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Caring for Caregivers: Strategies to Support a Healthy Workforce

When Julia Cohen Sebastien had a loved one become ill, that was all she could think about at work.“It definitely lowered my productivity,” she said during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s July virtual conference. “I hit burnout a lot faster in my job, and ultimately I had to take medical leave and started racking up new costs for my own treatment.”The HR department wasn’t fully supportive, says Cohen Sebastien. Even her mentor told to get over it and put on a smile.Cohen Sebastien left that job and went on to co-found Grayce, where she is the CEO. Grayce is a family care navigation platform that partners with employers to support personalized care journeys for their employees’ diverse needs.“At Grayce, we really take a holistic care approach to supporting an employee and their family,” Cohen Sebastien said. “And that’s about giving them tools, resources, and hands on support, to take things off their plate, so that they can navigate both the short-term and the long-term care responsibilities, including taking care of themselves.”More Employees Are Caregivers Than Employers ThinkCohen Sebastien noted that around 73% of all employees have some type of outside caregiving responsibilities for a loved one, whether that be for children, aging parents or grandparents, spouses or partners, siblings, or even themselves.Julia Cohen Sebastien led the thought leadership spotlight titled, "Caring for the Caregivers: Innovative Benefit Strategies to Support a Healthy Workforce and Families" (company photo)“Up to 50% of employees say that they’re afraid to reveal their caregiving responsibilities to their employers because they are afraid of what that will cost them at work,” she said. In addition, the amount of time people are spending on caregiving duties for their loved ones is skyrocketing because fewer professional caregivers are available, which drives up prices for those services, says Cohen Sebastien.When employees take on caregiving duties, it can become the equivalent of a part-time or even full-time job. Sometimes, they take multiple days off each month due to those responsibilities.Those who are in the sandwich generation find themselves caring for their young children as well as their aging parents. These employees tend to have a lot of seniority in the company and are difficult to replace, so their support needs to be comprehensive. Organizations need to consider the ROI of supporting employers who are caregivers. “It’s a pretty important topic to make people’s lives easier just at that moment when they need it,” she said. How to Support CaregiversCaregivers want a variety of support from employers. “Beyond time away and flexibility, employees want help to lighten the load,” she said. “In many cases, they need help accessing things, removing barriers to care and navigating the complexity.”For example, one of Grayce’s licensed clinical social workers helped an employee who was concerned about his aging father’s physical and financial safety. The employee was taking leave to travel and wanted help transferring his dad’s guardianship to his sibling.The clinical social worker expedited the guardianship transfer and helped transition the father into a safe senior living community of the siblings’ choice. The employee “was able to come back to work in 10 days with confidence and peace of mind,” Cohen Sebastien said. With the help of Grayce, many employees have been able to stay in their jobs and not have to take leave, or at least shorten the time they are on leave, says Cohen Sebastien. Although mental health days and general wellness solutions are excellent support for employees, they aren’t enough to give caregivers the help they need. It’s all about “going after some of those key life challenges that prevent them from being able to be present and happy.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Grayce, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Mary Pieper is a freelance writer based in Mason City, Iowa.

Mary Pieper | July 25, 2024
How to Navigate Different Learning Styles to Include Everyone in a Large Organization

“How do we engage 1,500 learners at a single time, and how do we have content that meets the needs of all who may be attending a particular learning event?” This is a question Dr. Sherri Brooks, chief learning officer at Baptist Memorial Health Care works on each day.The organization employs more than 21,000 people, including 1,500 in leadership roles. With such a large team, learning and development efforts can be complicated. Some people are kinesthetic learners, meaning they need to engage physically during the learning process. In contrast, others are auditory or visual learners.Brooks was interviewed by Nicole Smith, editorial audience director for Harvard Business Review during a fireside chat at From Day One’s July virtual conference on upskilling and career mobility.“I’ve stopped passing judgment on what I think people should know and how I think they should behave, because what I also recognize is that not everyone is a lifelong learner,” she said. “Not everyone loves learning, engaging, and developing,” said Brooks.People come from different backgrounds and have different motivation levels. That’s why she takes ownership of “all that I can do to impact someone else’s life, particularly as it relates to professional development and growth, and learning and development.”What Makes a Good Learning Environment?Brooks says the key ingredient for an effective learning environment is leaders who “take advantage of teachable moments when there’s an opportunity to impart knowledge or insight into what a particular team member may be doing.”In particular, middle managers have an essential role because of their direct impact on frontline workers, says Brooks. “They set the tone for the organization because they are responsible for facilitating changes that may come up for explaining what’s the new learning topic of the month, or what’s needed for the organization,” she said.Nicole Smith of Harvard Business Review interviewed Dr. Sherri Brooks of Baptist Memorial Health Care during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)Baptist Memorial Health Care holds quarterly leadership development intensives to address specific desired outcomes. “For example, if our goal is to improve overall patient experience ratings, we can do that by demonstrating compassionate connected care, which is the framework for how we really work alongside each other,” Brooks said.The organization’s leaders are trained to model specific behaviors, such as empathy. “When you have a team that's empathetic towards one another, then that translates into empathetic patient care, which then increases patient experience, which increases our patient experience ratings,” Brooks said.Ensuring Learning is Creative and EffectiveAs a large organization spread across three states, Baptist Memorial Health Care embraces technology as part of the employee learning process. They offer virtual and hybrid training methods and have invested in audience interaction tools to make presentations more engaging, Brooks says.Brooks also recommends varying learning methods. “We’re not going to call all 21,000 team members into a classroom to teach and train them on something. We have to offer content and micro learning bursts in 10 to 20 minute chunks.”Many workers don’t always have access to a computer since they don’t work from a desk, so the company makes learnings available on an app or provides desktop computer kiosks where employees can go when they have downtime.Another way to avoid learning fatigue is to avoid a fire drill approach where employees have a lot of material thrown at them at once. For example, Baptist Memorial Health Care decided to spread its orientation for new nurses over a 14-week period, where they would take a 90-minute course one day a week and then practice what they learned on their floor. “That tremendously decreased our turnover,” Brooks said.Mary Pieper is a freelance writer based in Mason City, Iowa. 

Mary Pieper | July 24, 2024
How “America’s Diner” Creates a Culture for Workers to Grow and Thrive

Fasika Melaku, SVP of HR and chief learning officer at Denny’s, is a big believer in career mobility. After all, she attended Emerson College to become a speech pathologist and ended up on an entirely different path. She credits the restaurant industry’s innate ability to provide a clear pathway for promotion as part of the reason she is where she is today.Melaku started as a restaurant hostess when she was in high school, working her way up the ranks. Now, she is committed to raising up employees at all levels. “I help engage our teams at Denny's from the hostess to the CEO, and discuss how we can create brilliance for our teams and for our guests when they walk in,” she said in a fireside chat at From Day One’s July virtual conference.Denny’s offers an ambitious career-development program for all of its 70,000 employees at more than 1,600 locations. Melaku provided an inside look at how the company’s ‘gain’ program provides support for workers in four key areas, including life skills and career pathways.Moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor, growth and engagement at Fast Company notes that Denny’s provides “a support ecosystem that enables you to grow and learn.” In order to lay that foundation, Melaku says HR leaders need to start at the source. “I think one of the number one people in your ecosystem to support is you,” Melaku said, noting the importance of simply wanting to get up and go to work every day. “How we nurture that is creating a purpose that people can engage with, that you can find your place in. [For Denny’s], it’s our love for feeding people, body, mind and soul.”Part of that is ensuring all employees have a shared language around corporate values. “At Denny's, we have this culture that we wrap around called the Denny's Way. Using consistent language [ensures that] everybody gets it. It’s not hidden,” Melaku said. “It is a beautiful thing that’s given from the CEO, all the way down to the server and the cooks. That's a huge part of how we create mobility and how we start life at Denny’s.”Most Denny’s restaurants are franchise-owned, with 210 owners spread across the country. It can be a challenge to teach everyone in all of these locations, which is why that consistency in language is key.“The culture was already there,” Melaku said, but language needed to be shared. So, Denny’s brought everyone to the table, with all departments and franchises meeting in person over the course of three days. She says people left feeling more like a part of something bigger and could envision their place in the Denny’s ecosystem.Providing a Platform for MobilityIn a modern job environment that prioritizes skills-based hiring, “the restaurant industry is at an inflection point, teaching people this set of skills that they can take anywhere, or stay here with.” We often don't think about mobility in the service industry as staying within the service industry, but Denny’s wants to prepare its employees for long-term growth and career longevity.Lydia Dishman of Fast Company interviewed Fasika Melaku of Denny's in the virtual fireside chat (photo by From Day One)“You learn stuff when you’re working in the service industry day in and day out. How do we flip the script in the world to make sure they know what you learn here, leading a restaurant that is a $3 million business, is just as worthy as what you learn in a classroom?” Melaku said.The gain program harnesses the energy and passion of its employees who run a 24-hour business. It gives employees who need it the opportunity to get their GED while working for Denny’s, and ensures that the management training provided onsite could be seen by colleges as equivalent to higher education courses. Today, Melaku says, their program is equivalent to 30 college credits with three universities – and they’re going after more.The gain program also provides life skills training, including financial planning courses to help employees better understand how to manage the money they earn while working at Denny’s. This is more training than many college graduates may receive, says Dishman.Often, Melaku says, Denny’s is where employees learn the skills that will help them improve the situation for themselves and their families, whether that’s through the Star Management training program or simply learning basic skills on the job.Melaku shares the story of Michael Best, who started working at Denny’s at age 16 and now leads new restaurant openings at the organization. “He said Denny’s managers helped teach him about accountability,” Melaku said. He became the first person in his family to purchase their own home. “That’s the beauty of a supportive ecosystem.” Denny’s prides itself on being a bedrock for people and often providing them with their first job.Paying to train an employee only to have them walk out the door, then having to pay to train their replacement, is a particular challenge in the restaurant industry, where competition is fierce. “It is crucial that we think about our people. If you don’t figure out how to make people feel like they belong, if they don’t feel like it’s OK to take some time off, if they don’t learn – that’s tough.” Melaku has been in consistent conversation with the 200 owners to show them the data backing up how the gain program impacts retention.In terms of getting through to the employees themselves, Denny’s is transparent with its employees, showing how the pathway from server to general manager can lead to personal financial success. “In every onboarding you have, we tell them about the growth,” Melaku said. “It pays to help them see the value you bring to them as an individual, [how you] help them with their families, and teach them life skills. When you open that door to create success, your business will succeed.”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, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | July 23, 2024
Transforming Your Organization into a Skills-Based Powerhouse

“Skills-based hiring allows us to focus on making better hiring decisions based on actual skills rather than subjective factors,” said Kristen Baller, head of talent acquisition at satellite provider DISH Network. “Traditional hiring practices often favor candidates who have specific educational backgrounds or tenure with [brand-name] companies. Moving to this model helps mitigate that bias. It allows employees to showcase their capabilities that could directly impact the roles and the requirements of a job.”Baller is part of a growing number of employers making skills-based hiring and promotion a priority. According to LinkedIn’s Future of Recruiting 2024 report, 73% of hiring professionals say skills-based hiring is a priority. Further, between 2019 and 2022, the number of companies that omit degree requirements from job postings increased 36%.There are many advantages to adopting a skills-based mentality: It grows the applicant talent pool based on relevant rather than arbitrary factors, it can improve the quality of hire, and it can promote internal mobility, giving workers a reason to invest in their own skill development and to stick with a company longer.“The importance of having consistency and scalability is important to any recruiting process,” said Kristen Cooper, head of North America solutions consulting at recruiting tech platform SHL. For skills-based hiring, “it comes down to the requirements of the job on day one versus what an organization can train its new hires on. A huge part of this is branding and marketing. It’s so important when a candidate reads a job description that it actually reflects what they’re going to be doing.”Cooper and Baller were part of an expert panel at From Day One’s webinar on how to transform an organization into a skills-based powerhouse. The group spoke about changing the hearts, minds, and processes that undergird this progressive new attitude toward workforce development.How to Break Old Habits and Adopt a Skills-Based ModelShifting to a skills-based hiring approach is easier said than done. Job descriptions, processes, evaluations, interviews, scoring, and even tech platforms have to be reimagined. It helps to involve hiring managers in the planning, and in doing so, begin challenging biases and breaking old habits.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the webinar about "Transforming Your Organization Into a Skills-Based Powerhouse" (photo by From Day One)“We’re really focusing on internal mobility and standing up practices like workshops and lunch-and-learns across the organization,” Baller said. “We invite our executive leadership to talk about the organization and the work they’re doing, but really, we ask them to focus on the skills and competencies that individuals need. That triggers the individuals attending these lunch-and-learns to think about what skills they possess that could transition into another job.” People leave the sessions energized and able to envision career opportunities they had never considered, she says.Redesigning Candidate Assessment ToolsFor many, retooling hiring practices will include new modes of screening candidates’ capabilities. The New York Times is one employer building its own assessment tools. Monica Parodi, the Times’ VP of talent acquisition, described how constructive it’s been to have those already in the organization assist with skills-based methodology and assessments.“We just finished building an iOS and an Android assessment. In recruiting, we don’t have that technical knowledge. There are great vendors and tools out there, but it’s also great when you can take your in-house talent and allow them to be a part of building that interview plan. We had them build in the ability to test their iOS-building skills and their Android skills and their coding abilities. They’re the ones who know what skills are needed to complement their team.”Not everyone will have the funds or in-house capabilities to invest in proprietary tech, but everyone can get the teams involved in identifying new capabilities that need to be added.Parodi is clear that making the change, and even implementing skills-based hiring, is an arduous undertaking. It requires forming new habits, conducting deeper and more critical research on roles, and writing requisitions differently. The process is a tough one, but a lucrative one. “That’s one thing about skills-based hiring in general: It’s a lot more work on the front end, but the rewards are worth that return on investment.”Powering Skills-Based MobilityAssisted by technology, employers are also reaping the benefits of skills-based hiring for upskilling, reskilling, and internal mobility. “Companies tend to be pretty excited about the ability to bring some science and precision to that whole process,” said Cooper of SHL.“We realized a couple of years ago that there are some pretty big gaps in the market for the talent that we need,” said Angie Lombardo, the VP of talent acquisition at engineering consultancy Arcadis. “So, we started researching different technologies that could assist us in the process. We decided to invest in a skills-powered AI tool.”Employees create a profile, and the platform helps them identify career paths and options within the company based on their skills and interests. “It helps people kind of see, ‘Oh, I could probably do this job; I never thought about it before.”Lombardo recognized that the company’s internal mobility rates were low, largely due to lack of communication, which is a challenge in a large organization with so many business units. “The right hand is often not talking to the left hand,” she described. “You have someone who has this specific experience in water or wastewater, for example, and they really want to do something in a different business area, but the divisions don’t talk to each other. They have transferable skills, but the visibility isn’t there.”Skills-Based Hiring as a Tool for Business Growth and Employee RetentionPrioritizing skills has significant implications for internal growth and mobility too. “It’s much more cost-effective to move an internal employee into a role than to have to [resort] to external hiring practices,” said Baller. “When we move to focusing on skills-based hiring over traditional qualifications, it enhances internal mobility opportunities across the organization. It promotes a more dynamic and flexible workforce where individuals are not limited by their job title or their background.”Mapping career paths and connecting the nodes with skills can help workers envision an enriching future with the company. At business consulting firm Slalom, senior director of talent acquisition Laura Sullivan is using a talent module to support internal moves.“It does a really lovely job of showing the jungle gym that your career could be at Slalom. Each level has skills and roles that are associated with it, and it helps people to see, ‘I have this skill right now, and these other roles also include these skills, so I could take my career in this direction by earning these certifications, or by potentially working on certain types of projects.’”Sullivan pointed out that skills-based career movement is especially valuable in the consulting industry, where employees are already placed on projects based on their skills and capabilities. “When people roll off a project, they’re on our bench, and the bench is a great time for people to upskill. We invest in certifications, training, and workshops to help people take on bench projects. They can learn how to help with RFPs, for instance, if that’s a skill that they don’t have yet. It’s a great way for us to give people new opportunities, and help them fill any gaps that they might have in their experience.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SHL, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | July 23, 2024
Measuring What's Really Happening in the Workplace in 2024

In today’s increasingly digital and often remote working environment, software can help organizations get a better handle on how their teams are tackling challenges and discover ways to fill in the gaps. The highest performing teams are 2.6 times more likely to be investing in performance management software, according to Lattice’s State of People Strategy Report. But of those not using such software, 27% are unsure of how to begin and 22% are even concerned about the cultural implications of doing so.But what does an average day of digital work look like? Does worker behavior vary during a typical workweek–or throughout the year? Workforce analytics company ActivTrak drew on three years of data, from more than 135,000 employees across 1,000 companies to provide an examination of workplace behaviors in its annual State of the Workplace Report.Among the findings: workdays are shorter and productivity remains steady. But at the same time, disengagement is growing, which may lead to problems of underutilization but also presents opportunities to make better use of untapped workforce capacity.In a From Day One webinar webinar, leaders from ActivTrak spoke about their critical findings related to productivity, burnout, technology, and AI usage trends. They discussed industry-specific best practices and benchmarks so you can take action and boost productivity across your organization.The State of the Workplace The goal of the report was “to reveal the current state of work and how organizations can better anticipate and plan for the future,” said Sarah Altemus, manager at ActivTrak’s Productivity Lab. “Notably, we found that workdays are shorter and productivity remains steady. Burnout is in decline, which should boost positive engagement and utilization. However, we did see that disengagement is growing, possibly due to previously burned-out employees who are increasingly checking out,” said Altemus.The study, which covered 2021 through 2023, found that employees were about eight minutes per day more productive in the first half of 2023 vs. the second half. This means that if an organization with 1,000 employees was able to maintain those earlier productivity levels throughout the whole year, it would gain an additional workload capacity of 18 full-time employees, worth approximately $1.1 million, assuming each employee has a $60,000 salary.Employees are also finishing their tasks in less time. The workday got a full 15% shorter from Q1 2021 to Q4 2023, dropping from nine hours and 52 minutes to nine hours and five minutes. Time spent on collaborative activities such as chat and messaging increased slightly. Meanwhile, total digital activity, productive time, and focus time stayed consistent.Sarah Altemus, ActivTrak’s Productivity Lab Manager, led the webinar (company photo)Efficiency, measured in productive time in relation to total time, remained steady. This, Altemus says, is a good thing. “We were creeping into almost 10 hours of ‘on’ connected time a day in 2021. I think a lot of that was really performative productivity, people wanting to be constantly online. And so it's encouraging to see that shift to a more sustainable period of time.”How can employers make the most of this trend? The ActivTrak Productivity Lab suggests utilizing workplace analytics software to boost performance management, enhance employee productivity, and maximize workforce investments. Leaders should continuously analyze current and long-term data to pinpoint gaps and obstacles, and identify employees who may benefit from additional training.A disengaged employee is defined as one who spends greater than 75% of their year in an underutilized state. Distressingly, they found that 20% of employees were disengaged due to underutilization, up 67% since 2021. Meanwhile, 7% of employees risked burnout due to overutilization. 4% of employees in 2023 worked on weekends, down one percentage point from 2022. Often, a small, overworked group of employees is taking on too much.Megan Moller, productivity enthusiast at ActivTrak, says multi-tasking and context-switching is often the culprit. “That can be exhausting,” Moller said. “And so when you are doing that every single day for a period of time, you can get burned out.” Leaders need to assess and track employee utilization to help right the balance.If you don’t find the right balance, the results can be costly. 27% of employees risk attrition due to burnout or disengagement.  Employees who are burned out are more likely to leave. And ActivTrak calculated that for an organization with 1,000 employees, a workload imbalance that leads to attrition equals a potential loss of 70 employees, valued at $2.1 million, based on 20% annual voluntary turnover and replacement costs equal to half of a $60,000 annual salary.To combat this, Altemus suggests gathering context through team meetings and one-on-one discussions to identify issues and offer targeted support to employees who are overburdened or underutilized. And leaders should encourage employee development by demonstrating how their daily work contributes to the organizations’ broader strategic goals.AI AdoptionArtificial intelligence is being adopted in the workplace – and fast. 22% of employees used AI tools in 2023, an increase of 50% from Q1 to Q4. While AI usage increased, however, ActivTrak found there was no apparent impact on productivity when comparing employees who used AI tools to those who did not. So that freed up time was not necessarily put to good use.Factors such as industry, company size, and workplace environment influenced AI tool adoption, but generally about one in 10 employees used AI tools. Remote workers were 5% more likely to use AI. 115 unique tools were used, with the free-to-use ChatGPT being the most popular.While the true role of AI in the workplace is not necessarily crystal clear, it’s obvious that AI is not going away. Altemus suggests striking a balance: train employees on effective AI use without solely relying on it. Promote a culture of experimentation and learning by encouraging employees to try new approaches and share what they learn. Offer guidance to ensure AI usage aligns with your organizational goals, and always be mindful of protecting sensitive or proprietary information.A Productive FutureIn terms of productivity, Altemus advises transferring best practices from earlier months to boost output and yield significant gains in the latter half of the year, when productivity tends to decline. To combat burnout and disengagement among employees feeling an unbalance in workload, try redirecting resources to support targeted training and growth opportunities. And with AI use on the rise, there is a need for clearly defined policies around appropriate use to maximize the benefits.Leaders can better understand the current state of their specific workforce using analytics tools, and add context with employee sentiment data gained through pulse surveys. They should always communicate their findings and take action when it’s relevant.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, ActivTrak, for sponsoring this webinar. Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | July 19, 2024
What a Five-Generation Workforce Means for You: The Myths and Realities

Nick, a senior manager in a global tech company based in Seattle, has worked with people of many different ages, both older and younger than him. His experience is increasingly typical in a workforce that spans five generations, a growing diversity of experience that provides the benefit of workers sharing wisdom across the ages, but also gives rise to problems like ageism–the bias against others based merely on their calendar age. Nick recently learned that one of his direct reports is notably older than Nick assumed. “At that moment, I realized that I had been thinking of him as less serious and more in need of guidance. I knew I had to examine my prejudices about age.”This is the first time in history that such a rich mixture of people from their teens to their 80s are at work. But the implications for business are still being sorted out. In 2020, a Deloitte white paper reported that 70% of executives surveyed believed a multigenerational workforce was important for their organizations, but only 10% felt ready to lead one and understood how it might affect operations.The widespread assumption has been that the generations are distinct enough in their affinities that they should be treated differently. In the Deloitte survey, more than half the respondents said they consider differences between the generations in designing operations and benefits But are these differences more perceived than real? Deloitte’s report cites the new concept of a “perennial” employee, or someone who transcends generational stereotypes.As the Deloitte survey explains: “Why is generation becoming less relevant as a way to understand the workforce? The starting point is that careers have become more dynamic and complex, loosening the historic correlation between age and career progression. Rapid technological and organizational change means that workers must now reinvent themselves multiple times throughout their working lives; at the same time, the broader business culture has shifted to make it acceptable, sometimes even desirable, to promote younger individuals into leadership positions. The upshot is that 65-year-old interns can today be found working side by side with 25-year-old managers, calling into question the assumption that age is a reasonable proxy for understanding people’s workplace challenges and needs.”A 2012 analysis of more than 20 studies supports this view, finding few generational differences in work-related variables like attitudes towards work or technology. Where they do exist, the differences can likely be attributed to variables other than age, like education level.Yet ageism persists. In this story, the first in a three-part series, we'll be looking at how employers can confront this challenge by adopting more age-inclusive practices. There’s good reason to do so, since lack of trust between generations can create unnecessary competition and resentment, to the detriment of working relationships. One experiment found that negative beliefs about older people and how they adapt to new technology led to poorer training of those people. Another survey found that hiring managers view younger workers as having more relevant education and experience and being a better cultural fit with organizations. On the other side is a view that goes as far back as Socrates: young people are flighty, have a poor work ethic, or require constant praise from above. Stephane P. Francioli, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at the Wharton School of Management, has made a study of “youngism” and found that when asked about age-related abuse or discrimination, younger workers report higher rates than bias related to sexual orientation, race, religion, or gender, he says. Could this be because they see the workplace as wholly unfair? No, he says. If that were true, younger workers would also complain about issues of racism, sexism, or anti-LGBTQIA+ actions at higher levels than other age groups. They don’t. Heather Tinsley-Fix is a Senior Advisor at AARP where she helps employers support a multigenerational workforce (company photo)Pigeon-holing different groups can impair how teams work together, says Heather Tinsley-Fix, a senior advisor at AARP, whether it’s saying that older people are not flexible with new tech or younger people have no loyalty. “If someone was young and not tech savvy, they wouldn’t mention it, but if they are older, it gets attributed to age,” she said. “It's often just a knee-jerk reaction.”Abuse and discrimination can take many forms. Younger workers may be asked to run personal errands outside of their job description, or handle on-call hours at night because they don’t have children to take care of. They may be denied flexible work arrangements that parents of young children are given because a manager doesn’t think young, childless employees will work as hard at home without supervision, says Francioli.The problems that affect younger workers are often not addressed because they are not recognized legally, at least at the federal level. In the U.S., the Age Discrimination in Employment Act covers age discrimination in workers over 40, but can disregard other workers. Employers need to be careful not to encourage and reemphasize generational differences by organizing training according to age groups, like courses on how to manage millennials, helping older workers navigate technology, or how your Gen Z staff is different. “There is no scientific basis for any of this, it creates an us vs. them atmosphere, and encourages an in-group/out-group mentality,” Francioli said.One other consideration is how people can project age-related perceptions onto others. An older worker, for example, may believe coworkers think he is slow to adapt to new work methodologies, when they may not feel that way at all. In fact, one study found that what people believed about other generations was usually positive. The outlier was what people thought of younger generations, though young people believed others’ perceptions of them were far more negative than the reality.While putting stereotypes aside, there are still some age-related realities that employers should take into account. For example, companies can consider ergonomic factors when it comes to older workers, as well as developing support programs for staff members going through menopause. But assuming attitudinal characteristics of specific age groups and training workers based on those assumptions is often counterproductive.At the same time, the world is changing fast, so generations are experiencing factors like media and economic conditions in different ways, which shouldn’t be overlooked, says Corey Seemiller, Ph.D., a professor at Ohio’s Wright State University, and author of several books about Gen Z. Understanding those differences can be key to engaging with team members and the future success of your organization. She points to Gen Z, the social media generation, and their comfort with video as a form of communication. “Do you offer the opportunity for them to provide a video resume? Not all of them will, but some might prefer it,” she said.Many in Gen Z are uninterested in public accolades for their work; some actively dislike it, Seemiller says. Similarly, those from Gen X, often called the Latch-Key Generation, experienced a lot of freedom during their childhood and are often averse to micromanagement.Knowing what might discourage different generations and meeting them where they are doesn’t make you ageist. But if, for example, you note that older people who worked in an analog culture for most of their careers are having trouble adapting to a new tech platform and subsequently require special training for all people over 50, Seemiller says, that is when it becomes discriminatory. The best way to support the different needs of employees is to talk to them and treat them as individuals, advises Seemiller. Employers should find out what they want, what they need, and where there is room for improvement. Regular surveys are a good way to do this.  All of this can be highly nuanced, but for employers, it will be worth the effort. We are experiencing a great age shift in the workforce. The UN estimates more than a third of the population will be over 65 by 2050. In the U.S., one-fifth of the population will be over 65 by 2030. Better health, and better healthcare, as well as economic circumstances, have led to people working longer. At the same time, the birth rate is declining.Is your organization prepared for fewer younger workers and more older workers? How can you create a culture where ageism and prejudice against anyone, young or old, doesn’t gain a foothold? How can you harness the power of a multigenerational workforce? In part two of this series, we’ll provide actionable ideas and examples of programs that have helped other organizations successfully navigate changing demographics.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, AARP, for sponsoring this story, the first in a series on how employers can foster age inclusion in the workplace. Interested in assessing how you are doing with age inclusion–and learning more? Try AARP’s new tool, Age Inclusion 101. Just send an email to employerpledge@aarp.org, with the subject line betatest.Lisa Jaffe is a freelance writer who lives in Seattle with her son and a very needy rescue dog named Ellie Bee. She enjoys reading, long walks on the beach, and trying to get better at ceramics. 

Lisa Jaffe | July 18, 2024
In Women’s Health, a New Coalition Aims to Keep Up the Progress

Women’s health care, long neglected by medical researchers and tech innovators in the U.S., is starting to get its due. A new coalition of digital health companies aims to harness the energy around women’s health to boost the accessibility and affordability of their care by working with employers to improve corporate benefits and workplace support.The group, called the Women’s Health Coalition for Digital Solutions, combines the mental-health platform Talkspace and the family-health company Ovia Health with other startups aimed at everything from fertility to menopause to nutrition and fitness.In its first year, the collective is focused on awareness and de-stigmatization efforts as well as using its members’ influence to advocate for workplace health equity. In future years, the coalition’s founders say they would like to encourage more investment in women’s health technology and enhance the patient experience by exploring integration among their many services.The idea for the group came about when Talkspace, which has expanded its business-to-business offerings in the last few years, was looking for partners, and executives saw a growing customer need in the realm of women’s health.“Women are busy. We manage our homes, we manage our work life, we’re managing our own personal happiness,” said Natalie Cummins, chief business officer at Talkspace. “What we’re hearing from our customers is that three barriers that still exist are stigma, access, and affordability.” She and other coalition partners are quick to note stats that show while women live longer than men, they spend 25% more time in “poor health” and they pay $15 billion more per-year in out-of-pocket health care costs than employed men. So Talkspace sought out other virtual health providers who shared their goal of helping people access care remotely, and intentionally put together a group that serves each point in a woman’s life cycle. In addition to Talkspace and Ovia Health the founding members include Conceive, which offers fertility and pregnancy support; Evernow, which offers menopause care; Nurx, a telehealth company that prescribes birth control, acne treatment, and other medications; FitOn, a fitness app; and Nutrium, which provides nutrition counseling. The coalition is part of a growing trend of employers prioritizing fertility and other family-building benefits in the last few years. The percentage of U.S. organizations offering such benefits increased from 30% in 2020 to 40% in 2022, according to the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans. The focus has expanded to include menopause, which has been poorly understood and little-discussed in the workplace. About 15% of companies surveyed by Mercer in 2023 provided menopause-specific benefits—up from just 4% in 2022. “We are seeing people respond to us in a way that is really taking menopause seriously as they should,” says Donna Klassen, a clinical social worker and co-founder of advocacy group Let’s Talk Menopause. She is particularly eager to see efforts aimed at changing the culture and policies around menopause in the workplace, as research has shown that menopause symptoms–and the stigma around them–can negatively impact both women and employers. Researchers at Mayo Clinic found that menopause symptoms cost the U.S. $1.8 billion in lost work time per year, for example. “When people have support at work, they are less likely to feel that they want to leave,” Klassen said. She emphasized the importance of trusted information as more women and their employers address menopause publicly. “People want their questions answered, and doctors don’t always have the time,” she said. “So let’s make sure you’re getting your information from credible sources.” Let’s Talk Menopause offers workshops and other educational programs to individuals and companies seeking to learn about menopause.That kind of education is key to the new coalition’s goals too. It’s “really an opportunity to drive some of the thought leadership with people who have been in this industry for a while and who are invested in improving the lives of women,” said Corrinne Hobbs, general manager and VP of enterprise and strategic partnerships at Ovia Health.Corrinne Hobbs, general manager and VP of enterprise and strategic partnerships at Ovia Health (Photo courtesy of Ovia Health)As the group develops, Hobbs says she sees the coalition companies being in a good position to provide services, advice, and research for companies that want to improve their benefits or policies in ways that support women’s health. Their effort comes as the U.S. continues to see the consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the federal right to abortion, which has led to other restrictions on reproductive health around the country. Cummins, Hobbs, and other coalition partners say they are not wading into national politics, but are focused on enhancing access to women’s health care for as many people as possible. They were pleased to see President Joe Biden’s executive order expanding research on women’s health earlier this year, for example, and are hoping this is a sign of progress. “For many years, women were thought of as tiny men and weren’t really required to be in clinical research,” said Lauren Berson, CEO and founder of Conceive, the fertility-support app that’s one of the coalition’s founding members. As part of the effort from the federal government, the National Institutes of Health will focus new research on menopause and an array of other health issues that affect women, including Alzheimer’s and conditions like endometriosis and fibroids.Conceive is especially focused on equipping its users with the science and information they need to navigate the experience of getting pregnant. “There’s just so much more we can do together when we think about the lack of research and the lack of infrastructure,” Berson said.The members of the new coalition say they have already heard from companies who want to join the group, but they know there is still a long way to go. Some first steps for employers looking to support women’s health, they say, are to design benefits plans that reduce the out-of-pocket costs for women, remove barriers to seeking care, and ensure benefits cover the full spectrum of employees’ experiences. “Ensuring that your workplace supports women is crucial,” says Hobbs of Ovia Health. “So what does that look like? Improving the parental leave policy, flexible work initiatives, ERGs to really understand the needs of employees and then also minimizing the caregiver burden at home.” Abigail Abrams is a health writer and editor. Currently she is the senior manager of content operations for Atria. Previously, she was a staff writer on health and politics for TIME magazine. Her freelance work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Guardian, and other publications.(Featured photo by SDI Productions/iStock by Getty Images)

Abigail Abrams | July 17, 2024
How to Attract, Screen, and Manage Your Talent in Today’s Hiring Landscape

Companies are more focused on retention and internal mobility than ever. From this focus, hiring talent externally has become more convoluted. The technical complexity of job boards generates a large pool of applicants who are not necessarily matched with the right jobs. So how can businesses optimize their search for qualified external talent within these talent pools? Heidi Barnett, the CEO of ApplicantPro, shared critical methods of optimizing the recruiting process during From Day One a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s June virtual conference.Knowing who you are as a business provides valuable information for sourcing. It’s imperative to clearly define who you are as a business, including your values, unique attributes, and what customers and employees love about it, says Barnett.ApplicantPro empowers businesses to streamline their hiring processes by posting jobs across multiple job boards, conducting thorough applicant screening, and offering guidance to hiring managers. One of ApplicantPro's key insights draws a parallel between job boards and search engines.Heidi Barnett, the CEO of ApplicantPro, led the thought leadership spotlight (company photo)By understanding that job boards prioritize higher visibility based on relevancy, businesses can develop more effective recruiting strategies, says Barnett. For example, job boards such as Indeed are optimized for the search of job seekers – not companies. To give job seekers the most results catered to their needs, Indeed provides visibility to newer jobs, jobs with more reviews, and higher click-through rates. “So their core focus is on candidates and candidate flow, not on companies that are posting jobs," she said.Reaching more applicants isn’t necessarily a disadvantage either. “What we’re going to want to do is cast the widest net: allow more people to see the jobs so they have interest. And then on the back end, we’re going to search for quality. And we're going to make sure that, not that we don’t have this huge influx coming in, but we’re focused on quality.”Barnett provided several job ad optimization strategies tailored to draw in the ideal talent from vast talent pools. First, include your salary. Otherwise Indeed creates an estimation that may not accurately represent your business. Next, close the job position if it hasn’t been filled within 21-30 days. Instead of reposting it, which will make Indeed block your traffic, rewrite its contents so that it will be recognized as a new job.Finally, prioritize the disposition of your candidates: by reviewing and engaging with your candidates, Indeed offers you more visibility and you get to screen candidates more efficiently. Barnett also advised businesses on what not to do, such as using redirect URLs in your ad that will take applicants away from your job post.Screening Tools to Identify Key TalentEffective screening tools can help identify top talent. Barnett recommends open-ended screening questions with multiple response options to gather comprehensive information from candidates. This approach allows a more thorough evaluation of applicants' skills, qualifications, and potential match for the organization.Candidate matching has also emerged as a valuable tool for businesses to identify and interview top talent quicker than before. AI-powered candidate matching tools assist in analyzing job screening questions, resumes, and years of experience. This newer technology streamlines recruiting, allowing businesses to make informed hiring decisions more quickly and efficiently.Pre-employment assessments also serve as a valuable tool for identifying candidates, says Barnett. These assessments provide additional insights into a candidate's alignment with the desired qualifications, offering a more comprehensive understanding of their suitability for the position. This allows organizations to make informed hiring decisions, increasing the likelihood of selecting qualified talent.Lastly, video interviews are a transparent method to gain insights into applicants' personalities and assess their potential suitability for your organization's culture and values.Using these strategies, businesses can effectively “make sure that you’re not only getting these positions filled, but navigating all of the different quality challenges,” she said.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, ApplicantPro, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. 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.

Stephanie Reed | July 17, 2024
Employers, You Need Your Gig Workers. Here's How to Treat Them Better

Corporate America, the gig workers that keep your businesses operating have some feedback. As the popularity of independent work increases, so does business dependence on contractors, freelancers, and gig workers. In a McKinsey survey in 2022, 36% of employed respondents, equivalent to about 58 million workers, identified as independent workers, up from 27% just six years earlier. The recruiting platform MBO Partners estimates the number is closer to 45% as of last year. Independent workers are the people who deliver your lunch, drive you to the airport, build your houses, write your blog posts, design your websites, produce your podcasts, tutor your kids, and market your products to the public. Among the changes to our working lives brought about by the pandemic is the preference–and often the need–for non-standard work arrangements. In fields where employment is precarious, gig work can cover the gaps in a pinch or when the bottom falls out. The popularity of flexible, autonomous, asynchronous, and project-based work remains with us long after Covid has subsided.Many who work as contractors are attracted to the autonomy and flexibility this working style affords; and especially for family caretakers, who are disproportionately female, freelance and contract work allows them to earn an income while meeting caregiving obligations. Plenty are drawn to the work out of necessity, bringing in extra money to fill the gaps or to maintain an income when a full-time job can’t be found.Even so, gig work has been associated with higher rates of anxiety because of its unpredictability and instability, and because gig workers shoulder the burden of benefits typically provided by the employer, like health insurance and paid leave.C. Crockford is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer and editor who has experienced both the promise and peril of gig work over the last decade. When editorial work doesn’t cover expenses, he uses apps like Amazon Flex, TaskRabbit, and Fiverr to pick up moving gigs, cleaning gigs, the odd retail shift, and courier work. It pays quickly, and he can squeeze it into his schedule where it fits. “The upsides of that are it is easy to find work if you’re just hustling, but it does depend on who’s posting and what’s available,” he told From Day One.Another point of stress: Gig workers seldom get employee-benefits support from the apps they use unless they meet a specific number of hours, thresholds that Crockford feels are unrealistic. “They offer benefits, but only if you work a certain amount of hours a month, and they know that you’re not going to make those hours,” he said. The relationship between worker and platform is often mercenary and transactional.Freelancers, contractors, and gig workers are left vulnerable. Not only are they susceptible to the whims of the business cycle, they’re not undergirded by the same rights full-time permanent employees enjoy. Some are paid sub-minimum wages and treated like permanent employees without the requisite benefits and support, a practice known as misclassification. Crockford pointed out that the benefit of quick payment is sometimes undercut by how low the compensation can be. He’s gone out for some jobs that pay just above the local minimum wage.Misclassification is one of the most common abuses: expecting full-time commitment from contingent workers without providing the protections and benefits required by law for full-time employees. It’s estimated that between 10% and 30% of U.S. workers are misclassified as contractors. Misclassification isn’t just ethically dubious, it has legal implications as well, depriving workers of labor rights and fair wages, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Misclassification of employees has invoked a number of lawsuits in recent months. In January, the Department of Labor issued stricter guidance over how workers must be classified, which prompted lawsuits from employers that want more freedom to categorize workers as they choose. In June, 15,000 delivery drivers sued Amazon for misclassifying them as contractors rather than full-time employees. The platform pays workers for three-hour blocks of time, regardless of whether their deliveries take longer. As a result, the suit alleges unpaid wages and overtime. “Companies either willfully or knowingly misclassify their workers as independent contractors to avoid having to pay employee taxes and benefits that can be costly for a company in the long run,” said Rafael Espinal, executive director at the nonprofit advocacy group Freelancers Union. “Companies hire freelancers on a long-term basis and put the same requirements on that freelancer that they put on their traditional employee. When in reality, the relationship between the company and the freelancer should strictly be a business relationship where the freelancer has full control and autonomy of how they’re using their time and how they’re producing the work.”The Effects of Misclassifying Contact WorkersFreelancers, gig workers, and contractors have largely been excluded by the benefits blitz of the last few years. Not only do they not qualify for basics like health insurance, 401(k)s, and paid leave, they also don’t get smaller perks–like transportation subsidies or career development training–nor are they included in many of the changes brought about by employers prioritizing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.Rachel Marcuse, chief operating officer and managing partner at DEI consulting firm ReadySet, believes that contractors and freelancers are the forgotten demographic. This set seldom has access to employee resource groups, learning and development opportunities, and company culture.“Not only are they left out of programming when it comes to DEIB work–being able to attend training and that sort of thing–but they’re also left out of having a voice around their experience,” she told From Day One.But, said Marcuse, the free agents working with your organization represent a wealth of knowledge about your company and how your employer value proposition compares to the competition. These workers are exposed to different workplaces, cultures, and organizational norms and policies.  “Contractors are frequently left out of engagement surveys that organizations do on an annual basis, which I think is a really big miss, not only because we want to make sure that all members of the team, regardless of their employment status, are having a good experience, but also because often these workers have particularly unique perspectives given their vantage point,” she said.The experience of working as a freelancer can be completely different than that of a full-time employee at the same company simply because they’re not factored into the employee experience. In 2021, workforce consultancy Mercer argued that employers should start providing contractor benefits. “Gig workers are here to stay, it’s time to give them benefits,” reads one Mercer blog headline. Some organizations are trying to close the gap. Independent workers can buy health, disability, and life insurance plans through Freelancers Union, and Mercer has even developed a platform for non-full-time worker benefits, called Mercer Indigo.How to Be Better to Your Contractors and FreelancersContract workers and their advocates want two things: Respect for their boundaries and on-time payment. Leslie Lejano, a Los Angeles–based freelance PR and communications consultant, asserts that a good client is one that treats her as a collaborator, not an order-taker. “They’re hiring me because they trust me. They value my services. They understand the value that I provide,” she told From Day One. “It’s very much like a partnership. I really value a client that gives me enough to work with, but also trusts that I have a vision.”And be aware of “scope creep,” which is when a client demands tasks outside of the agreed-to scope of work, often incrementally. It’s a violation of the contract, and it’s a harbinger of a relationship with poor boundaries, contractors say.  The most common problem that Freelancers Union hears from its members is late payment, or even non-payment. In fact, the union “polled freelancers and found that 76% every year go either unpaid or not paid on time by a client,” according to Espinal.There are bad actors who pay late or simply don’t pay, he said, but there are also well-meaning employers who don’t set themselves up to easily pay contract workers. Many HR payroll systems aren’t orchestrated to pay contractors, who aren’t integrated into full-time employee payroll systems. Therefore they aren’t paid at regular intervals, but in an ad hoc manner, often through a clunky system.What companies may not realize is that any given invoice can jeopardize a freelancer’s ability to pay their rent, eat dinner, or afford their basic living expenses. Though the arrangement with a contractor is typically a business-to-business relationship, “freelancers are not able to absorb tardy payments the way large companies are able to,” Espinal pointed out.Where companies that hire contractors on an ad-hoc basis often fail to pay out on time, Crockford has found that platforms designed specifically for gig work often succeed at super-fast payment. Some apps send fees within a few hours, and many are good at resolving payment hiccups quickly, he said.PR consultant Lejano wants employers to understand that her work, and the work of every other contractor, comprises much more than her clients ever see. “Freelancers juggle so many things beyond the actual work that they’re doing,” she said. “They’re also handling their accounting, their marketing, their client acquisition. There are all these other things that come with being self-employed.”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.[Featured photo by South_agency/iStock by Getty Images)

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | July 17, 2024
How Focusing on the Candidate Experience Helps You Hire Faster and Better

Today’s job seekers are sending out dozens of applications just to get to an interview, let alone an offer. Candidates don't want to waste unnecessary time where they don’t have to. “Speed is a cornerstone of hiring. And companies that have a streamlined and efficient application process can convert more job seekers into applicants,” said Naomi Bower, senior director of design at Lever, an Employ Solution.Most of those job seekers, around 78%, believe the application process should take 30 minutes or less, but still, that’s too long, says Bower, who led a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s June virtual conference. “Nearly one in 10 job seekers believe the application process should take less than five minutes,” she said. Bower spoke about what companies can do to focus on the candidate experience and speed up the process.More than a third, around 39%, of job seekers will abandon applying for a job if the application takes too long, Bower says. This  means that companies are missing out on recruiting potential talent. “Imagine you worked for a B2C company, and your sales team noticed that nearly 40% of customers were abandoning their carts in your E-commerce workflow. Wouldn’t your entire company drop what they're doing to rally around fixing that problem?”There are some simple fixes to streamlining the application process, says Bower. Making candidates type out information that’s already on their resume or taking steps that aren’t necessary are the most common frustrations for applicants. Other actions that will cause them to abandon the application process include having to join a talent network or creating a profile.Naomi Bower, the senior director of design at Lever, an Employ Solution, led the session (company photo)“If you’re on a hiring team, or a talent acquisition team, you can shift your perspective to one that also considers the time it takes a candidate to apply,” Bower said. “Just like you’d rally your team around reducing the time to hire, reducing the time to apply helps both your TA team and your candidates. So it’s a win win.”To more quickly get from start to finish in the application process, Bower says companies need to focus on design. “When we think about design in terms of how something works, we can see how the principles of good design are critically important to something like shaping the experience of applying for a job online. At the end of the day, design is about crafting something with intention.”To accomplish this, teams should focus on making the process simple, useful, and giving users control. To build out a UX that reduces friction and workflows, companies have to eliminate unnecessary and repetitive steps. Bower says you want to give candidates a good return on investment “by ensuring that [you’re] only asking them to complete the steps that add value for them.” This can be as simple as looking at an application process and taking out non-critical steps for candidates.However, there are times when adding friction to the application process can benefit both the company and the candidate in the long term. For example, if a role requires a specific license or certification, then having an extra step whereby they certify or upload that license or certification, saves every one time by weeding out candidates who aren’t certified to fill a role.There are several easy steps recruiting teams can make today with minimal effort to vastly improve candidates conversion rates. “The first one is to skip the registration requirement. Registration on a career site often comes with complex username and password requirements that create a barrier to moving forward.”The next step is enabling quick-apply options, like social, cloud, and mobile applications. “Allowing candidates to leverage their social profiles, like LinkedIn and Facebook, to apply for jobs is a recruiting best practice. Having the option for applicants to automatically populate relevant information from their social media profile is effective in converting career site visitors and applicants.”The same can be said for using Dropbox or Google Drive to populate relevant fields with cloud-based documents. “And employee data reveals that only about half of organizations offer candidates the option to apply with a cloud-based resume, which is a major deterrent for tech savvy candidates.”“If your application process isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re absolutely losing out on candidates. Indeed is considered the world’s largest job site and offers a game changing opportunity for companies to convert candidates into applicants by leveraging organic candidate traffic, specifically at a point of application conversion.”Bower points to some strategies to improve the candidate experience and positively impact candidate conversion. First, audit your own candidate's journey – put yourself in their shoes. Is it a process that you'd feel great about completing if you are a job seeker? Next, measure what matters to your organization and then optimize from the end of the candidate journey to the beginning. “And what I mean by this is to start with the end goal in mind of having job seekers complete the process and go from a site visitor to an applicant.”At the end of the day, though, it’s about the process, and the best way to understand that process, and how it can be improved, is to experience it yourself. “Something that you can do right now as a hiring team, is just review your application process. Go on to your career site, step through that process yourself. And just take a really critical lens to what the steps are,” Bower said.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Lever, an Employ Solution, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.

Matthew Koehler | July 16, 2024
How Digital Tools Give Talent Leaders More Time to Invest in Their Candidates

Innovative tools like AI not only help you get things done, but also free up time for you to reinvest in yourself. “It's important to be your authentic self. And to be your best self, you also have to take care of yourself. So if we can leverage AI and other technology tools to free up time, everyone has a choice to seek how to best reinvest that,” said Paul Phillips, global head of talent acquisition and onboarding at Avanade. That reinvestment can be taking a walk or spending more time with your kids, says Phillips, who spoke in a fireside chat at From Day One’s June virtual conference.Avanade is a joint partnership of Accenture and Microsoft focused on IT consulting of the Microsoft stack. With those credentials, “innovation is critical to our everyday business,” Phillips said. That means that job applicants must “feel and sense that they are working and operating with a leading innovator from the tech perspective.”AI is used throughout the Avanade acquisition process, beginning with writing the job ad itself. Using AI apps to craft the job description shaves 13 minutes off a task that had previously taken 15 minutes, he says. Then they use AI during the screening and evaluation process. The company does offer candidates globally the choice to opt out of the AI talent acquisition process, which about 30% do. But for the rest of the talent pool, the AI matching tool gives his team more precise matching of candidates to jobs and saves at least five days of traditional screening time.“When you multiply that by 5,000 hires, and multiply that by revenue per day, we’re talking multiples of millions of dollars that this is helping us generate on our top line growth,” Phillips said. Every applicant also has a human touch from his team, but the AI grading tool has proven to be very accurate. “It’s anywhere from two to five times more likely that anyone who is graded A or B is likely to get an offer,” Phillips said.Journalist Jeanhee Kim interviewed Paul Phillips of Avanade during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)Technology is not the only way Avanade innovates, however. Phillips spoke about a change to the three pillars of their talent strategy. To the core talent acquisition goals of  “attract, develop and retain,” his team has added “create.”“What we meant by that was our ability to actually create a new talent workforce within the Avanade ecosystem that could ultimately enable us to overcome some shortages of skills,” Phillips said. To start, Avanade began casting a wider net that looked for markers of potential to learn new skills and be retrained. “That means that we look for talent that maybe has not interacted with the Microsoft technology set, or those that may have been a performance management consultant so they have a lot of skills,” he said. And they train them, through a program called Avanade Academy. This hiring strategy has been a huge success from a diversity perspective, says Phillips.This all started in Brazil, where they hired 200 women to train in the academy a few years ago. “Not only did we see a huge spike in our diversity hiring percentage, we actually started to see a shift in the culture and the behavior of the business,” Phillips said. “Globally, in female hiring, we are striving towards parity. We’ve doubled in the last five years, from 20%, to 40%,” he said.Casting a wider net in hiring has other implications for the agility of a company, too. There’s an estimate that 85% of the jobs needed in the next five years are currently unknown. So for companies to stay abreast, hiring teams have to look for individuals who can “learn, unlearn, relearn,” and have “agility, courage, and resilience. These are different skills that we may have in the past overlooked or not seen as important.”Phillips had some comforting parting advice for those who may be daunted by the challenge of using technology in hiring and for hiring for skills that may not have even been invented yet. “Don’t be fully focused on getting it all right on day one,” he said. “We live in a very iterative world today. People are happy with continuous progress. Despite all the technology, we’re still human at heart.”Jeanhee Kim is an independent journalist who has worked for CoinDesk, Crain’s New York Business, Money magazine and Forbes Asia.

Jeanhee Kim | July 16, 2024
The Future of People Analytics Opens Data Science to Everyone

Human resources has officially moved into the C-suite. Where HR was in the past called upon for arithmetical facts about the workforce and its makeup, the department’s new position of influence now puts it on the hook to answer qualitative questions about the state of the workforce and the future of the business. But without quantitative backing, those answers are, at best, guesswork made in good faith.People analytics is proving a popular instrument. SHRM found in 2021 that HR teams using people analytics report achieving their DEI and retention goals and being more competitive for talent than HR teams that don’t.But people analytics platform Visier estimates that people operations teams still spend about 70% of their time on foundational analytics, that is, figures like headcount, turnover, and diverse representation. But as HR is increasingly called upon to be a strategic contributor to the business, the team needs to satisfy complicated concerns, like, Are we underpaying in our industry? Who’s most at risk for leaving the company? And how can we keep them?From Day One spoke with Visier’s VP of product management, Ian Cook, about HR’s move from counting workers to needing a PhD on the team just to answer business questions.Cook develops ways for HR teams to avoid staffing someone like him to answer their people operations questions. He equips them to do it themselves, no advanced mathematics and no PhD required. At the same time while people analytics capabilities are growing more sophisticated, the tech that powers it is becoming more accessible, and many who are tasked with analysis have little to no quantitative expertise–and that’s not a bad thing.Q: I now hear the term ‘people analytics’ more often than I do ‘human capital management.’ What’s the difference?A: Traditionally, HR’s focus has been on process control: Who works for us? When did they start? How much are they paid? When did they move roles? Human capital management systems are the record-keeping systems for that data. That information used to be kept in file cabinets, but within the last 30 years, it’s all been digitized, and that means they’re a valuable source of useful information.People analytics answers questions about your business: Who’s the right person for this job? If we move this department under another leader, is it still going to function? Are we paying too much for this particular set of capabilities? Your human capital management system has the record-level detail, but it has no way of taking that information, running a calculation or an analysis, and giving you the right answer. People analytics brings evidence to HR decisions.Q: So, you answer these kinds of questions?A: We are not a consulting business that does the work for our clients. They do the work, using our technology to find the answer for themselves, because they can.This is a pivot from how HR typically operates, which is going to an outside expert, having them decide what’s wrong and then how to fix it. We put that capability inside the business so they can apply it themselves. Evidence doesn’t become a project from a consulting firm, it becomes the way the business operates.Q: What do people get wrong about people analytics and how it fits into HR strategy?A: People tend to think that you do your work, then you do the analysis later to find out whether it worked. But that’s the wrong way around. I would rather do analysis up front so we can substantiate the decisions we make. Let’s not look at it as a retroactive justification, let’s be proactive. The people analytics team is the strategy arm of the CHRO.Others tend to think of people analytics as this weird science project. As in, we do HR, and then we do people analytics on the side. I fundamentally disagree with that. People analytics is how we should be doing HR.Q: I hear from HR leaders that they’re getting a directive from the C-suite: Start using AI. But without further direction, some don’t know where to start and whether they can meet expectations for what artificial intelligence can do.Ian Cook, VP of product management at Visier, spoke with journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza (company photo)A: HR individuals are right to be skeptical about AI, because depending on how the models are built and what you’re doing with the models, you can’t just throw your people data into a model and say, Tell me who to hire and tell me who to fire. An HR professional being tasked by business leaders to use AI must educate themselves on what is real and possible versus what is not.Q: Can you tell me more about Visier’s generative AI tool, Vee? A: It makes the analytics process really human. Most people think in questions, like, I wonder if we’re losing people in this area. Is that normal? With the generative AI capability, you can put your question into the bot, and the bot will interpret it and return you an answer.The traditional way these problems were solved was with handmade answers. You would build somewhere to store the data, and you would build some SQL code to run calculations on top of that, then you would put that into a different piece of technology to create charts. Someone would then assemble and distribute that. With Vee, it sits over a customer’s data that their people analytics team would access via our platform, and opens up the opportunity for any employee to simply ask questions, in natural language, without needing a data analyst to decipher the answer, with their precise security applied.Generative AI reduces the barrier to entry for everybody to become analytically informed. At the same time, no customer data is ever sent to a large language model which removes the fear we talked about earlier.Q: How is it different from other AI-powered HR tools available at the moment?A: We’re faster, cleaner, more integrated, and have a higher level of security. The teams running Visier are half the size of the traditional teams.We don’t recommend you shrink the team because, invariably, the demand on the team is always greater than it can solve, but with the same number of people, you can serve four to eight times the number of inputs and requests. Generative AI is designed to accelerate that even further.For instance, where a large financial institution may have 100 full-time employees running their people analytics team, one of our clients maintains just three dedicated FTEs to make the Visier component run. We’ve taken what has been a specialist, an expert, and made it into a process. We’ve created a high degree of automation, and we’ve layered in specific HR expertise, so that you don’t need to hire a whole bunch of data scientists to deliver the answers that your business needs.Q: If you can use it to answer questions about a given business, can you also use it to benchmark a business against its competitors? A: Sometimes ‘good’ is not an absolute inside an organization; it can be relative performance.All of our customers live in exactly the same data shape, which isn’t true for every other competitor, so we can publish benchmarks on resignations, promotions, diversity percentage of managers, and we’ve got some design benchmarks coming out around span of control, etc. All of that can be compared against the Visier customer population and broken down by size of organization, geography, and more. For instance, with that, we were able to demonstrate that Visier customers’ resignation rates were going up slower than the market. It’s available inside the application to any customer.Q: Could it be used to prevent over-reaction to employee attrition or engagement?A: Yes. Lots of executives run down the corridors, worried that everyone’s leaving, going to a competitor for tons of money. But an analyst hears that and says, that’s an interesting perception, let’s have a look. Sometimes you might find that you have a problem with attrition, but you might also find that one person left this week for a competitor, and that’s just one out of a hundred. Let’s keep our money and not overplay a reaction based on a specific individual’s perception.Q: Do you think analytics will be a permanent component of the HR function?A: Analytics is kind of a scary word, and it’s often presented in a way to make things seem difficult and important. I would rather talk about an evidence-based HR practice.If you can have the evidence that this program is going to manage to retain people better, why wouldn’t you use the evidence? We’re really passionate about pulling this whole practice away from having to be math experts just to understanding your people and your business.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Visier, for sponsoring this sponsor spotlight. To learn more, tune into their webinar on July 30. 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.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | July 16, 2024
How Employers Are Boosting Internal Mobility and Career Development

Developing talent from within a company’s ranks simply makes a lot of sense. The benefits include greater productivity because employees are motivated to reach their goals, cost savings and time savings from the job search and onboarding processes, and increased employee satisfaction as workers feel they are valued.But as with all corporate practices, how a company puts an idea into practice makes a difference. At From Day One’s Manhattan conference, a panel of leaders spoke to the topic, “Creating Opportunity Within: How Employers Are Boosting Talent and Career Development,” sharing the thoughtful and effective ways their organizations are successfully promoting employees.The executive panel discussion featured five dynamic and creative business leaders who described their own career development and the ways they support and encourage the same for others.At Visa, the message that career development is a priority comes from the very top, says Melissa Fridman, head of people and global merchant sales & acquiring at Visa, North America. Ryan McInerney ascended to CEO in February 2023, after being prepared for this transition for two years, Fridman says. And among his first actions as chief executive was to promote others into leadership roles, which reinforced the message throughout the company that there was career mobility.Fridman described the company’s efforts as driven from the top down and intentional, and relayed how as a new CEO, McInerney blocked off a few days this year with his leadership team to discuss talent across the company. “And everybody knows that, so in advance all the businesses are spending time with their HR partners and their leadership teams talking about talent. That type of intention and knowing that we’re being deliberate about succession planning because of the robustness of those conversations, [leads to a lot of] follow up action.”But a bottom-up strategy also works. Penguin Random House adopted a growth charter a decade ago that “infiltrated through our personal development conversations and put the power back in the hands of the employee,” said Joanne Mallia-Barsati, vice president of global talent management and development. This growth and development methodology was designed to create two-way coaching conversations between a manager and employee to elicit “how people really think about their careers, how they own their careers and how they are equally responsible in thinking about their development at the company,” Mallia-Barsati said.Brent Vader, VP of HR at Verizon recognized that at a company with a large frontline employee population, internal mobility and career development might look different than at other organizations. “It was very difficult to figure out how to make the right connections, you don’t just want to post and pray and hope that someone recognizes my profile. There has to be something more deliberate,” said Vader.And so over the course of a few years, Verizon created a program called Journey Forward to map out how ambitious frontline workers can get ahead. “It encompasses everything that we’ve talked about, whether it's finding a network, making sure you have a sponsor, and understanding the right skills and experiences necessary to qualify you for that next role,” he said.The panelists spoke about the topic "Creating Opportunity Within: How Employers Are Boosting Talent and Career Development," in a session moderated by journalist Jeanhee Kim The point of the Journey Forward is to give employees a systematic approach for their development plan, as well as a plan for getting training and finding a mentor, to make it easier to scale to their next opportunity.This effort to develop talent from within is a shift from the more traditional practice of attracting new talent to companies. A tell-tale sign that a company is serious about career development is when its internal career page is as sophisticated and thoughtfully designed as its external one, said Marcus Strang, lead solutions engineer of recruitment marketing platform Clinch.“We’ve started to see a shift in the market. Companies are realizing that there’s a much better ROI in investing in internal resources like career portals, talent networks programs, where employees who already work for you can get excited about their next job with you, instead of thinking they have to leave in order to grow.”The cost-benefit analysis points in favor of career development. “If you invest so much in an employee, and then they go elsewhere, and they take all the learning and all of the investment that you've made and bring it to another company, that’s really a big-time loss,” said Rose Fass, founder and chair of leadership development consulting company FassForward.Additionally, retained employees attract talent to your company: “They’re really your best advertisement, aren’t they?” said Fass.Mallia-Barsati says Penguin’s global immersion program, which adds a global dimension to its career development efforts, has created new business opportunities as well. Spending time in a new location allows the employee to get to know the team, understand the business, build connections, and really understand the culture, she says. From this program, they’ve experienced numerous business achievements, “including new imprints created, book partnerships and acquisitions,” she said.Jeanhee Kim is an independent journalist who has worked for CoinDesk, Crain’s New York Business, Money magazine and Forbes Asia.

Jeanhee Kim | July 12, 2024
Retention is the New Recruiting: Strategies to Build and Keep a High-performing Workforce

The hiring environment is on the cusp of change, with rates of decline beginning to slow down, according to monitoring done by Workday. “We might be at a kind of inflection point where hiring starts to stabilize,” said Greg Anderson, Workday’s principal product marketing manager. Anderson spoke at a From Day One webinar titled, “Retention Is the New Recruiting: Strategies to Build and Keep a High Performing Workforce.”Voluntary turnover decreased dramatically in 2023, with employees staying longer in their given roles, says Anderson. “This is driving a lot of value to their position and to the organization. But also resulting in a lot of pent-up demand, particularly from your high performers who are being asked to do more,” he said.Decreased internal mobility means companies and employees “haven’t seen some of the internal growth that they’ve been looking for,” Anderson said. This could lead employees to leave a company for another employer, but it could also be “a really great opportunity for your organization, depending on how you choose to navigate some of these challenges,” he added.“There is a lot of bottled-up employee energy, knowledge and experience in your workforce, and that’s a huge asset,” Anderson said. “This is a real opportunity to take advantage of this window and really invest in talent.”How to Make Retention the New RecruitingGreg Anderson, pictured, led the webinar with colleague Phil Willburn (company photo)The Workday platform allows employers to solve the challenge of quickly finding and matching talent to potential opportunities. Around 70-75% of job openings can be filled with internal talent, Anderson says.Phil Willburn, VP of people analytics at Workday, says tuning up your internal mobility engine is a key to turning retention into the new recruiting. “If you haven’t put any love or attention on this, especially when it comes to using automated tools, and streamlining the match, matching with skills, there’s a lot of opportunities there to make it much easier for your employees to find great opportunities and retain the best employees,” he said.Listening is also crucial, says Willburn. During the pandemic, “we were concerned about our employees’ needs, we were reaching out, we were caring for them, we were trying to see what they need to be productive,” he said. “And then after the pandemic, companies stopped listening as intently.”Employees respond well when employers listen deeply to their needs and take action to improve their on-the-job experience, says Willburn.How Workday Boosted Internal MobilityWorkday employers were looking for growth during the Great Resignation several years ago, but “they did feel like they were stuck a little bit,” Willburn said. Company leaders decided to make it easier to advance within the organization. Still, they had to address some pain points along the way.Some team members felt lost trying to navigate the promotion process and wanted more transparency and the company achieved this by posting every available role on a Workday Talent Marketplace and Career Hub that all employees could access.Some Workday employees “wanted opportunities to stretch themselves and get exposed to new things without necessarily taking a new role internally,” Willburn said. And so, in 2019 the company introduced gigs for workers to learn new skills. This was a massive pipeline for internal mobility because team members were 42% more likely to get a new role if they did a gig first.Workday's efforts to boost internal mobility resulted in a significant increase in the number of employees applying for new roles inside the company. “We’ve seen about 30% of all our roles filled by internal candidates, which is good because we did the research and found that internal hires consistently performed and ramped up faster than external hires,” Willburn said.When employees move up within the company, "that gives them that sense of growth," Willburn said. We saw a 26% increase in overall retention. If we’re making internal moves, we are keeping employees longer.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Workday, for sponsoring this webinar.Mary Pieper is a freelance writer based in Mason City, Iowa.

Mary Pieper | July 12, 2024
High-Performance Culture: Creating a Workplace Where People and Productivity Thrive

Some years ago, when Cameron Cozzens, CRO of the Arbinger Institute, met with a group of leaders at NASA, one of them described the challenges of getting human spaceflight to Mars. “He said, ‘It’s not the science that’s getting in our way. It’s the people stuff,’” Cozzens said during a recent From Day One webinar.  The issues didn’t have anything to do with the ability of the NASA team, which was composed of the best astrophysicists and engineers in the world.“What it really comes down to, and what a lot of leaders don’t get, is it’s not a performance problem, or a no communication problem or a workload problem,” said Lisa Sharapata, chief marketing officer of the Arbinger Institute. “It’s typically a culture problem.” There are many different definitions of workplace culture, but the Arbinger Institute defines it as “how people work together every day,” Sharapata said. So, when we really start to look at how you would fix these problems, how you would make these kinds of changes, we want to change how employees are approaching their work in relation to each other.”Developing Leaders Who Empower OthersThe Arbinger Institute, which provides leadership and professional development solutions that transform business culture for better performance and lasting results, has found that employees in organizations that prioritize leadership development are 4.5 times more satisfied with their culture, says Sharapata.“On the flip side, they’re also experiencing fewer negative effects,” she said. “There’s fewer staff shortages and issues with morale or communication.”Leadership development also prevents turnover, says Cozzens. “People don’t quit their jobs,” he said. “They quit their leader, they quit their boss, they quit their first line supervisor. And conversely, the more mature that employees become in the workforce, the more they understand the importance of finding a place where they feel seen and heard, and where their opinions matter.”Developing self-awareness within the leadership team and fostering a culture of collaboration where people are open and receptive to each other’s ideas “will start to enhance productivity and create less friction and stress,” Sharapata said. “It’s a mindset that’s going to create more of that outwardness rather than inwardness.”The Importance of Team Performance TrainingCameron C. Cozzens of the Arbinger Institute led the webinar (company photo)Employees who are encouraged to participate in team performance training are twice as likely than others to work for companies that saw a significant revenue increase over the past year and three times more likely to describe their company as highly adaptable in times of change, says Cozzens.Bridging the performance perception gap is a key component of team performance training. The Arbinger Institute’s research shows a gap between how employees see their own performance and behaviors and how they would rank the performance and behaviors of those on their teams.“Everybody is waking up in the morning, thinking that the problem in their organization is not with them,” he said. “The challenge is how do you invite change in these people?”“Really being aware of others’ goals, objectives, challenges, what they're trying to accomplish every day starts to impact the ultimate objectives of the organization and what you're working towards,” she said.Fostering a Culture of InclusionAn inclusive culture with a strong sense of psychological safety sparks collaboration and creativity, says Cozzens. According to the Arbinger Institute's research, 97% of employees encouraged to participate in inclusion training feel more comfortable taking on new challenges.However, when inclusion training is “calling people out, focusing on their behavior and how they should modify their behavior and telling people what to do, or having them memorize definitions of things, it’s highly ineffective.”Instead, it should be about “inviting people to participate in dialogue and getting to these authentic, real, vulnerable stories where you can really start to unpack what you're bringing to the table and understand the person next to you.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, the Arbinger Institute, for sponsoring this webinar.Mary Pieper is a freelance writer based in Mason City, Iowa.

Mary Pieper | July 10, 2024
Boosting Financial Wellness by Helping Employees Meet Their Everyday Needs

An auto repair, sick schoolkid, sudden medical or vet bill, or a home maintenance headache can wreak havoc on many employees’ budgets and stress levels. It’s not that working adults can’t manage the money they earn, but sometimes they can’t access it fast enough. When surprise expenses strike, workers on tight budgets often pay high fees to banks, credit card companies, or “payday” lenders to access quick cash for ordinary emergencies.Employers have become increasingly cognizant of workers’ financial vulnerabilities, especially as inflation has hiked prices on necessities such as gas, food, rent, and utilities. Some research indicates that as many as 72% of employees don’t have $500 in savings, says Steve Davis, national sales manager at Global Payments.But when employers offer their teams a workplace payroll benefit known as earned wage access, employees can tap up to 50% of current net earnings ahead of payday without incurring high fees, raising debt levels, or harming credit scores to address emergency expenses. Global Payments has offered employers technology and training so they may extend earned wage access as an opt-in benefit for three years.Davis spoke during a From Day One webinar and offered insights on how employer-offered earned wage access can benefit both employees and workplaces. “Waiting two weeks or more for a paycheck can cause quite a bit of financial strain,” he said. “We’re all living in an on-demand world. So why don’t we have pay on demand as well? That’s our question.”While some employees may never tap into earned wage access, its presence can offer them peace of mind against financial precarity. According to Davis, in one workplace study 60% of employees shared that financial decision-making impacts their mental health. And employers that offer benefits to reduce financial strain can help employers hire faster.“We’ve seen about twice the number of applications come in for jobs at employers that offer this type of benefit. So, it helps that employer hire faster,” Davis said. “Most employees taking advantage of the benefit are staying about 22 or more days longer. And there’s about a 49% to 50% increase in retention for individuals using it. It can create a sense of loyalty to employers (when) employees perceive that their workplace is one that genuinely cares.”Employers offering earned wage access can typically roll out the benefit in 45 to 90 days, depending on the size of their enterprise and their priorities. Global Payments’ system integrates with timekeeping, payroll, or HCM (human capital management) systems, and earned wage access technology integrates with those systems. Employees need only provide their email address and contact information to activate access to pre-payday wages.Steve Davis of Global Payments was interviewed by journalist Jane Hodges during the From Day One webinar about "Boosting Financial Wellness by Helping Employees Meet Their Everyday Needs" (photo by From Day One)About 75% of the employers using Global Payments’ earned wage access benefit extend it specifically to their hourly workers, who are often employed in fast food or retail jobs, but increasingly also manufacturing or healthcare, as well. It’s less common, but possible, to offer it to salaried workers. Davis notes that employees working in hourly roles at companies can get paid instantly for “gig economy” shifts (such as driving and delivery services), so employers offering faster pay access for hourly work can compete better against gig jobs.To use earned wage access, employees can use an app to check what funds they have earned during the current pay period and how much they are eligible to withdraw — with funds transmitted via their employer-issued payment card (a card used by many unbanked hourly workers), ACH, or direct to a particular credit card or payee. The 50% limit on net earnings is designed on industry recommended maximums, and employers can elect to reduce the amount available — or how many times employees can use the benefit in a given year. In most cases, Davis notes, it will take an employer about six months to understand its workforce’s use patterns with the product.“It’s totally free to the employer, and there’s such a demand from the employee base. And there’s competition for great employees: You’re competing with the gig economy,” Davis said. “I think probably in the next 24 months, most of your mid-market to enterprise organizations will have implemented (some form of) earned wage access offering.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Global Payments, for sponsoring this webinar.Jane Hodges is an independent journalist based in Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and The Seattle Times.

Jane Hodges | July 10, 2024
Using Innovative Technology and AI to Revolutionize Hiring for Top Talent

Like many other companies, MGM Resorts has been undergoing a talent acquisition transformation over the past few years in the wake of the pandemic and the Great Resignation. “We’re enacting a strategic way for recruiters to evolve into more of an advisor role,” said Justin Fronberg, executive director of talent acquisition for MGM Resorts.Fronberg spoke during an executive panel discussion about “Using Innovative Technology and AI to Revolutionize Hiring for Top Talent,” during From Day One’s June virtual conference. “What’s been critical for us is to relieve them of the transactional aspects of the position,” he said.Fronberg told journalist and session moderator Lydia Dishman that using an AI chatbot creates efficiencies for recruiters and job candidates alike. The chatbot allows candidates to determine if an open position is something they are actually interested in without talking to a recruiter, he says.Some people have reservations about using AI in recruitment, but Jane Curran, global head of talent acquisition at JLL, reminds her team that “you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.” “The tech is here, and we are ready for automation. So why don’t we dig in and find out what works for us, leave the human parts of the job to us, and automate the boring stuff?” she said.How AI Can Broaden the Talent PoolIf used correctly, implementing AI in recruitment can also reduce bias, says Ken Oliver, vice president of corporate social responsibility at Checkr. “We can focus on things like skill-based learning and the different skill sets that the candidate may have rather than look at things like gender, race, or age, which sometimes come up in the recruitment process,” said Oliver.AI can also help expand the talent pool by looking beyond more mainstream job boards such as Indeed, says Oliver. “To get the most diverse and inclusive candidates, oftentimes you have to look in some of the most unusual places," he said, noting that this could include social media.However, AI is “only as good as what you input it with,” he said. For example, if a candidate has a legal record, there’s typically not much understanding “about what that means or what it doesn’t mean, especially when it comes to a specific role.”But with AI, “we can provide much more context around the candidate and the specific charge, the date of charge, and whether it’s relevant to the job,” Oliver said. This scope can lead companies to consider candidates that they might have traditionally overlooked, says Oliver.Using AI in the Interview ProcessAnother way organizations can ensure their workforce is diverse is to standardize the job interview process using AI. “This allows candidates of diverse backgrounds to be evaluated fairly against objective criteria that should be set at the beginning of the process, rather than try to make that up towards the end,” said Seán Delea, team manager of talent acquisition, EMEA at Greenhouse.For example, a recruiter and a hiring manager will align on a number of key attributes needed for someone to be successful in a particular role and then design an interview process to assess candidates for those attributes objectively, says Delea.“Then you can do things like use AI to help you generate some of those interview questions. This step alone is helping to reduce human bias when you’re building out the best interview process,” he said.The panelists spoke on the topic "Using Innovative Technology and AI to Revolutionize Hiring for Top Talent" (photo by From Day One)Christopher Rotolo, VP of global talent at Mitek, says technology has helped standardize the interview process and also write job descriptions. “It literally will pull out the skills and create the interview questions, the guides, the scoring sheets and everything, from soup to nuts,” he said.The AI technology Mitek uses comes with a package of possible interview questions that the hiring manager and the talent acquisition partner can tweak so “candidates aren’t hearing the same question over and over through the interview process,” Rotolo said.Some organizations use tools to automate the interview scoring process, even “inferring personality through speech patterns and tone,” Rotolo said. “And I think that will mature. We’ll all be talking about that probably three to five years from now.”Keeping the Human ElementBut even with all of these innovative AI tools, the human touch is still needed, says Curran. For example, when it’s time to promote someone, “You need to know the talent,” she said.“Who’s the top talent I should be helping make the next move? The connection, the career conversation, the prep, that’s the recruiter’s job,” said Curran.“[Candidates] want to be treated like a person rather than a number. So, we abide by the stance that AI should assist but not replace humans in the hiring process,” said Delea.Mary Pieper is a freelance writer based in Mason City, Iowa. 

Mary Pieper | July 10, 2024
Taking a Well-Considered Approach to Adopting New Technologies

Volume, timeliness, quality, and cost. These are the four key performance indicators when it comes to talent acquisition (TA), according to Tim Wesson, SVP, global talent acquisition at IQVIA. While those will likely stay the same, what keeps changing is the technology surrounding it.“We can be much more efficient and much more effective in the way we go about meeting those success criteria,” Wesson told moderator Nicole Smith of the Harvard Business Review during a fireside chat at From Day One’s June virtual conference. “I think the measurements of success can change over time,” Wesson added. “As trends evolve, like focusing on skills-based hiring or internal talent development, the success metrics may shift accordingly.” That’s why being adaptable is so key.Being adaptable is vital, especially in a time of constantly changing and evolving technology. “Whether it’s your ATS, CRM, marketing tools, assessment tools and platforms, or workforce platforms for workforce strategy, I’m amazed to see how those technologies have evolved, been enhanced, and improved.”While that’s true, with so many emerging technologies, it can be hard for those in TA to keep up with all the changes. Does it meet your needs? Does it really do what it says it’s going to do?“I stay close to industry peers, read various periodicals, and stay in touch with the vendors we do business with,” Wesson said of assessing new TA tech. The talent acquisition department especially knows that if you don’t make good hires, you can negatively impact your business in terms of costs, opportunity costs, and cultural impact. But on the flip side, getting it right leads to performance, growth, and a strong company culture.“My philosophy has always been creating a win-win situation. Our job is to understand the requirements and needs of a hiring manager and the needs of the candidates, then create that match. If we can meet the needs of both the hiring manager and the candidate, then we’ve done a really good job,” Wesson said.If TA tech can help you to accomplish that, then it’s well worth the effort in researching and implementing it into your business.Tim Wesson of IQVIA was interviewed during the virtual fireside chat Talent acquisition requires an understanding that people are human and aren’t always going to have all the skills, especially soft skills, to get the job done. That’s why it’s important to be ready and willing to teach talent so they can succeed not only in their current role, but throughout their career. “Where I see recruiters and even some TA leaders struggle is the ability to analyze data and make informed decisions, as well as critical thinking,” Wesson said. “We train our people to interpret and influence with data and make informed decisions.”They also realize that people are busy, so they help their team by setting goals. “With my team, everyone in TA has a goal where they need to invest 15 hours a year, in just their own training and development.” The company provides access to courses, and encouragement. This approach can help people adapt especially as things change and grow.Of course, with growth comes growing pains. Wesson spoke about his own career evolution, highlighting that you might not and don’t have to do everything perfectly. “One of the things that I’ve learned throughout my career is that it’s okay to fail,” he said. “I encourage my team to test what’s possible and be okay with stepping out of the box. If it doesn’t work out, learn from it, adjust, and try again.”This is especially essential as talent needs to adopt new technologies. To give talent permission to fail, Wesson says you have to build trust and show people through example that failure is a part of growth. “Building trust takes time. If I’m out there telling people it’s okay to fail and then get upset when they do, the next opportunity to test what’s possible probably won’t happen. Trust is crucial for people to feel comfortable about trying new things.”Wesson also underscored the role of empathy in leadership, as it helps people look at things from a different perspective. “Understanding that people are human beings who deal with unique situations is essential for effective leadership.”Adopting new technologies in talent acquisition requires a balanced approach. According to Wesson, combining technological advancements with human-centric leadership principles, fostering a culture of trust, encouraging critical thinking, and maintaining empathy are key to navigating the complexities of modern talent acquisition successfully.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.

Carrie Snider | July 08, 2024
Consistent Reflection and Coaching: A Proven Method to Genuinely Support Employee Well-Being

The high costs associated with employee burnout and turnover demonstrate the need for a more effective and holistic approach to well-being. Genuine investment in employee well-being yields better outcomes: Gallup reported that employees who feel supported by their workplaces are 55% less likely to watch for other job opportunities or actively search for jobs and 68% less likely to feel burned out consistently.During From Day One’s Manhattan conference, Anita Hossain Choudhry, co-founder and CEO of The Grand, spoke about a new approach to employee well-being and cultivating an engaged workplace culture. This approach involves measuring, addressing, and enhancing employee well-being, while encompassing all aspects of wellness: physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, social, environmental, intellectual, and career.The Grand coaches leaders to help achieve clarity and self-awareness to reach their personal and professional goals. Choudhry strives to create a work environment that fosters a learning and authentic growth mindset, rather than solely highlighting performance.Understanding the self and what we need within our environments and communities to achieve greater success and well-being requires reflection, intention, and connection, Choudhry said.“Only when we reflect and take the time to learn from our experiences do they become a source of growth. If you’re not doing that, you’re missing out on 70% of your learning.” she said. “That’s why at The Grand, we believe it’s really critical to have reflective practices so you can better understand where you are and where you want to go.”Anita Hossain Choudhry, Co-founder and CEO of The Grand led the thought leadership spotlight in ManhattanThe keys to fostering individual self-awareness involve managers helping employees achieve clarity through meaningful discussions of the areas of their lives they wish to improve, using shared language to define and measure well-being goals effectively in direct reports, and taking every individual’s unique journey into account to allocate resources more efficiently. Upon reflecting on where one is and wants to go, it’s essential to create intentions based on those reflections and also to experiment. It’s critical to move from a performance-based mindset to a growth-learning mindset, says Choudhry.“A lot of times at organizations it doesn’t feel safe to flex and experiment because we always have to perform,” she said. “The opportunity that we have is to create safe spaces where people can experiment. [We need to] make that the norm and give them permission to do that.”Shifting from strictly performance-focused coaching to reflective and growth-oriented coaching, helps employees become emotionally resilient, self-aware, healthy, and more engaged with others. This holistic support of individual growth leads to more successful business outcomes: higher performance, retention, and engagement.Achieving well-being requires a comprehensive approach accounting for all aspects of life. It includes investing in experiences that encourage personal and professional growth. Evolved reflective coaching techniques are crucial in the modern-day workforce as employees prioritize fulfillment in their careers without compromising other facets of their lives.When employees struggle with well-being, business performance and employee satisfaction dwindle. Business costs also rise to compensate for higher turnover. When employees achieve higher levels of well-being, they use fewer sick days, experience less burnout, are more engaged at work, and perform more efficiently.“Our future vision is really to make sure that no one will have to walk through life alone. And everyone will be able to understand their strengths and use it to become the grandest version of themselves.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, The Grand, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.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.

Stephanie Reed | July 02, 2024
Promoting Well-Being While Boosting Performance in a Changing Workforce

Who does the work and how they do it is constantly evolving. “So, how do we make our work environments still attractive? How do we still develop our employees?” asks Kami Peterson, senior director, regional HR & employee Relations, U.S., Thomson Reuters. At From Day One’s Minneapolis conference, Peterson spoke on a panel titled “Boosting Productivity in a Changing Workplace–and Workforce.”“We need to think about not just the products in which we serve our customers, but also what type of product we are delivering internally. That’s programs, that’s processes,” Peterson told moderator Megan Thompson, Special Correspondent for PBS Newshour.Whether people are working remotely or hybrid, “There’s also the high degree of reactivity that we’re seeing that pervades the workforce,” said Andrew Deutscher, founder of Regenerate. “That’s partly stemming from the overwhelming workloads that we’re all contending with.” When employees feel their workload is too big, that diminishes productivity, says Deutscher.Workers are also dealing with a digital onslaught of emails and text messages throughout the day, which distracts them from more profound work. Other factors hampering productivity are diminished resources, meaning employees are forced to do more with less, and a lack of continuity due to high turnover rates, says Deutscher.How Company Culture Impacts ProductivityCommunication is the key to creating a culture that fosters productivity, says Chad Deshler, senior VP of U.S. sales for LifeSpeak Inc. “There are two common themes that I’ve seen with organizations," he said. “One is how you communicate, and the other is how you communicate.”In today’s workplace, some employees don’t feel their employers have a sense of loyalty toward them. “If you open up that door of communication and create a level of transparency, it goes a long way, sometimes even more than what a paycheck can do for somebody,” he said.Joel Geary,  vice president of human resources, global business units & medical scientific affairs at Beckman Coulter Diagnostics, says it’s crucial for an international company to have a common culture and way of doing things that crosses borders. Beckman Coulter Diagnostics has many offices around the world, so whether you are in Dubai, Japan, India, China, Mexico, or the United States, “everyone from manufacturing to R&D to sales uses a shared language rooted in our continuous improvement business systems, a guiding force of our culture” he said.The company uses its strong culture as a recruitment tool, Geary says. “It’s a big part of how we fulfill the employee experience and deliver results,” he said.Strategies for Increasing ProductivityCarita Hibben, vice president of human resources at C.H. Robinson, says the company’s new CEO is emphasizing a new operating framework based on lean methodology. She said this means “having the discipline to hold yourself accountable to the strategy you are trying to drive.”“What we’re seeing with that from a productivity perspective is a continuous process improvement mindset, as well as elimination of waste,” she said.The executive panelists spoke about "Boosting Productivity in a Changing Workplace–and Workforce"C.H. Robinson is also going to its locations and asking desk-level employees, ‘“Where do we have the pain points in the process that we’re trying to evaluate?’” Hibben said. The company uses AI to make processes more streamlined and efficient so employees can focus on giving customers the personal attention they need.“I would encourage you as an HR individual to partner with your business to say, ‘What does this mean for your teams? And how can we think about upskilling? Or how can we think about where we shift our resources to work on things that are a value add to the customer?’” she said.Thomson Reuters recently began having learning days several times a year where employees can sign up to learn from both internal and external speakers. These skills-based sessions are where team members “gather in our new world and help move the change, or the pace of change even faster,” Peterson said. “That’s definitely made an impact on performance.”Well-being and ProductivityEmployees aren’t as productive if they try to come back to work while they are still sick, and “we also know when we’re physically healthy around our sleep, or nutrition, or movement, we’re more focused and optimized in what we’re doing,” Deutscher said.Company wellness activities that have a high impact don’t have to come with a high cost, says Geary. For example, Beckman Coulter Diagnostics’ Chaska, Minnesota, facility does a 5K walk/run annually on a workday. The production line adjusts schedule so employees who want to participate, can participate, and it’s an annual highlight.“Don’t underestimate the value of a small group of people that are very passionate about something and want to make a difference with their teams and their organization,” said Geary, referring to the program that has been valued for over 12 years now.Physical health is only part of the equation. When people are emotionally and mentally healthy, they are better equipped to deal with setbacks and challenges, not only in their personal lives but also in the workplace, says Deutscher. “We’re more creative problem solvers when we have more energy to bear,” he said.Thomson Reuters now gives employees two mental health days per year. The entire company shuts down for those two days. “Everybody asks around, ‘What are you going to do during the mental health day?’ We’re trying to create that safe space, reintroducing that it’s OK, we all need a break. And they will talk about going into the spa or spending the day with their spouse,” Peterson said.Deschler pointed out that most of the people in the room for the panel discussion were in the “sandwich generation,” meaning they care for children as well as elderly parents. In addition to their oftentimes complex caretaker duties, they are also working full-time.“So, when I talk to companies and organizations, we’re trying to think of creative ways to engage their population so that they can feel productive and healthy. When you're taking care of yourself, we all know that you’ll be more productive,” he said.Mary Pieper is a freelance writer based in Mason City, Iowa.

Mary Pieper | July 02, 2024