Attracting Skilled Talent: Ideas for a Competitive Labor Market

BY the Editors | July 31, 2022

With candidates gaining the upper hand, how can talent acquisition leaders and their companies respond? What innovative techniques can give an employer a competitive advantage? The answers lie in what workers say is most important in choosing employers right now: better compensation, to be sure, but also personalized benefits, an inclusive environment, and a sense of social purpose. Plus: How can technology help recruiters find non-traditional candidates with potential? From Day One gathered experts for a virtual conference in January. Among the highlights:

What Makes a Company Attractive to Early-Career Talent 

Ever since she was a student, Giselle Battley, the global head of early-career talent at the commercial real-estate firm JLL, has been observing the ebbs and flows in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) recruiting. “As an HBCU student, I saw when we were hot and we were not. The truth is, if you’re going to go out to new sources, it’s a long-term game, it’s not a short thing. You can do more damage by showing up, and never showing up again once you hit your numbers,” she said in a panel discussion on attracting early-career talent, moderated by Shana Lebowitz-Gaynor, a correspondent for Insider who covers career development and workplace culture.

As Gen Z has now entered the workforce, and will constitute up to 27% of the workforce by 2025, companies find themselves having to adapt their culture and their pitch to attract new generations. DEI appears to have solidified into an integral value for companies eager to attract early-career talent. “They want their workplace to be inclusion forward,” said Alesandra McLean, head of North American campus and early-career programs at Wayfair. “They want a lot of autonomy, they want to have the possibility to make an impact.”

And while the demands of early-career workers have not changed that dramatically in recent years, the attitudes did. “What changed is that you always have to stay on top,” said Battley. “Gen Z is making their demands—and DEI is at the top—and corporations have to meet those.” And these demands are more about attitudes than about specific benefits or management practices.

“I don't think we’ve seen change: the real (development) is the agility and flexibility by individuals, but not from jobs as a whole,” said Crystal Lannaman, head of talent acquisition and  university relations for the chemicals company BASF. “We created a grid to help decision-makers decide what can be in-person and what can be remote,” she said. “Being able to showcase it eliminates the risk of dividing things between haves and have nots. With the pandemic, people are really starting to assess where they want to be and why, for the greater good.”

Speakers on early talent, top row from left: moderator Shana Lebowitz Gaynor of Insider, Giselle Battley of JLL, and Tom Brunskill of Forage. Bottom row: Alexandra McLean of WayFair, Jake Burke of SkillSurvey, and Crystal Lannaman of BASF (Image by From Day One)

In addition, more companies have started offering rotational programs, both for college students and for early-career workers. BASF has a talent marketplace where, for example, a chemical engineer who wants to move into business management can take advantage of the program that allows them to test the waters in a real work environment. And while there’s a modicum of accountability, it’s less anxiety-producing than jumping into a completely new role you haven’t done before. “You have to continuously create a new and exciting experience,” said Battley. “It's incumbent on the employer to provide the experience of growth. It's an undervalued or overlooked insight.”

A candidate can possess as many notions and skills as they can muster, but often they’re unprepared for the way the interview process unfolds. Wayfair instituted workshops on interview preparedness. “We took a deep look at their recruiting funnel, where we see a big drop-off in the process. Where in our process were people slipping up?” said McLean. “The data was really what led us: we now see a lot of success in students that go through that.”

McLean sees skill-building initiatives offered by companies as more relevant than standard on-campus career fairs. Building these skills can curb early-career attrition. “Sixty percent of students said they won’t be at a job for an extended period of time, and 66% said they applied to a role mainly to improve their chances of employment,” said Tom Brunskill, the CEO and co-founder of the learning platform Forage, who observed that the company’s partner employers face a 50% to 70% attrition rate. “Retention has always been a challenge, but why is it difficult?” he pondered. “Fundamentally it comes back to this idea that our education sector is great, but does not set people up for success in terms of career. [Industries can] provide the confidence, sensibility, and so on, to bridge that gap.”

In all, employers have to do their part in being upfront with talent. In fact, the data surveyed at SkillSurvey, a talent-intelligence platform, indicated that if a student does not know where they fit in a company from a skill standpoint, it’s going to be a challenge for them to find a real match in that company. There are, for instance, eight competencies that are the most sought after by employers, said Jake Burke, SkillSurvey’s VP of sales.

“Students and early talent don't know where they stand because they’ve never been measured on these important things,” said Burke. “The No. 1 required, or preferred, competency is critical thinking. What students are really good at is equity and inclusion, but critical thinking is No. 1. Equity and inclusion is No. 8. So, what companies want is the inverse of where students are. There are these gaps between what students are bringing, or what early career talent and applicants are bringing to the table, and what employers are valuing.”

If expectations are clearly set, that’s half of the battle. “Gen Z is very pragmatic, technically nimble and entrepreneurial,” Burke continued. “We have to make sure employers’ expectations match with what was posted in the job post. If you do that well, the retention goes up, disappointment goes down.”—By Angelica Frey 

How to Expand Your Business Globally, Ethically, and Equitably (Sponsor Spotlight)

Expanding digitization of work means companies can access talent anywhere. What often stands in the way are the logistics of global expansion. For every new state, for every new country where a company wants to hire, it has to establish a presence there—legal, tax, HR, operations. So even if a company in Baltimore finds a great engineer in Bucharest, that’s not a hire they can easily make.

During From Day One’s conference, I had a one-on-one conversation with Nicole Sahin, CEO and founder of Globalization Partners, which helps companies solve this problem and expand into new states and new countries without setting up their own infrastructure in those jurisdictions. Globalization Partners acts as an employer of record, and growing businesses can hire talent through their platform.

Speaking on globalization: moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz Esparza, at left, and Nicole Sahin, CEO and founder of Globalization Partners (Image by From Day One)

My conversation with Sahin, titled “The Democratization of Opportunity: Bringing the Dreams to the Dreamers,” addressed the effects of expansion and the obligations of companies that do so. “I always found it sad that people had to go to these really expensive communities far away from home,” said Sahin. “Now people can stay in their home community. It’s better for families, it’s better for communities, and it spreads opportunity to everyone everywhere, which is just unbelievably compelling when you think about that on a global scale.”

Don’t confuse what Sahin does with offshoring. The goal is not work at a discount, but responsible and ethical employment. “Our business model is not driven by the company’s desire for low-cost talent. It’s driven by the desire for companies to be able to access the best talent they can find, anywhere they can find it, and the elimination of geography as a core feature of that.”

Sahin has a unique perspective on what it means to help a wide range of companies hire and retain workers around the world. What it takes varies by country, but what is universal, she said, is the desire to work for a company with an inspiring mission. To that end, people are looking at sites like Glassdoor to get a sense of whether the company walks the talk.

With this in mind, expansion can be a means of supporting the local community as much as the business doing the hiring. Communities get access to more jobs, workers get access to better pay. “It’s part of our job to make sure that those employee rights are respected,” she said.

Sahin believes the person living in Montana should have the same job opportunities as the one living in Silicon Valley. And with the workforce largely in control of the job market, they’re demanding those opportunities. “Those employees are now saying, ‘I want a global salary. I’m worth as much as your employees in California, and I want to be paid accordingly.’ And if their current employer won’t give them that type of pay increase, they'll switch jobs.”

One of her goals is, indeed, to foster pay equity. “The idea is that we would build a global platform that enables companies to hire talent anywhere in the world quickly and easily, while still honoring, importantly, the employment laws in that location and making sure that people get paid the way the law is designed to protect those employees.”

Sahin is sympathetic to business leaders who are apprehensive about going global. “We always want people to carry forward our own mission. We want to make sure we hire the right person for the job and that they love and care for our own business the same way we do.”

For those on the fence, her advice is to take the leap. “It’s not easy to navigate, but it’s totally possible to navigate. And the benefits are so tremendous, of working with a truly diverse workforce that inherently comes along with building a more global team.”—By Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza

Building an Inclusive Culture That Keeps People on Board–and Attracts Their Peers 

Today’s workforce is characterized by record departures, a demand for flexible work policies, and an understanding that inclusive company cultures are a priority, driving organizations to build effective strategies that address these needs to keep employees and attract new talent.

Judith Harrison is the EVP of global DEI at Weber Shandwick, a leading communications firm. In a fireside chat moderated by Sam Blum, a reporter at HR Brew, Harrison shared how her company evolved its internal strategies in response to the changing times. According to Harrison, building policies that encourage employees to stay with the company should be thought of not just from a policy perspective, but from a strategic one, too. “In the past, we had the luxury of having a little more focus on getting work done,” she said. “We worked hard to get a great culture, but we had a tremendous focus on work and not enough on work-life balance, which is huge now. We want to make sure we are giving people the support they need.”

Weber Shandwick, which operated with a 100% remote workforce during the pandemic, is moving toward a hybrid model, the goal being “work-life balance and flexibility.” Harrison acknowledged some key differences, however, when it comes to a significant demographic of the workforce: Gen Z and Millennials. “There is a sense of social responsibility and idealism that was not seen in previous generations as it relates to work,” she said. “In the past, there was no expectation that an organization would share employees’ social values or that it would stand for a particular mission or objective, but these things have changed, and Weber is looking to change with them.”

In addition, many employees desire more opportunities to stay connected with one another. “People are being hired through Zoom and managing teams they’ve never met face to face. We’ve lost something in the way we connect,” she said.  “What people are asking us for is to be proactive in ways to connect with one another. They want a sense of culture and community more than ever. They want more of an ability to build and steer their career–they want more agency.”

This led the company to move away from a dated evaluation model and begin talking about processes that cultivated careers more organically. The firm developed a “Talent Compass” to facilitate and foster customized career building, and created Juice, a program intended to address work-life balance through discounts on, and access to, premium services related to health, nutrition, fitness, and mindfulness, enabling employees to participate in multiple activities to help bring them back to a balanced sense of self for work.

Judith Harrison, the EVP of global DEI at Weber Shandwick (Photo courtesy of Weber Shandwick)

The firm found that employees were initially reluctant to separate themselves from work due to uncertainty around job security that the pandemic introduced, on top of balancing external situations regarding children, family, and housing. But it didn’t mean they weren’t experiencing growing levels of overwork as a result of the evaporated lines dividing work life and personal life. Harrison highlighted how leadership made it clear that it was okay to “not be okay,” citing herself as an example. “There have been times with all of the things going on the news and social unrest that I have been exhausted,” she said. “We really want to be sure that they understand that it’s okay to not be okay.”

When it comes to her own career, Judith shared how she got her start working in public relations. Throughout her experience in the space, she recognized glaring issues surrounding DEI that existed across the industry, not just at one company. People were not conscious about issues regarding diversity, she said, pointing to an example of a company she worked at where the HR manager decorated her office with a large Confederate flag.

After some time, she observed that things were getting better, but that co-workers were not actively working on specific areas to improve diversity. This realization inspired her to begin steering her career toward a role that equipped her to take action as it related to advancing DEI in the workplace.

The last two years, marked by significant political and civil unrest, have shed light on inequality and racism in the workplace, as well. In response, many corporations publicly pledged to enact policies to support diversity and inclusion. But when it comes to efficacy of newfound policies, Harrison asserted that companies could do better, mentioning how many organizations talk about the necessity of DEI, but fall flat when it came to taking action.

“At Weber Shandwick, we’re working to bake that into everything we do,” she said. “DEI is not HR’s job. It’s not the leadership’s job. It is everybody’s job. We want to inculcate that as part of the culture. We want to make sure that people feel supported and heard, especially people from marginalized backgrounds, who are maybe having an even more difficult time feeling seen and heard in an environment where you’'re not even seeing people in person.”

She shared the steps that her company has taken in the past couple of years aiming to further progress in DEI. The breadth of conversation and action around social issues like racism and mental health has expanded tremendously, with the company hosting regular conversations where employees are free to openly share their thoughts and personal experiences.

The organization also launched four business resource groups (BRGs),  the name being a distinction from employee resource groups (ERGs), she said, to indicate that the groups are aligned with business objectives. In addition, DEI education was introduced to employees, with biweekly classes dedicated to exploring and understanding the Black experience in America. “This is what helps people feel super connected to one another,” she said. “It creates this level of trust that I don’t think I’ve ever seen.”—By Tania Rahman

RELATED STORIES

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.

Katie Chambers | November 20, 2024

Constant Change Is Bad for Business Because It’s Bad for Human Performance

In the corporate world, change is inevitable and organizations that can’t change don’t last long. Oftentimes, change is considered a good thing until you talk to people on the frontlines of it.“At some point you have to recognize that there is a contradiction between the simplistic idea that change is necessarily a good thing and the lived experience of change on the front lines, which seems to be anything but a good thing,” said Ashley Goodall, a leadership expert and author of The Problem With Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance.Goodall spoke with Vox's editorial director of tech, climate, and world teams, Bryan Walsh, at From Day One’s October virtual conference. They spoke about how to navigate constant change in the business world.Uncertainty, Control, and Work Without MeaningGoodall has had a long career in the corporate world as an HR executive, most recently at Cisco. He's seen major change from the outside and inside and identifies three key themes prevalent in any chaotic change. The first is uncertainty. “We don’t do very well when the future is uncertain and when somebody says there’s a big change coming, that’s almost the definition of uncertainty.”The next is control. “When you take away our sense of agency, we feel helpless. There’s a phenomenon called learned helplessness, where people just phone it in, because they’ve been trained by their environment that whatever they do won’t make that much of a difference.”Learned helplessness is the psychological name for a loss of control, Goodall says, but it also goes by another name. “Quiet quitting is probably pretty close in a business context for people saying, ‘Hey, I don't know what I do here. Why am I trying?’”Bryan Walsh of Vox interviewed author Ashley Goodall, left, during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)The last theme is having a sense of meaning. “We have a desperate need for the world to make sense to us,” Goodall said. Organizational change often disrupts the essential social connections that define how people work and identify themselves. Shifting teams or altering org charts can dismantle these "social graphs," leaving employees struggling to adapt. On top of that, humans have an innate need to make sense of their environment. When conflicting messages about the organization’s direction emerge, employees often feel lost and disconnected, unable to contribute effectively.Goodall noted that while leaders often recognize these challenges, their focus tends to remain narrow—fixing one change initiative at a time. The issue arises when multiple initiatives, driven by different leaders or consultants, pile up, creating chaos. To address this, organizations must rethink change holistically and prioritize creating a work environment that supports human connection and meaningful contribution.“And it’s the aggregation of all of this that is really pernicious, which means that organizations need to think differently about change, and more broadly about the experience of work here every day, and does it support human contribution,” Goodall said."What can leadership do when it comes to actually executing change?” Walsh asked. Goodall says there needs to be a sliding scale to determine when change is necessary. “The first thing to say to organizational leadership is, do less. Change. But do less. If we get through our collective heads that this isn’t an unalloyed good, this is something that can create harm more than it creates good, then I think you pause and set the bar higher on organizational change.”This doesn’t always happen but leadership can be proactive about “turning the volume down,” he said.“You can involve employees in telling you where the volume currently is,” Goodall said. "What would happen if a leader came in and said, I’m going to spend the next few weeks learning everything that works really well here, or everything that we should preserve, or everything that’s valuable, or everything that’s special, or everything that you really care about, so that we know what to protect. And once we’ve understood that, then we can think about how to improve things.”Leaders can help employees navigate change by anchoring on stability and framing it as a clear, process-driven outcome, while taking steps to promote consistency amid the chaos of multiple initiatives.Stability is a Necessary Precondition for Improvement“You could say stability is kind of the opposite of change. What does that look like?” Walsh asked.Goodall distinguished between change and improvement, which he says aren’t the same things and given a choice between the two, people would choose improvement. “The thing that we’re chasing in all of this is improvement. Well, stability is a necessary precondition for improvement.”People struggling in an organization amidst a sea of instability don’t lend to improvement. Goodall believes that improvement and positive change come from team environments, where employees know what’s going on and are valued. “If we are able to stipulate that organizational value, organizational productivity, organizational innovation, organizational goodness comes from humans working together.”If you have the above, then you’ll have something like stability, Goodall says.“What does stability look like? Stability looks like I have space to figure out the best use of my time. I’m given some autonomy.” For Goodall, true stability at work comes from personal confidence, strong team dynamics, and leaders who foster meaningful connections and mutual support.Digging more into that predictability and stability, Goodall talked about his use of weekly all-hands meetings, something Walsh pointed out that, in his experience, executives tend to despise.Goodall did not spend a whole lot of time prepping for these meetings. Instead, he used them as a personnel barometer. “It was a conversation for the leadership team that everyone got to tune into and ask questions of us.”“What we were trying to solve was, if you know what’s going on, you have space, you have agency, [then] you have predictability. You get to see the people leading your organizations when they’re not on script–when they’re not following the talking points that the communications team has put together for the all hands," Goodall added.The meetings would start with slides of birthdays, service anniversaries, or something random with a photo to spark conversation or a laugh. Then they would move onto business, and different teams would simply talk about what they were working on, what was working for them, areas of difficulty and challenge, what was coming up in the future, and more.And making things weekly, instead of a few times a year, gives organizations the opportunity to handle change as it’s happening, according to Goodall. All of this is "profoundly stabilizing." “We did this every week for years and years, and it became an organizational ritual, and people still talk about it. All we were doing was ritualizing stability and explaining to people what was going on.”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.

Matthew Koehler | November 20, 2024

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.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 14, 2024