Developing a Leadership Culture That Puts People First

BY Mary Pieper | October 23, 2023

When L'Oréal transferred Stephanie Kramer from the post of manager for one of its brands, to the position of chief employee experience officer a year ago, she focused on creating a people-first leadership culture.

“It’s about the three-way relationship between employees, HR, and people managers,” Kramer told moderator Erica Keswin during a recent From Day One fireside chat titled, “Developing a Leadership Culture That Puts People First – and Drives Businesses Forward.” The two spoke at the Edison Ballroom during From Day One’s Manhattan conference.

Kramer, who was promoted to chief human resources officer at L'Oréal USA earlier this year, said creating individual personal relationships within a huge company can be difficult. L'Oréal is overcoming this challenge through a series of people managing town halls. Everyone in the company who has at least one direct report is invited to one of these forums. Around 3,000 middle managers attended the second town hall three weeks ago.

“It not only elevates the relationship between the people managers and employees, but also the role of HR in empowering them,” Kramer said.

Managers at the Center

Some companies have recently been eliminating middle manager positions to flatten their organizations. However, L'Oréal has chosen to celebrate them.

One of the ways the company is doing this is referring to them as “managers at the center” rather than middle managers, according to Kramer.

Bestselling author Erica Keswin interviewed Kramer during the opening fireside chat. 

“We’ve seen in our annual employee survey the direct correlation between the results of people managers and their entire populations,” she said.

During the most recent town hall for people managers, Kramer used the monologue by America Ferrera’s character from the hit movie Barbie to describe the constant tension managers experience.

“She says, ‘you have to be this and not that,’” Kramer said. “I said to the people managers, ‘You need to be in the weeds, but give them space. You need to be empowering, but not on top of them.”

Along the same lines, “I think it’s important that we empower our people managers with skills, and also give them the space and grace that it’s not going to be easy all the time,” Kramer said.

Human Resources Transformation

People managers aren’t the only ones in the spotlight right now, according to Kramer.

“HR is having a moment for sure,” she said. “The role of HR has never been so powerful. I can say that personally I very much enjoy when I see the path to some of these major leadership positions also includes HR.”

However, transforming HR is a marathon, not a sprint, according to Kramer. “So, with your transformation, listen, when something feels sticky, survey,” she said. “When you’re not sure about a decision, test. But also make sure you’re giving yourself time and space to see real results. It's not going to happen in three months, you’re not going to have those key metrics. In fact, if they don't go down, that means you're not really transforming. So, take time, appreciate the people on your team.”

Building Relationships with Employees From Day One

Onboarding is critical for the creation of community at L'Oréal, but relationship building efforts don’t end there, according to Kramer. In fact, they continue even after an employee has left the company.

“At the end of the day, whether you retire or you choose another organization, you’re also still a consumer, and you’re also fueling our future pipeline of individuals that want to join us,” Kramer said.

Also, employees who part ways with L'Oréal are welcomed back with open arms should they decide to return, she said.

Being a Human Being at Work

When people show up at work as their whole selves, it helps create authentic relationships and sense of community, according to Kramer.

However, “I think that leaders often struggle with the amount of vulnerability they want to show or how they can be empathetic, but also show the presence of their leadership ability,” she said. “And there's a way that if we all do that to a different level, we're actually encouraging everyone to give their best.”

Another reason for enabling people to be their true selves in the workplace is “you have to have the foundation of inclusivity to have innovation for people to thrive and have different ideas,” Kramer said.

Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.

Related Stories

How Employers Are Strengthening Support for Employee Mental Health and Well-Being

Burnout has become a critical issue in healthcare, especially for providers treating chronic pain. The emotional and physical demands of patient care, combined with mounting workplace stressors, are pushing many to the brink of exhaustion. Experts say the solution lies in a holistic approach—one that recognizes the deep connection between physical pain, mental health, and organizational culture.Across industries, employee mental health remains fragile. In a post-pandemic world where wellness is a top priority, companies are grappling with a key question: how can they offer support that’s truly meaningful?At From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference, a panel of experts explored the evolving landscape of employee mental health and wellness. Moderated by Michal Lev-Ram, contributing editor-at-large at Fortune, the discussion covered the role of technology, personalized wellness initiatives, and global strategies for cultivating well-being at work.“Pain is never just physical,” said panelist Claire Morrow, senior manager, PT consultants at Hinge Health. “It’s influenced by psychological and social factors, and that applies to providers just as much as patients.” Healthcare workers who spend their days managing patients’ pain often struggle with their own, leading to a cycle of stress, fatigue, and burnout.Toxic workplace culture only makes it worse. Studies show that negative workplace relationships can delay pain recovery and contribute to emotional exhaustion, Morrow says. A lack of support from leadership or colleagues can push already overburdened providers to their breaking point.“A healthy work environment isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential for both patient care and provider well-being,” she said. “When providers are burned out, it directly impacts the quality of care they can give.”Thankfully, the rise of telehealth and flexible digital platforms is reshaping healthcare delivery, giving providers more control over their schedules. At Hinge Health, physical therapists can work remotely, reducing the stress of long commutes and rigid clinical hours.“Giving providers flexibility in their work helps prevent burnout and ensures they can keep delivering high-quality care,” she said. As healthcare continues to evolve, industry leaders are pushing for solutions that protect both patients and providers. The fight against burnout isn’t just about reducing stress, but about ensuring the future of quality care.Technology’s Role in Mental Health SolutionsTechnology has its place—it should enhance, not replace, human support. AI-driven tools provide employees with a confidential, accessible entry point to mental health care, especially for those hesitant about traditional therapy. Platforms like Unmind’s AI-powered system guide employees toward self-care and offer a seamless transition to professional support when necessary.Despite advancements, burnout remains high, a result of high-performance cultures that overlook well-being. Advanced analytics allow companies to measure burnout’s impact on productivity and healthcare costs, demonstrating mental health as a business priority. “The business case for mental health is clearer than ever,” said panelist Matt Jackson, GM, VP of Americas at Unmind. “When companies invest in prevention, they see reduced absenteeism, increased engagement, and ultimately, better business outcomes.”The U.S. healthcare system prioritizes treatment over prevention, but employers can lead the shift toward proactive mental health strategies. “The future of workplace mental health isn’t about reacting to problems—it’s about using technology to prevent them before they start,” Jackson said. Preventative tools offer real-time support and data-driven insights to address mental health challenges before they escalate.By integrating AI solutions, companies can scale mental health care, reduce costs, and build a resilient workforce. “Digital tools give employees the autonomy to access support on their own terms while ensuring organizations can offer consistent, scalable care,” he said. These tools also help foster a psychologically safe environment, equipping leaders with the resources to prevent burnout and enhance employee well-being.Global Approaches to Wellness As companies adapt post-pandemic, Enphase Energy has focused on helping employees prioritize self-care and family care in a world still adjusting. Panelist Vivian Hung, head of total rewards at Enphase said that “Post-Covid, everyone’s mental head space and self-care prioritization has shifted, and that extends to how they care for their family and how they care for themselves after they leave work.”To accommodate its global workforce, Enphase tailors wellness programs to meet regional and cultural needs. This includes offering fertility health benefits globally while also ensuring inclusivity for employees in different life stages. Executive panelists spoke about "Enhancing Employee Mental Health and Wellness Support" “I don’t have 100% of my workforce thinking about family formation,” Hung said. “So how do I take care of the rest of the population?” The company offers a wide range of benefits to ensure that every employee’s needs are met, irrespective of location.In addition, Enphase maintains a strong focus on work-life balance, particularly through its implementation of blackout meeting periods. They employ a blackout period to be respectful of local time zones. This ensures employees aren’t burdened with after-hours work, promoting true disconnection from work, she says. Financial wellness is another key pillar at Enphase, recognizing that financial stress is a global issue that impacts overall well-being. The company provides educational resources to help employees understand their total compensation, easing financial concerns and strengthening their connection to benefits.Fostering Meaningful ConversationsHuman connection is key to building a supportive work environment. Since each employee’s experience is shaped by their location, culture, and personal circumstances, companies must take a flexible, personalized approach to wellness. In short, panelist JoAnn Taylor, CHRO at Rakuten, says organizations must meet their people where they are. “We try to make sure that we know what’s going on, and we can be agile so we can react quickly to make sure that our employees have the support in place that they can access when they need it in confidentiality,” she said. This adaptability allows companies to offer tailored solutions, ensuring that employees feel understood and supported.While digital wellness tools play a role in wellness programs, the human element is just as crucial. “Having one meaningful conversation a day raises all the good hormones, and that builds your inner strength, so you can be more agile when things start to come at you,” Taylor said. In today’s hybrid work environment, balancing flexibility with meeting business needs is essential. That’s why they introduced Wellness Fridays, where employees get the afternoon off to recharge.As the panelists pointed out, with the right tools and a focus on human connection, companies can create a resilient, engaged workforce capable of thriving in today’s challenging landscape. By embracing flexibility, integrating preventative mental health tools, and fostering personal connections, companies can create a resilient workforce equipped to thrive in today’s dynamic work environment.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.(Photos by David Coe for From Day One)

Carrie Snider April 16, 2025

The Debate Over RTO and WFH: What the Research Really Shows

Despite headlines over the last year touting the full RTO of major corporations like J.P. Morgan Chase and Amazon, Nicholas Bloom the foremost expert on remote work and professor of economics at Stanford University, says the RTO trend seems to have already passed. Citing a recent study of more than 1,000 companies, he said “we asked them about their return to office plans, looking ahead a year, and 85% of them said they have no plans to change.”“The big data I’ve seen suggests there is not a major return to the office. I don’t think there’s going to be much major change outside of the government sector,” said Bloom. Some companies have been tying bonuses to office attendance to incentivize employees to come in, which Bloom finds ineffective. “There are only so many dollars you can give [an employee] for a bonus,” he said. “If you start to take away some of that from performance and put it onto days in the office, you’re just giving her less bonus for performance. You’re basically saying, as a business to a manager, ‘We care less about performance.’”And still, latest headlines regarding return to office are contradictory. “One will say that being in the office full time will make your workers more productive, and then the next day you might see one that says being hybrid or fully remote will make your workers more productive. What is the actual answer?” asked moderator Katherine Bindley, technology reporter at the Wall Street Journal during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference.As more large employers enforce a return to office, Bloom shared insights on what the latest research shows about productivity, employee engagement, and other factors that companies need to take into account when developing their policies. For employers insisting on RTO, what can they do to make the arrangement more effective? And for those offering flexible arrangements, what approaches provide the best results?We all want to know: which is the more effective strategy, RTO (return to office) or WFH (work from home)? “It really depends on the task,” Bloom said. Certain duties like call center work benefit from the quiet of home. Generally, Bloom and his student researchers have found that a hybrid model is optimal.A recent two-year study on the company Trip.com did an A/B test of their workers, with half working from home two days per week and the other half in the office full time. The study showed no demonstrable effect on performance.“[In interviews] they’d say there’s a huge benefit of coming into the office. It’s great for mentoring, it’s better for innovation, it’s better for building culture,” Bloom said. “But by the time you’ve gone three days a week in the office, it’s not obvious that days four and five are useful.”In fact, spending the other two days at home allowed for deep work and an additional 90-minutes of working time. And the employees who were allowed to work part-time from home were 35% less likely to quit. “The Trip.com CEO and the board said this is massively profitable, because every person that quits costs us something like $30,000  to $50,000,” Bloom said. It can be hard to measure performance among certain professions–even more so when employees are working from home and you can’t physically see or hear what they are doing, says Bloom. But it’s crucial for employers to figure out how to gauge results to allow employees this highly sought-after benefit. “Make sure you have good performance evaluations,” Bloom said, suggesting complex metrics and sliding scales based on each role.How to Enforce RTOBloom cautions against using RTO as a method of downsizing, referring to Amazon and even DOGE as guilty of versions of this, essentially making work so uncomfortable through RTO and other mandates that people quit. But organizations that do really need a full RTO need to roll it out in a way that is both enforceable and attractive. Companies that announce RTO, he says, see an uptick in “card swipes and Wi-Fi logins” at the office at first, but after the initial mandate, compliance starts to slip. Buy-in from managers is key, as they set the tone for their teams. “What’s happening is this very weak enforcement. In order to enforce, you have to have a strong mandate and incentives,” he said. Bindley also notes the importance of having the actual space to bring back workers, especially after so many companies downsized their spaces during the pandemic. “You have to have enough desks,” she said. Nicholas Bloom, William D. Eberle professor in economics and foremost expert on remote work, was interviewed during the fireside chat The Best Model of Hybrid With hybrid schedules, it can be hard to coordinate workers, Bindley says. You don’t want a situation where people head to the office just to be on Zoom with colleagues at home. “The most common model is three days in the office: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,” Bloom said. “There’s no exact science on which days, but you want to coordinate two or three days.” People still work on Fridays, but most do it from home, Bloom says. In fact, the London Underground has even made Friday an off-peak travel day due to the change in work-styles.And with coordination must come enforcement. “There’s an old Roman saying that a good law is an easy to enforce law,” Bloom said. Allowing employees to work from home means “treating employees more like an adult,” Bloom said. It means you trust them, knowing that even though they might be technically working fewer hours as they pick up their kids or go to the dentist, they will still make it up on the other end to get everything done. Workers end up less stressed, and more personally and professionally productive, when they are trusted to manage their own time. Looking ahead, WFH is the way of the future, Bloom says. And we’ve been moving toward it for years, with the advent of personal computers in the 1980s, inexpensive Wi-Fi phone calls in the 2000s, and the like. Innovations like Google’s Starliner project and other technological advances will make remote work that much easier.And perhaps most importantly, it’s what the next generation wants. “If you look at the people that are against working from home, they tend to be 50 plus. As time goes on, those folks tend to drift out,” Bloom said. “If you look at leaders in [their 30s-40s], they’re much more balanced on this. Those folks, in 10 years, are going to be the CEOs of the future.” 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.(Photos by David Coe for From Day One)

Katie Chambers April 15, 2025

Change Is Hard. What HR Leaders Can Do to Make it Easier and More Successful

One of the most significant and foundational opportunities HR leaders have is to empower frontline and middle managers through scalable tools, resources, and information, says Steve Arntz of Campfire. Leaders at this level may not have influenced the decision-making, but they do need to be able to effectively articulate the plans and guide team members through the process. “Middle managers are often the ones delivering the change, but they’re not the ones who have to make the decision,” said Arntz. “So what tools and resources can we give them to help them have honest, consistent conversations?”Change initiatives can leave employees feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. A cross-industry executive panel at From Day One’s Salt Lake City conference discussed how HR leaders can help streamline change in their organizations and improve the employee experience. The conversation was moderated by KSL-TV anchor Lori Prichard.It can also be helpful to reiterate what is not changing, says Amanda Harper, the global head of growth learning experience and performance for Square. “Talking to my team about what’s not changing in those times of great change has been really helpful,” she said. “We can anchor to those [core values] to say, ‘Here’s the stuff that stays the same.’”Panelists agreed with Marcus Cazier, bioMérieux’s senior director of L&D for the Americas, that HR can leverage their C-suite relationships to advocate for frontline employees. “HR is a great advocate for the front line to the C-suite,” he said. “You have access to more senior business leaders so you can help communicate the reality back up the ladder.”With 86% of HR leaders reporting directly to their CEOs, according to The Talent Strategy Group’s 2023 HR Operating Model Report, Harper also emphasized that those in the room should use their seat at the table wisely: “We’re there in most cases, so it’s up to us to use our voice at that table.”Nate Beck, SVP of learning experience and design for Zions Bancorporation, says that HR leaders cannot just tell the C-suite what they want to hear; they need to be confident in communicating hard truths.For leaders without a seat at the C-level table, Cazier recommends boosting visibility and building trust by bringing data and strategic plans to help executives meet their priorities. Clear alignment with their goals will position you as an asset and illustrate your investment in the company. The ability to bring forward an authentic perspective from frontline employees can help build credibility. By proving with data that you have a purpose in that space, and use your strengths to influence and drive success. To advocate for business partners and frontline teams in the C-suite, it is also vital for HR to build trust with those teams, says Beck. Simply spending time with your partners to understand their daily workflow and the impacts of change can help build relationships and demonstrate that you’re there to help them thrive, says Cazier. It’s important for listeners to have hard conversations that support individuals and help align them with the organization’s strategic direction. The panelists also agreed on the importance of building a culture of accountability. Rather than employees first hearing about a change from HR, Harper likes to see leaders champion changes before rollout. Arntz urges people not to let business partners “hide behind HR.” They should communicate expectations to their team members and work through the performance management process before any handoff to HR.Relationships can also be leveraged to encourage bottom-up change. “Don’t wait for the C-suite to come to you,” said Beck. “Advocate for your team from the start—you’re a part of every change that happens in the organization.”Panelists spoke about leading through change at From Day One's SLC conference Cazier emphasized encouraging senior leaders to take an iterative approach to shaping change strategies: “Stress test it with team members. Run it by them. Get their feedback,” he said.Another opportunity lies in reviewing performance management processes, said Arntz. “Your performance management process sits at the center of all of it,” he said. “We take that for granted. We teach some behaviors and reward completely different ones—and that creates a system with no safety.”Change Management vs. Transition ManagementBeck takes a proactive approach to making change better for everyone around him. One key step is reframing “change management” as “transition management.” “Change is about the event—flip a switch, it happens. But people are not the same way,” he said. “Transition management is about navigating the ebb and flow of people’s feelings during a transition.”Change has a collective impact, but senior leaders do not always have the capacity to look at change from an individual perspective, says Arntz. Recognizing and leveraging team member strengths can help orient the rest of the team. In these situations, Arntz identifies and empowers results-oriented, relationship-oriented, and process-oriented people to support their team members during the appropriate phases of change.Harper recommends implementing feedback loops and modeling a solutions-oriented approach. “If you have feedback loops in place, knowing how to correlate that data to what matters to the executive suite is really important,” she said.Navigating Unpopular MandatesHR leaders also have a role to play in return-to-office mandates. “If the decision is based on real estate commitments, don’t pretend it’s for productivity,” said Arntz. “Just be authentic with your message.”Similarly, leaders must communicate clearly about emerging technologies like AI. “AI can’t take judgment from us—it needs us to operate it,” said Arntz. Harper added: “HR is in a unique position to prepare organizations to use AI in a way that enables our workforce, rather than replaces it.”Beck encourages a practical, human-centered approach: “Let AI do the good things, so we can focus on the best things,” he said. Meanwhile, Cazier noted that AI implementation presents an opportunity for HR to support not just tools, but people: “There’s plenty for us to do—not just help write emails or generate e-learnings, but also to help people navigate the changes hitting their world.”Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photos by Sean Ryan for From Day One)

Jessica Swenson April 10, 2025