of support: the people within the organization who can help, the company’s short-term and long-term disability programs, and available psychological support services. “We had all the services that the people needed, they just couldn’t figure out how to stitch it all together,” Cowgill said. It was their ERGs that showed them those services needed stitching.The panelists spoke about "Cultivating Well-Being Through Workplace Culture"Workers are a valuable resource for discovering gaps in well-being resources, like access to medical care, preventative medicine, and early interventions. Employees should be empowered to ask for the things they need, said Victoria Lee, the SVP and chief medical officer at Lucid Diagnostics, a company that offers testing for esophageal cancer risk. But, like Cowgill found, not all workers will readily know what to press for or what’s already available to them. “Education is really critical when people think about workplace well-being and mental health. A lot of people don’t really think about disease until they’re suffering from symptoms,” said Lee.She believes employers have an obligation to fill the gaps created by healthcare deserts. For instance, depending on location, some workers may have access to highly specialized screening tests, while others may be hundreds of miles away from care. “So, how do we level the playing field when it comes to something as important as preventative medicine, making it accessible to everyone?” Lee posed. Lucid brings testing to offices, so even those without local access to care can get screenings they need.ERGs are rich channels for identifying well-being needs, but they’re easily overburdened. At VP Corporation, Guthrie retooled the company’s resource groups to reallocate work and divert responsibilities to the right parties. Their ERGs had become “catch-alls” for culture transformation, policy reinvention, and brand feedback. They even stood in for consumer focus groups.“We wanted to re-anchor them around the promise that every associate in our company should be able to feel an authentic sense of belonging and be celebrated for the uniqueness they bring to the organization,” she said. Brand leaders are now assigned ro consumer engagement and brand feedback strategies, the company’s DEI team is in charge of getting employee feedback and converting those ideas into policies, and ERGs have a new name: belonging communities. “Let’s call them what they are,” Guthrie said. “They sit at the intersection of associate experience and well-being through the lens of belonging.”Very often, balancing employee well-being against business goals takes a good deal of commitment from HR, but considerably more from business leaders who answer to the P&L. “You don’t max out productivity and preserve well-being at the same time,” said Arntz. As the CEO of a venture-backed company, Artnz says he’s guilty of trying to achieve both peak output and peak well-being. “We have investors, we’ve raised money, and we need to provide a return on that investment.” To stave off burnout, don’t aim for the maximum, aim for the optimum, he said. Something closer to 70% is a better goal than 100%. “Let’s keep space for connection, for collaboration, for innovation, for well-being, and for breathing.”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, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

How to Upgrade Company Culture—And Make It Stick

“For years, I had a front row seat for how lack of culture or toxic culture can have an incredibly negative impact on an organization. The seat that I had was defending organizations in the court of law, in front of judges and juries,” said Elaine Becraft, the head of human resources for Siemens Healthineers, a branch of Siemens that makes the machines that carry out a lot of the diagnostic blood and urine testing around the world. She learned that the distance from no culture to toxic culture isn’t very far.Becraft, a lawyer by training, was no longer interested in playing defense as problems materialized, nor did she want to lead the clean-up crew following a culture-related disaster. She wanted to be proactive in creating a motivating and inclusive culture, so she joined HR. “I felt like we could do better.”I interviewed Becraft for a fireside chat during From Day One’s September virtual conference on creating a healthy and durable culture. She told the story of how the company upgraded its company culture, and instituted processes to make it last.How to Rewrite Company Culture–And Make It StickIf Becraft was to avoid playing defense or repeating post-incident disaster relief, she knew that Siemens Healthineers had to upgrade its culture: to state its purpose, name its values, and identify the behaviors that reinforce them. But where to begin?“So often you see companies where it’s top-down: Maybe somebody in the C-suite is in charge of developing culture, or the CEO says, ‘I’ve got this great idea, let’s just run with it.’ We went about it a little bit differently.” Becraft is responsible for 15,000 employees in more than 60 countries; to change the culture, she needed buy-in from more than just the C-suite. So she found high-potential talent much lower in the organization and brought them in to debate the purpose and vision for the company.Ultimately, they needed to arrive at something that people would enthusiastically adopt, that “when somebody says, ‘Why do you work for Siemens Healthineers? Why are you excited to be there?’ is the kind of rallying cry that gets employees really excited.” They arrived at this: Pioneer breakthroughs in healthcare for everyone, everywhere, sustainably. That was step one.Step two was identifying the company’s values: Listen first, win together, learn passionately, step boldly, and own it. They deliberately wrote them in the understood first person–that is, “I” and “we” statements–“so my team can come together and talk about whether we are exhibiting these values. At the end of each year in my performance review, I have to talk about whether I’m exhibiting these values.”It takes more than a memo from the top to spread the culture and its reinforcing behaviors throughout a global organization. To grow culture rhizomes–a live system that perpetuates a healthy culture season after season–find the influencers. “Sometimes the influencers are obvious in the org chart, they’re at the top, but sometimes they’re not as obvious, and you have to get to know who’s going to carry your message because they believe in it too.”Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza interviewed Elaine Becraft of Siemens Healthineers during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)If the company was to reinforce and reward employees who embody the company purpose and values, then they’d have to reinstate formal performance reviews, which had been retired almost a decade ago, long before Becraft arrived.Of course, change management is easier imagined than done. When leaders told her they wanted a formal mechanism to hold their teams accountable to the new values, Becraft assumed they were asking for performance reviews. It was a humbling experience for the new HR head.“I left out of the gates with my team full of gusto to make this happen,” she said. “But a lot of people in the organization resisted the idea of reintroducing performance ratings.” The strongest resistance came from HR teams. “I thought, they just don’t get it. For 30 seconds, I allowed myself that awful thought. Then I realized that I don’t get it. These are the individuals who, eight years prior, had been the face of this radical evolution revolution to get rid of performance ratings, and now I was asking them to do something different that could be perceived as failure.” She had to slow down and convince the HR teams the idea was worthwhile.Despite the good and necessary attitude change, Becraft wishes she hadn’t let the naysayers have so much of her attention. “At one point, a senior leader said to me, ‘Why are you trying to win every single person over with this? You never will.’” At a certain point, you have to decide what you’re going to do, then do it. There will always be someone who refuses to change their mind.“It’s not possible–and it’s not even appropriate–to strive for one culture, especially in a global organization like ours,” she said, reflecting on the enterprise-level change. “But our common language has really helped us to be consistent. We have our purpose. We know why we jump out of bed, or at least why we log in, in the morning. We are there to impact patients in a positive way. We also have the wording, the vernacular, the phraseology that we use in our values. We practice them with each other, and that really helps.”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, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

How HR Can Become a Strategic Partner in Annual Business Planning

Poor planning returns poor results. In a company where the workforce is unprepared to meet shifting business needs, organizational performance can drop by as much as 26 percentage points, Gartner found in 2024. Human resources is responsible for delivering a workforce fit to meet the firm’s goals–no matter how fickle–so when business leaders plan poorly, or plan alone, HR teams struggle.John Bernatovicz is the founder of human capital management platform Willory and the author of HR Like a Boss: Your Guide to Amazingly Awesome HR. He believes the buck doesn’t stop with HR or talent acquisition; the business plan is a shared responsibility. “If you don’t feel like your company is effective in annual planning, look no further than your CEO, your board, or other key executives responsible for driving that critical business function,” he said during a From Day One webinar on how to become a strategic HR partner in your global annual business planning. Most executives have a vision for the future of the company, but many fail to consider how their workforce will get them there.Just 32% of talent acquisition leaders feel like strategic partners to their organization, according to 2024 research from the Josh Bersin Co. Business leaders that consider workforce planning immaterial are an acute frustration for TA.Human capital has always been a vital business asset, so why is now the time for HR to insist on having a place in annual planning? According to Sofia Moll, head of global talent management at HiBob, the effects of the pandemic continue to linger over working models, still influencing where and how talent is found. Employee expectations have also shifted, not just regarding compensation and benefits, but also career trajectories and skill development. Further, artificial intelligence is already coloring the skills employees are developing–and setting new standards for productivity.Becoming a Strategic Partner in Annual PlanningEarning a place in annual planning requires human resources people to think like business people, panelists agreed. HR may not think in numbers or spreadsheets, but executives certainly do, Bernatovicz says. Unless talent acquisition learns to link workers to revenue and teach executives to do the same, they won’t prove their relevance. “I see oftentimes that companies look at the bottom of the P&L first, not realizing that profit is an outcome of a number of unique things that are going to happen and run effectively in a strategic manner.”The panelists spoke about "Becoming an HR Strategic Partner in Your Global Business Annual Planning" during the From Day One webinar (photo by From Day One)“They need that data to understand where you’re coming from,” said Lane McFarland, senior director of talent management at data intelligence company Flashpoint. “Maybe the finance team just needs to hear the cost savings initiatives or the vacancy savings during the hiring period. Maybe the CEO just needs to know how many [positions] you’ve fulfilled by department.”Strategic thinkers ask good questions and answer them. Know the short-term and long-term business goals–and whether you have the workforce to achieve them, McFarland said. Inventory the skills of your team and find the gaps. If you don’t have what you need, can you develop those skills, or should you hire from the outside? Consider potential labor market shifts and how they might bump up against those plans. Could overall market swings change the business needs in the coming year? What are the consequences of hiring now versus later? What are the risks of over-hiring? What happens when you overload a manager and it pushes them out the door? If you hire in less expensive markets to save money, can you properly support those employees? What about regulatory requirements? Business leaders rely on their HR partners to inform them on the labor market and advise on how it will help or hinder achieving business goals.It’s not enough to be only a dollars-and-cents business contributor: Trust and influence are ultimately won through relationships. Start with the business leaders you already know, said Moll. That might be the sales director or head of content marketing. “Just get on their calendar for 15 minutes or 20 minutes every other week or every month to talk about what they care about,” she said. “Start learning about their business: What are the metrics that they are looking at? What are the pain points they’re experiencing?”Bernatovicz recommended starting with the finance team in particular. “Develop a relationship with [the finance practitioner] at whatever level you’re at, so if you’re the head of HR, then that’s the CFO. If you’re a manager, then find a manager. Get to know them as individuals, what makes them tick, why they’re working at the company, what they do outside of work.”As you embed yourself with your business counterparts, track the impact of decisions made about the workforce and provide regular updates, Moll advised. Know your time to hire and turnover, the cost of recruiting versus training versus internal moves, the success rate of onboarding, and how long it takes. Then involve business teams in your work, inviting them to work alongside you in investigating turnover rates, pipeline problems, or onboarding results.Be a helper and be a problem-solver, said McFarland. “Even if your team is split up between a people experience side and a talent side, talent acquisition specialists can be the ear for another team member, even if they just need someone to vent to or help them through difficulty or bounce an idea off of.”“They have to first see you as a partner that they can trust,” Moll said. “That takes time, and that means building relationships a little bit at a time, and that means maybe not participating in workforce planning this year, but you’re building to be part of it the next one.” The good news, McFarland noted, is that the relationship between HR and business is already becoming more strategic, and the direction of travel is positive.“Workforce planning is a tool, not a result. It’s not about having the perfect plan. That doesn’t exist,” Moll said. A plan is a guide. When you have a guide, you can adapt when things change. And things will always change.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, HiBob, 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, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Regenerating Your Leaders and Teams With Sustainable Energy

While compensation and benefits are important, they’re not the only factors that influence job satisfaction. Seventy percent of preventable leavers say that if their general work culture had been better, they would have stuck around. In other words, if the energy was better, they’d stay. And engaged employees could save U.S. companies trillions of dollars.Andrew Deutscher, the founder of Regenerate, knows about energy–especially how a work environment that drains you of energy can lead to disengaged employees. After a career in sales, marketing, and media leading to burnout, he learned the value of understanding energy and managing it to create sustainable performance for himself. He started Regenerate to spread this message to other companies, their leaders, and employees to help “develop energy-inspired sustainable practices to transform their workplaces.”Deutscher told me during an interview for From Day One that his goal at Regenerate is to “teach people how to better manage their energy inside of a lot of demands and accelerated burnout in this era of work.” Poor Leadership, Not Bad WorkersDeutscher points to high turnover among leaders because many companies don’t provide proper support, and the high turnover often occurs because leaders are overstretched and their capacity is drained.“Part of the reason that engagement is the core issue for so many people around burnout and turnover, is because leaders are so busy and under the weight of a lot of responsibility. If you’re running a full time job [while] also having to lead, which is a full time job, there’s really going to be a strain,” he said.There’s an opportunity for growth and improvement when teams step up and speak out. Oftentimes, bad leaders stick around because the people around them don’t have the courage to speak up or don’t understand the damage being done to teams and company culture, Deutscher says. When awareness is raised, these challenges can be addressed before “it infests, and those leaders get to stay and [create this] really bad environment.”Employees may not approach their managers to express their feelings of disengagement, which provides leaders with a valuable opportunity to proactively foster open communication and create a supportive environment. It's part of a leader’s role to recognize and address these needs.Deutscher shared a graphic from a 2022 study done by McKinsey showing the primary drivers of disengagement, where uncaring and uninspiring leaders were among the top. The focus on leadership shows up just behind a lack of career development and inadequate compensation. “There are six or seven different things here, but they’re all about energy,” he said. “Energy is the X factor for creating sustainable high performance. Energy is the internal strength and vitality required for sustained physical, emotional and mental activity,” Deutscher wrote for Forbes.Leaders also play an important role in articulating purpose to their workers. Leaders who create a culture around purposeful work cultivate employees who are more engaged because they understand what they’re working for and have a common goal to achieve. “When leaders are moving too fast, they fail to articulate how the work matters and how it's meaningful–both to them individually and to the company.”When leaders effectively manage their teams and employees have a clear understanding of the goals, everyone’s efforts align, creating continuity. This synergy fosters a stronger company culture, where everyone’s collective energy is directed toward shared objectives.Commitment to CollaborationWhen Deutscher gets hired to coach and help leaders restructure their energy for a better work culture, the outcome is a more engaged and cohesive team that values commonality and goal orientation over individual agendas and scarcity. Some of his assignments focus on helping the leader bolster collaboration and teamwork.Leaders who prioritize building strong connections with their teams are better positioned to drive meaningful change, says Deutscher. When companies embrace this approach, they create the conditions for long-term success through healthy leadership.From Day One spoke with Deutscher about energizing the workforce (company photo)Sometimes these businesses have a solid strategy or product, but they can't overcome the human energy aspect needed for success. Deutscher helps leaders create alignment within their teams, so not only do they have a great product, but also a great culture. “[A]t the top end, if we’re customizing content, if you want commitment from people, you need to be aligned. If you want alignment, you have to be really clear on where you’re going.”Deutscher has golden rules for achieving this. “Look people in the eye. Be respectful. Ask questions. Give them a chance to be heard. Be receptive to what they’re saying. Have a good value exchange of candor and receptivity. Speak your mind, but do it respectfully.”Cracking the Code to Energy EngagementFiguring out the energy coefficient on engagement and retention is about getting the fundamentals right and doing the deeper work. “Getting back to the basics is hard for people, teams, and leaders [because] it’s boring.” It takes a long-term commitment to working more sustainably and to building a workplace that prioritizes well-being alongside results.Preparation is key for leaders and companies when thinking about the longer horizon for sustainability. “All we want to do is play the game. We don’t want to prepare to win the game in the workplace. That’s essentially what regenerate means. You have to renew, recover, strategize, plan, spend more time thinking and planning than doing. [That’s how] you prepare to win.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner Regenerate, for supporting this sponsor spotlight. To learn more, tune into Andrew’s workshop at our October virtual conference.Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.

Enhancing Employee Support With Technology and Community Building

Talkspace, a company dedicated to offering accessible mental health services, recognizes the importance of mental health and well-being for all employees, from therapists to corporate staff. To support this, they've harnessed technology to foster a community-driven culture, providing the tools employees need to thrive.Andrea Cooper, Talkspace’s chief people officer says that from the time an employee first joins the company, they try their best to meet them where they are and connect them with the technology and services to help them succeed. Cooper spoke in a thought leadership spotlight titled “Enhancing Employee Support and Engagement Through Technology and Community Building,” at From Day One’s August virtual conference.Given the broad range of employees at Talkspace, about 50% are therapists and the other half are on the corporate side, she says it's important not to make assumptions. “Because we have a broad range of employees with a lot of different backgrounds, we shouldn't assume that people are going to be immediately comfortable with the technology that we’re asking them to use. And we shouldn’t assume that they know all the functionality available to them.”The company uses some of the common business tools like Google Suite and Slack, for example, but they try to maximize those platform’s effectiveness by really understanding how to use the technology better.Ahead of 2024, Cooper says her team took some time reflecting on strategic objectives and what OKRs (objectives and key results) they wanted to commit to for the new year. “We spent time reflecting on our people leader experience, and candidly, what we found is that it was inconsistent,” Cooper said.Andrea Cooper of Talkspace led the thought leadership spotlight (company photo)“It wasn’t that it was not there, but it just could be better.” Cooper says they had to acknowledge that people leaders are critical to the experience that employees have. “[They] really often set an important tone for the company.”Being fully remote, Cooper says their people leaders were not always pausing to take care of themselves. They had to self-reflect on what, as a company, they were doing, what they weren’t doing, and what they could do better.Despite being a “Slack company,” they didn’t previously have a channel for people leaders. So, they created a channel just for their people leaders, and used it to communicate with them ahead of company news. “Historically, we would just send [news] out to all employees and leaders at the same time, and [we] didn’t really position them to support their teams effectively. So we use this channel as a way to give advanced communication to people leaders to make their job better and easier.”Cooper says that in addition to giving advance notice of company news, they’ve opened their Slack channel as a safe space to simply ask questions, instead of everything being routed to one team leader. This has opened “the door to a broader support system for people leaders,” which has led to “more interactions and [a] sense of support and community.”Talkspace also offers a drop in session once a month. It’s an informal Q&A format without an obligation to show up. “If you’re someone that enjoys the live discussion, join us. If you're someone who prefers to read and reflect on your own, here are the slides that we talked about,” Cooper said.Finally, to bring it all together and connect the dots, Cooper says they started using tools like JIRA and Confluence to automate various aspects of the employee and people leader experience with their People Resource Center. Building Connection Through Community“I’m sure we all have a clear memory in our mind, if you went to the office four or five days a week, and then that day in March of 2020 [when] many of us just suddenly started working remotely. If you were in HR, you probably also remember how hard it was to build culture and to maintain the sense of community in the absence of going in-person five days a week.”To build community among their nearly 500 mostly remote employees, Cooper says Talkspace does an “all hands” meeting once a month. In July and August of this year, they did a Co-worker Feud, live classes (like cultivating healthy adult friendships), and tips on coping with loneliness, for example.“We’re trying to meet people in all different places. Some people like to go to a live webinar. Some people like to do self-reflection with a worksheet. Some people like to join a game and just have fun and forget about work for 30 minutes,” she said.Cooper points to three things she’s learned in how they’ve used technology to help with creating a sense of community and culture: Little things can have a big impact on employee experience.People leaders need support and a safe space to learn and grow.Investing in people and making time for connections isn’t just a feel good thing, it's essential to collectively succeed and deliver on business results.“I hope that we continue to learn and grow and experiment in a way that helps our employees feel that sense of community and as they continue to be fully remote.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Talkspace, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.