“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 Stick

If 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.

Enhancing Global HR Tech: Balancing Data, Automation, and Human Touch

Ankit Saxena, now the global head of people insights and HR technology at PPG Industries, has had a long career in data analytics. He has seen it all, from fraud to operational to financial to people analytics. In his experience, there are four critical takeaways: a clear business case, good storytelling, solutions, and action plans.“Whether you work in any kind of an analytics or technology environment, you have to have a clear business case. The second thing is the storytelling. Unless you connect the dots, your story is not impactful. The third thing is the solution. So you told me the problem. How do you fix it? [Finally], the action plan you're going to have. And those principles, whether you work in X analytics, y analytics or HR analytics, remain the same across the board.”Saxena spoke to the editorial audience director for Harvard Business Review, Nicole Smith during From Day One’s November virtual conference. They discussed the importance of maintaining a human touch in a rapidly evolving AI world and retrofitting existing technology with the new.When making a big move in any organization, especially one centered around people, you have to have your finger on the pulse of a lot of analytics. Saxena says it’s typical to pay attention to internal movements—how the company is performing, how the market is shifting, what major internal events are taking place, and more.There’s also people insight, which is all about gathering and analyzing employee data to understand their motivations and engagement.“If you’re looking to make a very broad kind of a decision, if you’re looking to understand what needs to be the future way of the organization from the people perspective, you have to have a pretty clear line of sight of what is happening externally as well,” said Saxena.Saxena points to how external events like Covid and inflation created ripple effects within organizations by influencing talent supply, attrition, compensation, and career dynamics. “As a professional in the analytics space, you keep a tab on all those things, not just your internal but also externally. During my career of 15 to 17 years, I have realized that if you are myopically focused internally, you will lose sight of the external environment, and if you focus too much on the external, you will lose sight of the internal.”To not get overwhelmed on managing all the external and internal metrics, Saxena says all organizations are focused on how they are [using] automation and AI.To narrow down the aperture of information and really focus on what is needed, Saxena says it’s imperative to look at the internal use case for technology. “What exactly is the benefit that you’re going to generate for your end stakeholders? Is there any kind of a buy-in that you see? Because AI is a prime example where everyone wants to jump in, but they don’t know exactly what the outcome is.”To answer that essential question above, Saxena developed a framework based on five ‘whats’:What’s the use case? What benefits do the different technologies generate? What’s the cost of implementation and maintenance? What are the future growth opportunities for any specific technology? And, what does change management look like?“Every organization struggles with their technology implementation if they don’t have robust change management,” Saxena added.Nicole Smith of the Harvard Business Review interviewed Ankit Saxena of PPG Industries “There are a lot of traditional technologies that do exist and will continue to exist. And I think that is important for us to understand that a lot of companies invest into technologies, but they are not able to make them work.”Saxena believes there’s an opportunity here with companies making their existing technology work. At previous companies, he said they would buy a technology but not fully implement it. “I think making your existing technology or tech stack work appropriately and providing you the full benefit” is a theme he's seeing in the market.Another piece of advice he offers is that before you look at the next big AI product being offered, look internally. “Rather than buying an AI technology, you should kind of look upon your current tech stack and how it kind of aligns with your AI capabilities.”“Make sure that you are using [traditional technology] to the fullest capability. Second, before you go outside [to buy] any AI capability, you should explore what tools you have and if they offer any AI capability. And can you leverage it for certain use cases to show some success and have an investment for the future?”Saxena emphasizes the importance of evaluating technology investments carefully to ensure they align with a company's vision and strategy. He notes that technology companies frequently introduce new capabilities to stay competitive in the AI space, which can create a challenge for businesses locked into long-term contracts.“Companies are not going to invest into anything new unless you have made the existing ones work, so this is a kind of a catch 22. Once you invest into long term contracts, you have to make them work,” Saxena 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.

Using AI to Revolutionize Hiring for Top Talent

With the help of artificial intelligence, a task that would take hours, days, or even weeks to complete can now be done in five minutes, says Mike Aronson, senior director of talent acquisition at Johnson Controls.In talent acquisition, AI has been a useful tool in generating job descriptions, screening applicants, and sourcing candidates. During a panel at From Day One’s November virtual conference, executives touched on how AI has revolutionized hiring the best candidates and streamlined productivity.Balancing AI and Human OperationsLesli Stasiek, senior director of human resources at Cencora says that they maintain the “human touch” through the hiring process by still interacting through recruiters and hiring managers, while also using Phenom AI as a way to drive efficiency in filtering through applications on a daily basis. “We don’t have enough recruiters to go through everything, so we’re leveraging the AI at the top of the funnel,” said Stasiek.Cencora is still at the start of its journey with utilizing AI but Stasiek shares that she hopes it can be leveraged “internally to empower employees and give them the resources to build their careers and drive better discussions.”AI is being implemented into talent acquisition to quickly check off tedious tasks that may be taking up time that can be investing towards more productivity. When it comes to creating job postings, AI is also used to source the best candidates through algorithms within job boards. During the hiring process, AI minimizes the time recruiters spend on summarizing interview notes and conversations to provide to managers.“It’s not replacing the person. It’s making the job a bit easier so that they can have a conversation around why [they] think this person’s good,” said Aronson.Companies who use skills-based hiring processes also benefit from the efficiencies of using AI to filter through applications that match the best skill sets. Angie Lombardo, global director of operations for talent acquisition at Arcadis, says the company’s applicant tracking system has an AI that will help rank the talent pool based on skills.This tool is helpful in regions like India and the Middle East where they receive thousands of applications within a week of posting a job opportunity, says Lombardo.Mitigating Bias in AIAI functions through system memory and if human bias has already been incorporated, machines will learn to replicate the same bias. Jenny Cotie Kangas, director of talent-centered transformation at Eightfold, says that it’s important to understand how you’re using the AI, how it’s coded, and the necessary guardrails to prevent wrong decision making.“When we’re talking about job descriptions and leveraging [generative] AI for job descriptions, it’s always important to run that through some sort of anti-bias tool,” said Kangas. “We want to kind of reset and recalibrate and make sure that we’re creating job descriptions that are truly inclusive.”AI is useful in eliminating the natural human bias such as what Kangas describes as the decisions she’ll make when she’s really hungry and when she’s not. Generative AI tends to be more male leaning, she added. The system may also be seeking “charged words” to identify patterns from the past in order to predict next steps. Kangas adds that even when companies use tools like AI, it’s always important to layer other tools on top to make sure all pieces are being covered.Utilizing AI for Internal GrowthAI’s efficiency not only helps with sourcing applicants but it can also help identify current employees who are ready for development and growth as future leaders. Especially in organizations with thousands of employees, it’s almost impossible for managers to know every employee well enough to identify possible candidates.Lydia Dishman of Fast Company moderated the discussion among industry experts (photo by From Day One)“Tools like this allow us to look at not just career pathing within a function, but across multiple functions or business units,” said Stasiek. “You drive that connectivity and you drive that networking and then you can grow your pipeline and your succession planning exponentially.” Investing in the career development of current employees also increases engagement and retention.Tracking the Applicant ExperienceThe digital platform of AI, allows everything to be tracked and digitized for future data analysis. For example, hiring managers can see what questions candidates are asking a website’s embedded chatbot and understand what they are looking for and what problems need to be solved, says Aronson.The reason why websites like Amazon are visited so regularly is because it’s easy to use. Company pages should be emulating this simplicity to improve the candidate experience during application processes, he added.Especially with the culture of recruiters “ghosting,” improving the candidate experience is also a key aspect to attracting the best candidates, said Kristen Baller, head of talent acquisition at DISH Network. By using AI to cut down tedious tasks, recruiters have more time to focus on “engaging and partnering with the candidate throughout their journey,” she said.The Challenges of AIAI is a powerful tool within the corporate space and it’s now being used by more companies, but what challenges can rise with increased use?“I think education is what we’re going to have to really think about,” said Baller. “We’re giving all these teams a Ferrari but nobody’s taught them how to drive it.” Stasiek emphasized that education is important to create awareness, but change management is where leaders can really see the impact of implementing a new system.As we remember that AI is a machine, Lombardo points out that “the more that we use AI, we do have to be careful that we’re not just using AI to do our work, but we are putting that human touch on it before we put anything out to be viewed.”Jennifer Yoshikoshi is a local news and education reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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.

How to Upgrade Company Culture—And Make It Stick

RELATED STORIES

Enhancing Global HR Tech: Balancing Data, Automation, and Human Touch

Using AI to Revolutionize Hiring for Top Talent

Creating a Purposeful Workplace Experience