To kick off his thought leadership spotlight for the From Day One conference in Salt Lake City, Steve Artnz, co-founder and CEO of Campfire, a Utah-based leadership development company, invited the room to close their eyes.

“We’re going to check in with ourselves,” he said, and asked three questions:

1. What are you feeling today?
2. What are you thinking about or distracted by the most today?
3. Who are you today?

“Now, think of someone on your team and go through the same three questions,” he said.

30 seconds later, eyes open, he explained that we’re blocked from making meaningful connections by the language we use.

“Notice I didn’t say ‘How are you’ or ‘How are you feeling,’” he said. “If the person on the other side of the Zoom can’t empathize, you’ve got some big challenges in your workplace. We have to know how to check in and get to know [who our coworkers] are.”

You can’t start diving deep in conversation if you’re stuck in generalizations, though—something Artnz says we do both at work and in our everyday lives.

“I’m going to describe all of the salespeople that you’ve ever worked with,” he said. “They all love sports, sports all the time. They love to close—it’s their favorite thing about their job. And they’re absolutely driven by money; it’s all they want.”

His exaggeration of the boxes we’re prone to put people into is met with bashful laughter. But he goes a step further, into the real research.

“I [sat down with] 200 salespeople, and only 20% of them ended up with money and rewards in their top six of [drivers],” he said. “They’re motivated by mission and vision, purpose, problem solving, collaboration, teamwork…all these things matter as much to them as they matter to us. Turns out, they’re human too.”

Steve Artnz, co-founder and CEO of Campfire, led the thought leadership spotlight in Salt Lake City (photo by Sean Ryan for From Day One)

But even with a change in perspective and improved conversational techniques, Artnz posits that you’ll be walking in place unless your company’s environment instinctively fosters this kind of connection.

“Raise your hand if you work at a company that you would describe as ‘an engine for your mental health and well-being,’” he said. To a few hands, he said, “Some, but not a lot, right? Are we doing the things that we need to [achieve that]?”

Campfire takes its name from the “warm, connected gathering place” friends and family make s’mores over.

“Somehow you just feel safe, sharing stores and thoughts, ideas and mistakes, challenges, lessons learned, all of these sorts of things from the deepest part of your life,” he said. “How do we create that campfire culture at work?”

It falls on all of us to develop that culture collectively, making honest efforts to know and understand the people we work with. The most efficient culture changes, though, start at the top.

“We’ve learned throughout the pandemic how critical the manager role has become,” he said. “If you take a company that’s become successful and exploded in growth, at some point, they will hit a ceiling if their management is ineffective.”

The expectations of managers have risen since the start of the pandemic, he says. What might be tagged as “soft skills,” he says, are anything but.

“They’re not soft conversations, they’re hard,” he says. “‘What do you expect of me as your leader? Here's what I expect of you.’ We need to have conversations about career development, ones that provide direction and clarity.”

When these conversations are informed by his earlier three questions Artnz asked initially, he says “your company will grow, see success and achieve results.”

The reverse is also true, though.

“If we don’t do this, people will leave,” he says, referencing a McKinsey & Company study on the Great Attrition. “The biggest reason that [people quit] during the pandemic was uncaring leaders. [We need to] make people feel seen. In a post-AI world, we really need to focus on what makes us human.”

In closing, he invited the audience to get a head start on that.

“Please pull out your phone and text someone on your team, in your family, [whoever]: ‘How are you? (honest answers only),” he said. “I promise you’ll enjoy the results.”

Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Campfire, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.

Jacqueline is a writer and Master of Accounting graduate from the University of Utah. Specializing in tax, she's interested in business, government, and the intersection of the two. When she's not in Excel or writing, she loves to run, play Candy Crush, and read novels.

Embracing Change by Evolving Employee Mindsets and Skill Sets

Technical innovation is continuously streamlining processes and departments, from customer service to daily operations and paperwork, leading to the creation of new roles and a transformation of the modern workplace. As a result, this opens up new opportunities for HR leaders to develop holistic talent management programs and employee development initiatives.At From Day One’s Denver conference, Judith Almendra, group vice president of people and culture at TTEC, shared her perspective on incorporating holistic change management solutions to help employees adjust to new roles and continue to professionally evolve amid these changes.“I think it is very important for us to have to make sure that nobody’s filling in the blank with thoughts that may be counterproductive to what we’re trying to achieve, which is truly driving the business forward with our people-centric mindset,” Almendra said to moderator Elizabeth Hernandez, reporter for the Denver Post.TTEC is an international customer experience company blending human and AI interactions, providing organizations with effective customer service. The technological advancements help deliver effective solutions that can reduce the employee workload.With a reduced workload, employees then have opportunities to build other skills for other roles and achieve new career goals. For example, in 2020 the organization launched its Rewire initiative, where leaders meet and restrategize processes, people programs, and more for holistic business outcomes, says Almendra.TTEC also launched Rewiring for Success, an effective change management solution where employees can ask questions about their career prospects and get information from company leaders.“Change can drive a lot of anxiety in a lot of us, right? It can be intimidating,” Almendra said. “What does it mean for my job? Is my job at risk? [These] were some of the questions that we were getting early on that we were trying to make sure we could address in a timely and very proactive manner.”New Skills, New OpportunitiesAfter evaluating their career trajectories, employees at TTEC move forward by reinventing their skill sets or mastering new ones. Their program called I Aspire offers employees a space to share their career goals and aspirations and have TTEC facilitate their new skill development. By engaging with leaders who act as mentors, employees create new career trajectory goals and advance into new roles within the organization.Almendra recalled her career trajectory with appreciation. She is the first generation of her family to receive an MBA, and was initially an accountant. However, she faced challenges finding finance roles. Almendra needed to adapt to change and eventually joined TTEC, where she was encouraged into different roles, like communications and talent management, until landing her current role in people and culture.Judith Almendra of TTEC spoke with Elizabeth Hernandez of the Denver PostHR employees ultimately benefit from acquiring new skill sets as the modern workforce continues to transform. Taking opportunities to learn new skills and working with a mentor will open new doors, says Almendra. “I think continuous learning is so important in today’s environment, to stay relevant, to stay competitive, to stay fulfilled. We just cannot afford not to learn.” Achieving a Unified VisionHow can companies align on a shared vision of success amid workplace and culture shift? And how can leaders foster employee growth and drive expansion while staying focused on business goals? asked Hernandez. On their talent platform, TTEC Talent, leaders record their goals onto the platform and refer to Rewire to confirm they align with the company's goals. Continuing to adopt a more organic approach to business strategy, leaders from each group are encouraged to meet, define their top priorities, and list three things they can do to achieve positive business outcomes, says Almendra.With fewer rigid priorities or fixed meet-up schedules, and by leveraging a range of engaging programs and initiatives, leaders gain greater flexibility, tools, and support to achieve personal goals while driving positive business outcomes. These shifts reflect the evolution of HR, the adoption of a more adaptable employee mindset, and the expansion of skill sets to shape and thrive in new, dynamic roles.Stephanie Reed is a freelance news, marketing, and content writer. Much of her work features small business owners throughout diverse industries. She is passionate about promoting small, ethical, and eco-conscious businesses.

Building a Workplace Culture That Prioritizes Well-Being

When it comes to well-being in the workplace, one can hardly generalize, as every generation has its demands. Boomers are gearing up for retirement, Gen X is sandwiched between childcare and eldercare, Millennials are starting their families and dealing with a housing crisis, while Gen Z is fresh out of school.“It’s not a one-size-fits-all, so if you don’t know what the population is looking for, you might be investing in the wrong places,” said panelist Stefanie Christmas, global head of diversity, equity and inclusion at Inizio, during From Day One’s Philadelphia conference.Still, there are some industry-wide areas that are demographics-agnostic. In 2023, The American Psychiatric Association found that the majority of the employers think the work environment is healthier than it actually is. More than 50% of workers strongly (21%) or somewhat (34%) agreed that their employer thinks their workplace environment is a lot mentally healthier than it actually is, and 43% reported worrying that if they told their employer about a mental health condition, it would have a negative impact on them in the workplace, reads the report.Well-being does not just mean wellness. “We’re looking at well being in the less traditional way: we’re looking at it through the lens of social, emotional, and financial wellbeing,” said Magdalena Dexter, SVP of communication and HR at manufacturing company Saint Gobain, which operates in 76 countries and has a workforce of 76,000 in North America alone. “Think about well-being holistically. It [encompasses] physical, financial, career growth,” Christmas said.When thinking about well-being and how to build it within an organization, the first question Tyler Zalucki, client executive at Marsh McLennan Agency asks is: “‘What is your feedback loop?’ and ‘How are you capturing the sentiment of employees and colleagues through a well-being lens?’”The panelist spoke in a discussion titled, "Does Your Company Genuinely Care About Well-Being? How to Show It Through Your Culture," moderated by Lizzy McLellan Ravitch, Business Coverage Editor, the Philadelphia Inquirer“In our organization, the respective manager will fill out a survey and speak with individuals to capture their sentiment and aggregate it,” he said. Then, during their town hall, the CFO and HR Director offer solutions to what was shared. “This feedback led to changes like implementing paternity leave, increasing contributions to the 401(k), and making December 24th a full day off,” he said. “It reinforces the sense that ‘my voice matters,’ because if feedback goes into the ether, employees feel unheard.”Getting Specific With NeedsCora Claus, VP of HR at Burlington Stores, emphasized the importance of understanding the employee population: who are they? What do they need? What do they want? “I work for a retailer, largely female based, and for a long time we had a lot of them going on leave of absence, starting their families, and they’re not getting paid but a minimum wage,” she said. “We now are implementing policies: as you’re designing the policies, who are you writing them for?”Getting to know the workforce also means helping to clear away any misconceptions. Scott Thompson is the CEO of Tuition.io, which helps employees with financial education. The total amount of student-loan debt is close to $1.8 trillion dollars, and you might be surprised at who the most affected group is. “The fastest growing segment for student loans is 55 and up,” said Thompson. “That’s parents taking on debt for their kids.”In order to thrive at work, people need to feel included. “As we know, DEI is under intense scrutiny, but at its core, it’s about inclusion—making sure people can bring themselves to work in a way that feels comfortable,” said Christmas. “A lot of people say, ‘Bring your whole self to work,’ but many employees feel more comfortable bringing just 55% of themselves. How do we support that?” Christmas emphasizes the idea that for DEI work to work, “it has to be seen as everyone’s responsibility. This includes sponsoring events and encouraging leaders to show up. One impactful practice is having senior leaders participate in quarterly calls, asking questions, and engaging in the conversation.”Ultimately, a company can have the best programs, but if the leaders don’t buy into them, don’t lead with that and implement them, you really don’t have a culture of well-being. “You can put the best parental leave in place, but if a senior leader can complain that he has 3 people out, it’s going to send waves through the organization about how we truly feel about it,” said Dexter. “It’s not just about having the program, it’s about talking positively about it, showing examples of how important it is to take advantage of it.”Universal NeedsStudent loan debt has only become more challenging for borrowers, partly due to all the noise in the media. Efforts to improve the situation have unintentionally made it worse, as some employers diminished the importance of loan support, assuming it would be resolved under the current administration. “That hasn’t happened—and likely won’t,” said Thompson.“When we break down student loan debt by age segments, we see the impact. For example, a recent college graduate with $40,000 in debt faces a monthly payment of about $500 after taxes,” he continued. “At 25, I would not have been able to make that payment. And it doesn’t get easier over time; most people aim to pay off their loans in 10 years, but it often turns into a 21-year commitment due to the financial missteps that come with starting a career,” said Thompson.And while he is not suggesting that all companies need to contribute to loan payments—though that would be nice and certainly helpful, “offering assistance in understanding options and finding pathways to manage debt is a big win, with spectacular retention benefits,” he said. “It’s about meeting employees where they are and helping them move forward.”In many companies, the adage seems to consist of teams being told to do more with less, and that might be at odds with well-being. “When I think about my own organization, when I think about doing more with less, we have an AI tool that allows you access to compliance resources and will also write emails,” said Zalucki. Other resources include open office hours to ask questions and then do modules exactly on what one is working on that day. “Do the things you like and enjoy and iterate admin tasks,” he said. “At the end of the day, we want to spend more time with our family.”A similar mindset also steers employers and employees towards an 80/20 perspective. “For so long, our organization has been focusing on being perfect,” said Claus, noting that they changed towards 80/20. “Are we comfortable with 80? It’s that permission to be directionally correct so that we don’t spend too much time getting to false perfection.”This also requires leaders to understand the cycle of an organization. If Q4 is the busiest time of the year, for example, a slower Q1 should allow employees to take a break. “Don’t let them sprint through that, let them have moments to breathe,” said Dexter. “What can we deprioritize? What can we take off?”“It’s about how you’re showing up but also how we empower our team to have conversations that need to be had,” said Claus. She speaks about how frustration can pile up because we don’t have the courage to speak or there’s no safe space to do so or there’s no empathetic leader. They began coaching associates to handle conversations independently, teaching them to engage and leaders to respond with positive intent.Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Boston and Milan.

The Backlash Against DEI: How Perceptions Are Being Driven by Fear and Sensationalism, Not Facts

DEI has faced intense backlash, often turned into a partisan dog whistle by those aiming to politicize its goals. But is this pushback grounded in reality? In truth, the vast majority of companies remain firmly committed to DEI, both in the U.S. and internationally. Most Americans approve of DEI initiatives, including 78% of Black workers from a Pew Research poll from 2023.Dr. Stephanie J. Creary, Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, says the backlash against DEI doesn’t tell an accurate story. “What we found is a story that is not being shared in the media or by politicians, and that is that of all the industries that exist right now, finance is leading the charge. Tech–its commitment to any kind of DEI, including towards black employees or black communities [has] continued to increase–in spite of the external environment. And Pharma is in the middle.”Creary spoke with Earl Hopkins, arts and culture reporter for the The Philadelphia Inquirer, during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Philadelphia conference. They discussed the false narrative around DEI and its future in the workplace.Recently, Creary spoke at a conference of bankers, a group that Hopkins identified as being stereotypically not diverse. Creary was worried about what kind of crowd she was going to have and what the reception was going to be like. “What does banking look like? It’s predominantly white and predominantly male,” Creary said. But what she found was encouraging and inspiring.“I was inspired by those institutions that were continuing to lean into the evidence, either internally from their own organization or externally from academia. That suggests that it does make good business sense. There were a lot of people in the room who were saying it’s hard that the topic has become so politicized when that’s not why they had invested all these resources into [DEI].”Earl Hopkins of the Philadelphia Inquirer interviewed Dr. Stephanie J. Creary, of the Wharton School Hopkins pointed to the politicization of DEI and how recently it’s faced a lot of legal and political backlash. “Which has prompted many companies to retreat on their initial commitments, or at least...keep their head down amid the storm,” Hopkins said. For example, Ford Motor backed out of its DEI initiatives this past summer, no longer participating “in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.”The headlines can be misleading and frustrating. “I lead with evidence, and every day I get some person in HR or DEI calling me saying, ‘Can you come speak at our organization and help us?’” There's a contradiction between the headlines and what she sees in her inbox.Right now, she and her team are “combing DEI reports from 2019-2023 (2024 data won’t be available until next year)” in Fortune 100 companies in three industries: financial services, pharma, and tech, which all show DEI efforts as stable or increasing.“Now that’s not to say that a few companies are reducing their commitments, changing practices, but it’s not a trend. It’s not an empirical trend in the way that is being suggested.” Still, the reported decline in DEI in the media, she adds, isn’t accurate to reality and may be more related to how news is covered and how we consume it.“I think what we’re suffering from is people who are covering these stories, the people consuming them, are very new. They’re novices. And I can say this as an educator, when people are new and they’re learning something the first time, they tend to make concrete generalizations about things that are complex.”She points to our innate tendency to “reduce the complexity of the world around us,” she said. “There’s an over simplistic reporting and consumption and interpretation of something that is much more multifaceted and dynamic and nuanced.” Basically, we’re not hearing enough from experts in the field. “And certainly political leaders are not experts on this conversation.”Looking to the future, does Creary think DEI is going in the right direction? She says she’s hopeful but skeptical.“So the challenge with the field of DEI practices [is] that there's not always evidence being used to justify the problem that needs to be addressed. And, there’s not always evidence showing that we should continue down this path with these practices, because they’re working.”There’s hope, she added, in organizations that are “leaning” on the data to identify the problem that needs addressing but also looking to see if the interventions they put in place are working.However, having access to the right data is still a problem, and Hopkins pointed out a wide discrepancy between quantitative data and qualitative data. “We’re beginning to understand what's happening with people who are in the minority. Oftentimes that doesn’t show up in the quantitative data because they’re underrepresented,” Hopkins said.Creary confirmed this in a recent analysis conducted with a media company. In her team’s analysis, they looked at the performance reviews between Black and white employees, where the performance reviews were “way more telling than” the quantitative data. “The quantitative data would say that Black employees don't perform as well as the qualitative data. But when you look at the qualitative data, it's very clear that the managers are not all using the same metrics to assess performance. And sometimes the Black employees are getting measured on things like, do they turn their cameras on during meetings and not on things that are actually agreed upon performance indicators.”“The qualitative data can often tell a much richer story about what's happening and why something is happening than the quantitative data can,” Creary said.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.

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