Enhancing The Employee Experience With Innovative Technology
BY Matthew Koehler March 28, 2025Some say high turnover is simply the cost of doing business, and for many industries, that will always be the case. But the numbers tell a different story. Disengaged workers cost the world economy $8.8 trillion in lost productivity, according to a 2023 report from Gallup.“A number like this shows that the opportunity cost of not investing in the employee experience fully outweighs the investment that you would make. 8.9 trillion dollars [is] 10% of the world’s economy. That’s a staggering number to think about,” said Josh Parente, the director of sales at LineZero. Parente spoke about the cost of employee disengagement, and how to re-engage them during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Salt Lake City conference.Doing Employee Engagement WellLineZero is passionate about the employee experience: “We live our values of ‘People Matter.’” “We focus on building and enhancing the employee experience through technology,” said Parente. LineZero has a long-term partnership with Meta’s Workplace and current partnership with Workvivo, and they’ve taken that experience to new organizations they work with. “Our objective when we work with a lot of our partners is to act as an extension of their organizations. We work with our partners to help them build and deploy their employee experience through technology.”Parente says they start with an employee’s experience from day one, “not just throughout maturity.” They focus on that starting point and “continue to push that positive momentum throughout the lifecycle [of the employee].” HR professionals and leaders should think about how connected their employees are to the mission and whether or not they're “excited and inspired” to clock in every day.During an impromptu survey with the audience, Parente sussed out a few key items that highlighted the lack of employee engagement and what companies are doing about it. Building trust turned out to be the number one challenge attendees were facing in their organizations. Email was how they were dealing with it. And, budget was one thing they'd increase to mitigate disengaged employees, if a “genie” was available. “Investing in the employee experience leads to 43% less turnover, an 81% reduction in absenteeism and a 20% increase in productivity. So if we’re looking at the budget and we’re looking at the opportunity cost, not investing far outweighs the cost of actually making the investment.”Slide from Parente's presentation, highlighting statistics shared When asked whether the above statistics shocked anyone, not a single hand went up. “80% of employees feel lonely. 3 out of 5 are burnt out. These are statistics that clearly articulate that we are facing a massive problem when it comes to the labor market today. So the question is, what are we going to do about it?”Looking back at the Great Resignation of 2022, the data paints a clear picture. Many boomers took early retirement, while millennials left their jobs in droves. But one statistic stood out to Parente. “Of the millennials that turned over during the 2022 Great Resignation, 47% of them were high performers.” That’s a big deal. “High performers outperform the average employee at a rate of four to one, and they make up about 15% of your organization.”If companies want to build strong cultures and retain top talent, they need to invest in the employee experience—especially for those high performers because they will help drive the employee experience and "push the [company] culture forward." Millennials, on average, change jobs every two to three years, meaning another wave of turnover is coming. “There’s a good opportunity here for us to start diving into ways to stop this mass turnover, especially with our high performers,” Parente said.Parente shared another chart inspired by Simon Sinek’s work with Navy SEALs. The takeaway? “The high performance, low trust person—this is a toxic team member. Even though they’re driving high performance, they would sooner select somebody that has low performance, high trust over somebody who has high performance, [low] trust.”Parente's slide on the relationship between trust and performance Take that to heart: The most elite teams prioritize trust over raw talent.Encouraging the Entrepreneur to be an IntrapreneurAccording to a chief people officer at a major enterprise Parente and LineZero works with, “Within the U.S. economy, [that company] [does] a really good job of inspiring and encouraging entrepreneurship,” the officer said. But when companies invest in employee experience, they don’t just keep workers—they create “intrapreneurs,” employees who think like entrepreneurs but stay within the company.The key is investing in high-trust employees.“Those high trust categories are those intrapreneurs that you want to encourage within your organization,” Parente said. “Those are the 15% that you want to continue to keep and continue to encourage to be part of the culture.” The solution Parente says is better technology. Right now, organizations juggle multiple platforms—productivity suites, HR systems, endless apps—but they don’t talk to each other. “What if we had one? One that connected everybody, our cultures, our productivity tools, and our HR systems? The truth is, we have that at our fingertips today.”Yet, many companies still rely on outdated communication methods. “Email is still number one." But mass emails with critical company updates? They get buried. “I don’t know if you guys read them, but they usually fall to the bottom of my inbox.”Parente says we all need to move in a different direction. “Legacy and top down communications [are] something that showed hierarchy. It showed clear efficiency, but it's not effective. It’s not inspiring, it’s not empowering our employees and our team members to go out and be entrepreneurs for the business.”As organizations look to the future, the way they communicate and engage employees must evolve. Creating an environment where employees feel encouraged, not overlooked, when sharing ideas is (or should be) the future. “If we’re not evolving and moving our organization forward, those statistics are going to stay at 60% of burnout. They’re going to stay at 80% of loneliness,” Parente said. “I don’t know about you, but if I go into work and I know that 80% of my coworkers feel lonely. That’s not an inspiring thing. We're not inspiring change. We're not inspiring communication and collaboration. We’re just staying the same.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, LineZero, 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 the Washington Post, Greater Greater Washington, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.(Photo by Sean Ryan for From Day One)
Developing Talent Across Generations and Rapidly Changing Technologies
BY Matthew Koehler March 17, 2025If the opening of 2025 could be defined with one word, it would be turbulence. From the street to the board room, the world is experiencing shake ups and changes, or turbulence, forcing everyone to adapt to rapidly changing realities.In these turbulent times, Daniela Proust, the SVP and head of people & organization at Siemens, focuses on keeping the company’s people top priority, and putting them first, especially “when there’s so much turbulence out there,” she said. “I think my role is to be the voice of our workforce, and to make sure that our people can thrive. We create a work environment where people want to be part of team Siemens, and that we help them navigate along the way.”At From Day One’s Washington, D.C. conference, Proust discussed Siemens’ people-first approach to workforce development and changes with Taylor Telford, corporate culture reporter at the Washington Post.Siemens, “a technology company in the B2B space” that’s been around since 1848, is huge and diverse. It has over 300,000 workers worldwide, with more than 45,000 in the U.S. alone. The range of jobs at the company cover everything from engineering, software development, and manufacturing. “We have a large manufacturing footprint. So we have to cover all of the different needs and the skill and capability building,” said Proust.The company’s success and competitive edge, says Proust, is based on its ability to “innovate” and reinvent itself over and over again,” she said. “I like to describe us as a living organism. [We] try to stay adaptive, agile, and focus on the things that we need to innovate and also how we need to foster and create our workflow strategies,” Proust said.Its advantage is being a large global company “in terms of workforce...that it’s almost like a playground,” said Proust. “You can try out so many different things. You can work in different industries, in different geographies, you can also move across different functions.”On this worldwide playground Proust says Siemens focuses on attracting the right talent while recognizing individual development needs. “Each and every one of us has a unique skill set, or almost like a backpack of skills and capabilities and experience,” Proust said. “What each and every one of us needs to continuously adapt is very different.”She highlighted the company’s My Learning World platform, launched about six years ago. The platform has become their “number one used platform or tool in the whole company,” offering more than 130,000 learning opportunities. “Our people just love to engage. They love to see what’s out there.”A Team by Team Approach to RTOAccording to Proust, flexibility extends beyond just remote work policies. “The conversation is much more dimensional than just that dimension, even though it matters.”Siemens implemented a global policy encouraging employees to be in the office two to three days per week, but defer to their teams in determining what works best for specific team needs. “Each team can design to what is most meaningful in their context,” Proust said. Preferences vary widely, though–particularly between office-based and manufacturing environments.Taylor Telford of the Washington Post interviewed Proust of Siemens during the fireside chat With approximately 150 locations in the United States alone, Proust emphasized that Siemens’ flexible approach has been successful. “We have very flexible teams, and this has worked for us. And when I hear other companies say, ‘Oh, people are not engaged or they are not coming back.’ I see the opposite.” She stressed the importance of team-level conversations to determine optimal working arrangements while meeting objectives.Within her own bailiwick as a people and organization (P&O) head, Proust “creates the forums in the space that these conversations take place.” She emphasizes the importance of first line managers alongside executive leadership. “Tone from the top is super important, and they play a critical role to develop the strategy of their area of responsibility, but where the true people experience sits is usually in your direct environment. It’s your direct manager, it’s the people you work with.” Being “conscious and strategic” about senior leadership appointments and how they support first line managers is also key.The role of P&O has shifted significantly over time. “It really shifted from being a service provider with shared services in the back end for the core processes of payroll, travel, whatever it was.” P&O evolved from service provider to business partner, helping with strategic workforce planning. More recently, she noted an even more fundamental change in organizational importance.“Over the last two to three years, we are the third leg of a stool. I’m in every conversation with the CEO and CFO, and the people conversation is always [at the] core of every business strategy conversation.” She stresses that people are “the highest value” in organizations, making talent and organizational capability essential components of business strategy discussions.But ultimately what matters most to their people, according to Proust, is work environment, flexibility, and benefits. “What I find interesting as a European, is this growing interest in the topic of child care and elderly care and support, when you have to provide for your parents and for your children.”Exploring Innovation Through AI ApplicationsProust says Siemens is uniquely positioned at the intersection of physical and digital domains. “We are building trains as an example. We are building factories so that vehicles get built, or beverages can be filled. We build digital factories as an example.” And of course, the company is combining industry expertise with AI capabilities.For Siemens, AI represents a significant business opportunity, from shop floor applications to supporting field technicians. As head P&O, Proust also considers AI's internal workforce applications, though she remains cautious about productivity claims.“What are the tasks that bring value where we as humans really bring the value to the table? How can we focus on those tasks? And how can we get rid of other tasks that can be done easily through the technologies that we utilize?”Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real-estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Greater Greater Washington, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.(Photos by Justin Feltman for From Day One)
Harnessing AI for Human Resources: The Promises and Risks
BY Matthew Koehler March 07, 2025To some people, generative AI can feel like magic, and perhaps it's meant to be that way. Even the experts who designed it don’t fully understand how neural networks are thinking on their own, which is quite magical. But if Dr. Balaji Padmanabhan could wave a magical wand over our awe of AI, he’d utter a revealing spell. “The beauty of magic is that even magic is not magic. And that’s a perfect metaphor for AI. Under the hood, there is a very specific way in which it works, and it’s extremely important for all of us to understand the capabilities of AI, rather than just walking around thinking it can do anything under the sun.”Padmanabhan, a professor of decision, operations and information technologies at the University of Maryland, led a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Washington, D.C. conference last month. He spoke on the promises and risks of AI and the next frontier in the domain of HR and hiring.In a fundamental shift from earlier approaches, today’s AI represents a dramatic evolution in machine learning, says Padmanabhan. “AI, over the years, has picked problems that demonstrate intelligence.” And while use cases appear similar—chatbots existed 60 years ago and remain prevalent today—the underlying technology has evolved exponentially.Earlier AI relied on “pre-programmed logic,” while modern systems operate through “learning from continuous, massive data streams, as well as new learning paradigms.” The implications are significant. “Potentially, we are at a time when AI can be not just as good as humans, but potentially much better,” creating both “problems as well as concerns” for society.Zeroing in on how AI will outperform humans, Padmanabhan pointed to two broad issues. The first revolves around predictive models using AI and the “edge cases” it applies to.“Predictive models are very good when the future is like the past. So what happens when the future is not like the past? The data that we've trained [AI] on isn't going to be adequate to make those predictions.”You can think about predictability in terms of what physicians do during a majority of their workweek. While most of a doctor's routine work could be automated—perhaps 39 hours of a 40-hour workweek—their true value emerges in those critical moments of specialized judgment.“That 20 minutes or one hour in that 60-hour workweek where they make a decision that's different from what something would have automated is what that person is getting paid for.”This reality shapes how we should approach professional development, and Padmanabhan suggests we "focus on that aspect in our own professions,” specifically, the ability to excel “where the future is not like the past,” he said.Superpowered AI and Where Humans RemainPadmanabhan cast a revealing spell on broad assumptions about AI's superiority by highlighting the disconnect between publicized tests and real-world applications. “Where they show AI is better than humans most of the time doesn’t reflect on-the-ground use cases.” Dr. Balaji Padmanabhan of the University of Maryland led the session on AIHe bases this reality on his experience helping companies implement AI solutions. “When a company is actually using AI within an HR context, or when a hospital is actually using AI to help a doctor make decisions, those situations are not the same as taking an automated exam.”“So take these predictions with a big grain of salt that AI can replace humans.”Another false reality to consider is AI’s reliability. “AI makes mistakes just as humans make mistakes.” And while many organizations have developed robust systems to understand and minimize human error, “most on-the-ground use cases [with AI], it's hard for them to even come up with a number which says what percentage of the time AI is making a mistake.”Despite some areas of concern, Padmanabhan remains optimistic about AI's potential as a personalized workplace tool, or what he refers to as the “superpower” we’ll all have in our pockets. “Regardless of what your job is, whether you're a wealth manager, whether you're an information analyst, whether you're an investment banker, everything that you're doing can be supported by AI in a very significant way, and that’s the superpower in our pockets that we have to try to go towards.”AI Agents and the Next FrontierDespite early missteps in automated hiring, Padmanabhan foresees AI continuing to be more useful and practical in HR. For example, HR vendors now use generative AI to automate specific tasks rather than entire workflows. These targeted applications include resume filtering and automatically preparing initial performance review reports—tasks that previously consumed significant time but can now be completed “in a matter of seconds.”One particularly promising application incorporates nudge theory—a behavioral science concept where subtle, positive interventions guide people toward better choices without removing freedom of choice. AI can deliver these “right pushes at the right time” to enhance employee performance.“Technology can very easily become our friend. That's what I meant when I was saying it’s a superpower in our pockets to help all of us do our jobs much better.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, the University of Maryland, 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 the Washington Post, Greater Greater Washington, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.(Photos by Justin Feltman for From Day One)
Modernizing Benefits at a Mature Organization to Appeal to Today’s Changing Workforce
BY Matthew Koehler February 19, 2025Employee retention and engagement are one side of the human capital coin. The other, perhaps, is the total rewards package. Most people think of total rewards in terms of pay and health benefits, but it's far more than that. “Total rewards encompasses all forms of compensation and benefits needed to attract, motivate, and retain our employees,” said Fannie Mae’s VP of total rewards, Brian Copeland. Copeland discussed the evolution of total rewards during a fireside chat with Denver Post reporter Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton at a From Day One’s January virtual conference.A Total Approach to Job SatisfactionJob satisfaction isn’t one-size-fits-all, says Copeland. So total rewards must be tailored to each employee’s unique needs. “It’s for us in our overall leadership team to try to figure out ways to better understand what those inputs are to an employee's job satisfaction,” he said.He puts total rewards into four “buckets”: Career advancement – A clear talent architecture that outlines career paths, including vertical promotions and lateral opportunities.Compensation and benefits – innovative total rewards designed to support employees’ diverse needs at every career stage.Learning and development and cross training programs – tools like training, certifications, and tuition reimbursement to help employees own their career growth. Culture and psychological safety – continuous feedback and engagement efforts to ensure employees feel supported and heard.Tapping into that second bucket, and to a greater extent what Fannie Mae’s mission is, the company also tries to make housing affordable for their employees. “One of our long standing benefits that we've offered is our employee assisted housing. So it's directly tied to our mission, which is making sure that we provide sustainable access to home ownership.” To this extent, they offer a one-time stipend to employees buying a new primary residence. Aside from that, given that home ownership is a complex process, especially for new homeowners, they provide education on how to buy a home and what it’s like to own one. Copeland says these types of benefits have been around a long time.Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton of the Denver Post interviewed Brian Copeland of Fannie Mae, discussing the companies innovative total rewards On the more innovative end, they’re working on a pilot energy efficiency program where, working with vendors or local energy companies, they do a scan of an employee’s current home. “The energy efficiency audit will go through, and they'll look at somebody’s home and see –maybe they need new insulation. Maybe it’s Windows. Maybe the inverse of the availability for solar panels or energy efficient appliances, whatever it may be, and they go through and get kind of a scorecard on how efficient their home is.” He says employees can apply that one-time stipend to update or upgrade their homes.Fannie Mae also expanded its benefits to support employees’ mental health and well-being by introducing enhanced leave programs, including parental and grandparent leave. Furthermore, they’ve launched a lifestyle spending account, an after-tax benefit that employees can use for personal needs like pet insurance, home office supplies, or hobbies. “We really created it to try to meet the ancillary benefits that are more one-off,” Copeland said. “[We were] trying to be creative and different to make sure our employees [are] able to say, 'Hey, I'm working with Fannie Mae. I love Fannie Mae, and it supports me and who I am inside and outside of work.’”Managing Cost Constraints With Total RewardsRising healthcare costs, especially increased use of GLP-1 medications, have led Fannie Mae to refine its benefits strategy in that area. “We still wanted to provide access, but we wanted to be very thoughtful." Copeland says they balance availability with preventative care like lifestyle programs to help control costs. Given the constant flux of costs in healthcare, they review their offerings every six months and work with providers to find cost-effective solutions. Attracting digital talent has also raised costs as inflation drives up salaries. “We've had to pay tech talent right to get them in the door to make sure we're competitive.”Lastly, Copeland points to two seemingly “small” areas of cost constraints that “add up quickly”: regulatory compliance and evolving employee expectations. New laws create administrative costs, while demand for personalized benefits like loan repayment and mental health support requires multiple vendors. “If we're going to offer that, usually we have to go out to a new vendor. There's very few vendors that may offer a one stop shop,” which increases overall costs. “We found ways to mitigate some, but some are just going to be something we’ve got to focus on over the next couple years.” As their current generation of employees nears retirement, Fannie Mae expects to introduce even more tailored benefits.On that retirement piece, Copeland says there isn’t a perfect solution but they take a holistic approach. They auto-enroll their employees in a 401(k) that has a generous employer match, even for employees who don’t contribute. “We spend a lot of time on financial literacy...providing them education on savings investing through webinars and workshops.” Fannie Mae also offers one-on-one coaching.Beyond retirement, Fannie Mae focuses on overall financial well-being, providing tuition reimbursement, student loan repayment, and guidance for parents planning for college costs. “I don’t know if that’s fully innovative, but I think it’s something that we can control. And, that’s bringing awareness and options for our employees.”Looking towards the future, Copeland says the industry will start seeing “more personalized benefit options.” “We're probably going to start moving towards more individual total rewards programs, almost like a menu style where you can select what you need for yourself.”He sees AI and new technology options accelerating personalized benefit programs. For healthcare options, for example, in network doctors might be going the concierge route, “focused on more of [a] holistic medicine.”Ultimately, Copeland believes the total rewards space is on the verge of an evolution. “I think we're on the verge of a lot of advancement in the total reward space, given some of the technology changes that are probably coming over the next decade.”Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real-estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Greater Greater Washington, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.(Photo by AaronAmat/iStock)
Technology and Humans: How to Reinvent the Working Relationship
BY Matthew Koehler December 30, 2024A lot of conversation around generative AI in the workforce feels dire, and many are speculating that when the dust of the AI revolution clears, humans, in many professional roles, will no longer be relevant. The counterpoint, however, is that AI will change how work is done but not necessarily as a replacement for humanity, but as an enhancement. “My team wakes up every morning thinking about, How do we discover and understand the new patterns of work, and where is work going?” said Matthew Loys Duncan, the head of future of work thought leadership at Microsoft.“I think people are scared about change, right? But in general, I think it's the concept of change, and how willing are we to really know that with change comes growth and new opportunities. And we’ve never seen that more so than recently with AI." Duncan spoke with Nicole Smith, the editorial audience director for Harvard Business Review, in a fireside chat at From Day One’s December virtual conference. They discussed the emerging patterns between technology and humans, and how AI will enhance humanity in the workplace. Distinguishing Fad From the Actual Future“First and foremost, let’s put the facts on the table. AI has been around for 40 years. It’s helped us correct our sentences [for years]. So it's been in our world; it’s just been behind the scenes.” Duncan believes AI’s potential impact on the workforce is going to be as big as the industrial revolution or the emergence of the internet. “I remember a day when there wasn’t a .com and we didn't have all this massive information. We can’t imagine a world where we don’t click and shop and it’s at my front door in a matter of hours. It’s going to have that profound of an effect.”Matthew Loys Duncan, the head of Future of Work Thought Leadership at Microsoft (Company photo)However, the profound impact and change is not going to come from one direction, and people will have to experiment with it. Duncan points out that people already are, indeed, experimenting with AI. “We’ve never seen such a massive experimentation—millions of people basically, overnight, started using it.”“The challenge is always, with anything new like this, you have to experiment. [U]nderstand how it’s applicable. And what’s unique at this moment with generative AI is its usefulness. It’s only a breakthrough when it’s useful." From planning a vacation to a big event at your kid’s school to freelance writers experimenting with it to condense information and produce workable outlines to generating ideas—everyone is still experimenting with AI. “I think it starts with individuals, but what we’ve seen in the last almost two years is leaders that believe this is a new way of how you’re going to create greater efficiency and productivity. Or a new opportunity to innovate and create like we've never done before. I’m sure everyone’s seen the meme: It’s not that you're going to lose your job to AI, you're going to lose your place in the market to those that are applying AI,” Duncan said.One of the ways Duncan points out AI’s inventiveness is in how it’s able to take the overload of information, all the historical data of, say, one organization and make good predictions from that data. “If you apply AI to that, you can actually, for the first time, layer over all that data and information and start to understand your business very explicitly.”AI is transforming how businesses approach customer retention and sales as well, Duncan observed. In customer service, AI can analyze subscription data to predict churn by identifying patterns, such as reduced usage or complaints, or signaling when a customer may cancel. This allows businesses to intervene with personalized outreach—both digital and human—to retain customers. In sales, AI acts as a copilot, helping sales representatives sift through leads to pinpoint those with the highest conversion potential. It also provides real-time coaching, offering suggestions and strategies to close deals effectively. As Duncan put it, AI enhances decision-making “at the right time and right place.”AI Could Potentially Make Us More HumanAnother fear of AI, and indeed a problem with automated customer service already, is that it’s taking the humanity out of our interactions. This raises the question, as Smith pointed out: Will there be room for human emotional intelligence in the workplace of the future? Duncan seems to think so. “I have a premise that AI will make us more human.” He cited research Microsoft has done on human performance that points to 68% of people saying “they struggle with the pace and volume of work.” After surveying 31,000 people in 31 countries about where they focus most of their time, 60% of that time goes to emails, chats, and meetings. For every email someone sends, they have to read four. “There’s not enough time in the day, not enough energy to get it done. That’s where, oddly enough, AI and generative AI, in this more useful natural-language reasoning world, become[s] our assistant and really help[s] us break through.” Duncan says that if AI can take over mundane tasks, then it can give us back about 10 hours per month, which he says can help “unlock” what makes us and allow us to focus more on “communication, connection, empathy and relationship with other humans.”Expanding on with that theme of lost time regained with AI, Smith pointed out a ubiquitous sentiment out there in the world: Technology hasn’t freed us from overwhelming work obligations. In fact, it has made us feel that we always have to be on. “Do you think AI is going to intensify that pressure to stay connected? Or do you think it can help us break free from our digital addiction?” Smith asked.“When was the last time, or where were you, when you had your last great idea?” Duncan said. “I usually hear in the shower, on a run, walking my dog. What’s common there is, we’re at a place with our own mind, where we have space to think and be creative and focus, and we need to bring that back.”Duncan touched back on the research they’ve done at Microsoft showing how AI, when utilized effectively both at work and at home, can recoup many hours of time a month lost to drudgery. “And what do you want to use with those 10 hours? And my answer is, whatever is going to make that human do better. The reality is, it’s meant to refuel and re-energize and give people the space to actually innovate and create like we’ve not been able to do for a while.”Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real-estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Greater Greater Washington, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.(Illustration by Moor Studio/iStock by Getty Images)
Enhancing Global HR Tech: Balancing Data, Automation, and Human Touch
BY Matthew Koehler December 20, 2024Ankit Saxena, now the global head of people insights and HR technology at PPG Industries, has had a long career in data analytics. He has seen it all, from fraud to operational to financial to people analytics. In his experience, there are four critical takeaways: a clear business case, good storytelling, solutions, and action plans.“Whether you work in any kind of an analytics or technology environment, you have to have a clear business case. The second thing is the storytelling. Unless you connect the dots, your story is not impactful. The third thing is the solution. So you told me the problem. How do you fix it? [Finally], the action plan you're going to have. And those principles, whether you work in X analytics, y analytics or HR analytics, remain the same across the board.”Saxena spoke to the editorial audience director for Harvard Business Review, Nicole Smith during From Day One’s November virtual conference. They discussed the importance of maintaining a human touch in a rapidly evolving AI world and retrofitting existing technology with the new.When making a big move in any organization, especially one centered around people, you have to have your finger on the pulse of a lot of analytics. Saxena says it’s typical to pay attention to internal movements—how the company is performing, how the market is shifting, what major internal events are taking place, and more.There’s also people insight, which is all about gathering and analyzing employee data to understand their motivations and engagement.“If you’re looking to make a very broad kind of a decision, if you’re looking to understand what needs to be the future way of the organization from the people perspective, you have to have a pretty clear line of sight of what is happening externally as well,” said Saxena.Saxena points to how external events like Covid and inflation created ripple effects within organizations by influencing talent supply, attrition, compensation, and career dynamics. “As a professional in the analytics space, you keep a tab on all those things, not just your internal but also externally. During my career of 15 to 17 years, I have realized that if you are myopically focused internally, you will lose sight of the external environment, and if you focus too much on the external, you will lose sight of the internal.”To not get overwhelmed on managing all the external and internal metrics, Saxena says all organizations are focused on how they are [using] automation and AI.To narrow down the aperture of information and really focus on what is needed, Saxena says it’s imperative to look at the internal use case for technology. “What exactly is the benefit that you’re going to generate for your end stakeholders? Is there any kind of a buy-in that you see? Because AI is a prime example where everyone wants to jump in, but they don’t know exactly what the outcome is.”To answer that essential question above, Saxena developed a framework based on five ‘whats’:What’s the use case? What benefits do the different technologies generate? What’s the cost of implementation and maintenance? What are the future growth opportunities for any specific technology? And, what does change management look like?“Every organization struggles with their technology implementation if they don’t have robust change management,” Saxena added.Nicole Smith of the Harvard Business Review interviewed Ankit Saxena of PPG Industries “There are a lot of traditional technologies that do exist and will continue to exist. And I think that is important for us to understand that a lot of companies invest into technologies, but they are not able to make them work.”Saxena believes there’s an opportunity here with companies making their existing technology work. At previous companies, he said they would buy a technology but not fully implement it. “I think making your existing technology or tech stack work appropriately and providing you the full benefit” is a theme he's seeing in the market.Another piece of advice he offers is that before you look at the next big AI product being offered, look internally. “Rather than buying an AI technology, you should kind of look upon your current tech stack and how it kind of aligns with your AI capabilities.”“Make sure that you are using [traditional technology] to the fullest capability. Second, before you go outside [to buy] any AI capability, you should explore what tools you have and if they offer any AI capability. And can you leverage it for certain use cases to show some success and have an investment for the future?”Saxena emphasizes the importance of evaluating technology investments carefully to ensure they align with a company's vision and strategy. He notes that technology companies frequently introduce new capabilities to stay competitive in the AI space, which can create a challenge for businesses locked into long-term contracts.“Companies are not going to invest into anything new unless you have made the existing ones work, so this is a kind of a catch 22. Once you invest into long term contracts, you have to make them work,” Saxena said.Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.
In an Argumentative Time, How to Create Healthy Conversations at Work and in Life
BY Matthew Koehler December 11, 2024The most recent election points to America, and many parts of the world, being divided. Now more than ever, we should prioritize fostering constructive dialogue over casting blame. In a sense, we need more peacemakers.“Once we free ourselves from the fiction that anyone who disagrees with us must be a monster or a fool, we need not be so afraid of allowing ourselves to be persuaded,” wrote Steven T. Collis, a Constitutional Law professor at the University of Texas, in his most recent book, Habits of a Peacemaker.Collis spoke to KVUE sports journalist Cory Mose at From Day One’s Austin conference. They discussed the habits of peacemakers that allow for sometimes difficult, but fruitful conversations.Understanding the Limits of What You KnowCollis is a First Amendment law professor who specializes in freedom of speech and religion, and is no stranger to difficult conversations on a broad range of topics. He’s been thinking about how to more effectively have those conversations for a while. “I travel all over the globe talking about those really controversial topics. And I started to ask myself what is it that we’re doing that’s allowing us to have productive conversations about these really difficult topics? When most people just devolve into shouting matches and arguments."Collis’ mission isn’t just navigating difficult conversations in politics and culture. His aim is to offer non-partisan tactics for dealing with all sorts of conversations, often drawing on anecdotes from his own life. “The book was about how to have productive conversations about hard topics. We see them in our family dynamics. We see them in the workplace. We see them at schools, at churches, anywhere where [you] have to deal with another person, difficult conversations come up.”Drawing from his book, he started with intellectual humility and tells the story of his middle school days of looking cool. One day, he confidently strolled into the bathroom and spiked his hair with what he thought was mousse. Strutting out of the bathroom, his mom caught a whiff of his head and immediately marched him back in and washed his hair out. “It turns out that what I thought was moose was actually her hair removal product, Nair. And for the next week, all my hair started falling out. For the rest of the summer, people thought I had some horrible illness.”“We get in trouble in life when we think we know about something and we don’t, and we have strong feelings about it. Intellectual humility is critical.”Collis, left, spoke about his book Habits of a Peacemaker: 10 Habits to Change Our Potentially Toxic Conversations into Healthy DialoguesIn a heated debate, we’re all experts. Especially if we’ve learned a little bit about something, then we’re not only experts, but we form very concrete opinions. “Scientists call this the Dunning Kruger effect, and it’s been pretty well established,” Collis said.At the University of Michigan Law School, a frieze above one of the doorways features a pertinent inscription: “a little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep or taste not.” Collis often walked through this door. “That has become ingrained in my mind as something to remember. Now the question is, how do we establish that in ourselves?”Compounding the Dunning Kruger effect is that most of us walk around “enjoying something called the knowledge illusion,” or a bias in which we think we understand more than we do. “Any one of us actually knows almost nothing,” Collis said.A senior business leader he recently talked to shared that recognizing how little he knows and how much he can learn from his team has been vital to his success. By fostering open communication and encouraging input, he ensures his position doesn’t intimidate others, creating space for growth and collaboration.Asking yourself that same question: ‘How much do I actually know about this,’ is a good way to remind yourself of how little you actually know, says Collis.The Root of the Argument“I know it’s hard for a lot of people to do. But one thing that stuck out to me, was how you explain the surface level argument that you may be having with someone may not be the root of why you’re having that discussion,” Mose said.This touches on something Collis finds true of all effective peacemakers. One of their enduring habits is that if someone “come[s] in really hot about something,” peacemakers assume a good motivation for why their interlocutor acts or thinks the way they do. “Most of us strut around the world thinking, there’s three kinds of people: there’s the people who agree with us, and then there are monsters and fools. Peacemakers don’t do that.”Peacemakers realize that their disagreeable interlocutor has a position they have to better understand. Perhaps they have the same goals but differ on how to achieve them. That’s a valuable conversation to have. Or, perhaps your goals are different, yet another worthy conversation there.“There are bad actors, but generally speaking, in our families and our work lives and the day to day people we’re having contact with, it’s not a good practice to start off assuming the absolute worst about somebody.”Another quality of peacemakers that Collis admittedly doesn't have in spades, is spending time with people. In the workplace, for example, Collis says it applies to work relationships as well. “Spending time with your colleagues in a way where you’re just building the relationship and you’re not dealing with the hard topics, allows the later conversations that will inevitably come that are difficult to be far more productive.”None of this is easy, though, and Collis says people can spend a lifetime perfecting the good habits of a peacemaker.“I can’t emphasize enough the idea that the ideas in this book are ones that we could all spend a lifetime perfecting. Nobody has perfected any of these things, and I don’t mean the book to be exhaustive. I would encourage people to take the skills that they already have and add [to] them.”An important message going forward, and one derived from the pages of Collis’ book, is also simple but hard to do. Peacemakers need to have the ability to change and adapt to new information.“Being a peacemaker carries with it important responsibilities. One of which is being willing to change. This is a hard concept for humanity to understand. But recognizing that we don’t know everything, and being willing to learn, seeking the best sources for doing so, asking people honest questions, all of those mean nothing if you’re unwilling to ponder the new things you are learning and consider changing your views.”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.
Bridging the Gap: Evolving Benefits to Support Women’s Health Milestones
BY Matthew Koehler November 25, 2024Women’s healthcare has made progress, yet it remains outdated and frequently falls short, even in the 21st century–a consequence of longstanding bias. In 1977, the FDA banned women of childbearing age from phase 1 and 2 clinical trials, “unless they had a life-threatening condition.” Then in 1993, “Congress passed a law requiring the inclusion of women in clinical research.”“How did we get here? Well, you know women aren't small men. You might have heard that, but the FDA did not agree with that. The FDA in 1977 banned women from being part of research. So anything that applies to a man research-wise, applies to a woman as well. [In] 1993 we’re finally invited back in, which is great. However, we still have work to be done. We’re very behind,” said Kerri DiCicco, vice president of business development at Progyny where she partners with consultants and employers to provide end-to-end family- building solutions.DiCicco spoke on the topic of women's healthcare at a From Day One’s Denver Conference in a thought leadership spotlight about “Bridging the Gap: Evolving Benefits to Support Women’s Health Milestones.” She specifically touched on fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause, and how to make it more tailored to women's experiences.The Impact of Health GapsDiCicco says access to providers who specialize in women's healthcare isn’t easy. “Everyone has probably heard that women live longer than men, right? But it's true, we do live longer than men. But the flip side of that is that we spend 25% more of our lifetime in debilitating health. And one of the things that happens is it takes us a lot longer to be diagnosed with illnesses,” said DiCicco.Yet, even though women are back in the picture, outside of oncology, only 1% of research dollars go towards women’s health research. Furthermore, DiCicco says it took another 14 to 16 years for infertility to be recognized as a disease. “And infertility, even when it's male factor-infertility, the woman is the one that's going to bear the treatment for that.”DiCicco points to the fact that we’re starting families later in life and that “one in six people are going to need help conceiving.” “Because of the lack of research we come to childbearing years with chronic conditions. So it takes, on average, 10 years for a woman to get a diagnosis of PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) or endometriosis, which when it goes untreated, really impacts your ability to conceive without assistance.”The struggle to have a child, DiCicco says, is often more stressful than a death in the family, “but less than 7% of women are able to get support.” There needs to be a full episode of care to cover what is needed, and it needs to happen at the right time.DiCicco gives the story of Jessica and Ashley, a same-sex couple, who want to start a family. “It’s a hard journey to start, and if you're in a same sex relationship, there’s additional nuances.”In this scenario, Jessica’s employer offers equitable fertility benefits, so they’re assigned a patient care advocate (PCA). This advocate acts as their guide, helping them find appropriate clinics, offering emotional support, helping them understand their options, and scheduling appointments.The benefits of targeted, proactive care extend beyond health: Data shows that 80% of employees who receive fertility benefits stay loyal to their employer, seeing the support as invaluable. “And you think about that also through the lens of DEI–it’s a very connected journey, and we took the gaps out.”With pregnancy and postpartum care, DiCicco says the U.S. is not doing its job to take care of women, and that the maternal death rate has risen.Proactive Postpartum CareBroadly speaking, DiCicco says we know postpartum is deadly, but it's still up to women to seek out that help. “And that's really hard, because at that point she's just trying to keep a seven pound human alive.” Instead, DiCicco says that proactive, early care is better.In another example, Katie, a new mom in her 30s who went through fertility treatment, is struggling with postpartum anxiety while caring for her baby alone at home. Her employer's program connects her with a PCA who knows her background and stays involved after the birth. This advocate, along with a pregnancy coach, checks in on Katie, helping her understand that her struggles are common. “As she gets closer to [returning] to work. Her patient care advocate helps her with that, so she has the ability to go back on a schedule that really works for her, works for her family and takes the stressors out of it.”Navigating the Symptoms of MenopauseThe final issue DiCicco covered was menopause, which she says gets misdiagnosed all the time. “If you have an employee that comes into your office and says, ‘My heart won’t stop racing.’ You’re going to tell her to go to the ER. The cardiologist is going to see her and say, ‘I don't know what it is. Let's refer you here, here, and here,’ not even thinking that you’re 37 years old, and this is perimenopause.”There are 34 symptoms related to menopause and according to DiCicco nearly 47% of women go through 15 different providers before they get a correct diagnosis. Most women are told to go see their OB-GYN, who are primarily trained to “have a healthy mom and a healthy birth. Less than 7% of the OB-GYNs in this country get any training at all in menopause.”DiCicco's final example is Nicole, a 42-year-old working mom and executive, who is struggling with classic menopause symptoms. She first goes to her primary care physician, who doesn’t recognize the symptoms as perimenopause-related. “Why would she ever think about menopause or perimenopause?” Luckily, Nicole’s employer provides a comprehensive health benefit that covers menopause care. This proactive care not only eases symptoms but also saves women from multiple office visits, keeping them focused and productive at work. By offering targeted proactive support, employers can avoid unnecessary claims and help retain valued employees who might otherwise be affected by unmanaged symptoms. “And when we close the gaps in menopause with the right care, with the right specialist, that's what's going to happen.”Closing the gaps in women's healthcare is key, and highly beneficial to employers. “Really think about ‘what gaps do I have, and how can I close those?’ Because when you close the gaps we just touched on, you're going to see that financially, it’s going to make sense. Don’t put the onus on women to navigate a system that wasn’t created by or for women. We need to choose equitable coverage, coverage for everyone. And make sure it's intentionally designed for the specific concerns of women.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Progyny, 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.
Constant Change Is Bad for Business Because It’s Bad for Human Performance
BY Matthew Koehler November 20, 2024In the corporate world, change is inevitable and organizations that can’t change don’t last long. Oftentimes, change is considered a good thing until you talk to people on the frontlines of it.“At some point you have to recognize that there is a contradiction between the simplistic idea that change is necessarily a good thing and the lived experience of change on the front lines, which seems to be anything but a good thing,” said Ashley Goodall, a leadership expert and author of The Problem With Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance.Goodall spoke with Vox's editorial director of tech, climate, and world teams, Bryan Walsh, at From Day One’s October virtual conference. They spoke about how to navigate constant change in the business world.Uncertainty, Control, and Work Without MeaningGoodall has had a long career in the corporate world as an HR executive, most recently at Cisco. He's seen major change from the outside and inside and identifies three key themes prevalent in any chaotic change. The first is uncertainty. “We don’t do very well when the future is uncertain and when somebody says there’s a big change coming, that’s almost the definition of uncertainty.”The next is control. “When you take away our sense of agency, we feel helpless. There’s a phenomenon called learned helplessness, where people just phone it in, because they’ve been trained by their environment that whatever they do won’t make that much of a difference.”Learned helplessness is the psychological name for a loss of control, Goodall says, but it also goes by another name. “Quiet quitting is probably pretty close in a business context for people saying, ‘Hey, I don't know what I do here. Why am I trying?’”Bryan Walsh of Vox interviewed author Ashley Goodall, left, during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)The last theme is having a sense of meaning. “We have a desperate need for the world to make sense to us,” Goodall said. Organizational change often disrupts the essential social connections that define how people work and identify themselves. Shifting teams or altering org charts can dismantle these "social graphs," leaving employees struggling to adapt. On top of that, humans have an innate need to make sense of their environment. When conflicting messages about the organization’s direction emerge, employees often feel lost and disconnected, unable to contribute effectively.Goodall noted that while leaders often recognize these challenges, their focus tends to remain narrow—fixing one change initiative at a time. The issue arises when multiple initiatives, driven by different leaders or consultants, pile up, creating chaos. To address this, organizations must rethink change holistically and prioritize creating a work environment that supports human connection and meaningful contribution.“And it’s the aggregation of all of this that is really pernicious, which means that organizations need to think differently about change, and more broadly about the experience of work here every day, and does it support human contribution,” Goodall said."What can leadership do when it comes to actually executing change?” Walsh asked. Goodall says there needs to be a sliding scale to determine when change is necessary. “The first thing to say to organizational leadership is, do less. Change. But do less. If we get through our collective heads that this isn’t an unalloyed good, this is something that can create harm more than it creates good, then I think you pause and set the bar higher on organizational change.”This doesn’t always happen but leadership can be proactive about “turning the volume down,” he said.“You can involve employees in telling you where the volume currently is,” Goodall said. "What would happen if a leader came in and said, I’m going to spend the next few weeks learning everything that works really well here, or everything that we should preserve, or everything that’s valuable, or everything that’s special, or everything that you really care about, so that we know what to protect. And once we’ve understood that, then we can think about how to improve things.”Leaders can help employees navigate change by anchoring on stability and framing it as a clear, process-driven outcome, while taking steps to promote consistency amid the chaos of multiple initiatives.Stability is a Necessary Precondition for Improvement“You could say stability is kind of the opposite of change. What does that look like?” Walsh asked.Goodall distinguished between change and improvement, which he says aren’t the same things and given a choice between the two, people would choose improvement. “The thing that we’re chasing in all of this is improvement. Well, stability is a necessary precondition for improvement.”People struggling in an organization amidst a sea of instability don’t lend to improvement. Goodall believes that improvement and positive change come from team environments, where employees know what’s going on and are valued. “If we are able to stipulate that organizational value, organizational productivity, organizational innovation, organizational goodness comes from humans working together.”If you have the above, then you’ll have something like stability, Goodall says.“What does stability look like? Stability looks like I have space to figure out the best use of my time. I’m given some autonomy.” For Goodall, true stability at work comes from personal confidence, strong team dynamics, and leaders who foster meaningful connections and mutual support.Digging more into that predictability and stability, Goodall talked about his use of weekly all-hands meetings, something Walsh pointed out that, in his experience, executives tend to despise.Goodall did not spend a whole lot of time prepping for these meetings. Instead, he used them as a personnel barometer. “It was a conversation for the leadership team that everyone got to tune into and ask questions of us.”“What we were trying to solve was, if you know what’s going on, you have space, you have agency, [then] you have predictability. You get to see the people leading your organizations when they’re not on script–when they’re not following the talking points that the communications team has put together for the all hands," Goodall added.The meetings would start with slides of birthdays, service anniversaries, or something random with a photo to spark conversation or a laugh. Then they would move onto business, and different teams would simply talk about what they were working on, what was working for them, areas of difficulty and challenge, what was coming up in the future, and more.And making things weekly, instead of a few times a year, gives organizations the opportunity to handle change as it’s happening, according to Goodall. All of this is "profoundly stabilizing." “We did this every week for years and years, and it became an organizational ritual, and people still talk about it. All we were doing was ritualizing stability and explaining to people what was going on.”Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.
The Backlash Against DEI: How Perceptions Are Being Driven by Fear and Sensationalism, Not Facts
BY Matthew Koehler November 06, 2024DEI has faced intense backlash, often turned into a partisan dog whistle by those aiming to politicize its goals. But is this pushback grounded in reality? In truth, the vast majority of companies remain firmly committed to DEI, both in the U.S. and internationally. Most Americans approve of DEI initiatives, including 78% of Black workers from a Pew Research poll from 2023.Dr. Stephanie J. Creary, Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, says the backlash against DEI doesn’t tell an accurate story. “What we found is a story that is not being shared in the media or by politicians, and that is that of all the industries that exist right now, finance is leading the charge. Tech–its commitment to any kind of DEI, including towards Black employees or Black communities [has] continued to increase–in spite of the external environment. And Pharma is in the middle.”Creary spoke with Earl Hopkins, arts and culture reporter for the The Philadelphia Inquirer, during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Philadelphia conference. They discussed the false narrative around DEI and its future in the workplace.Recently, Creary spoke at a conference of bankers, a group that Hopkins identified as being stereotypically not diverse. Creary was worried about what kind of crowd she was going to have and what the reception was going to be like. “What does banking look like? It’s predominantly white and predominantly male,” Creary said. But what she found was encouraging and inspiring.“I was inspired by those institutions that were continuing to lean into the evidence, either internally from their own organization or externally from academia. That suggests that it does make good business sense. There were a lot of people in the room who were saying it’s hard that the topic has become so politicized when that’s not why they had invested all these resources into [DEI].”Earl Hopkins of the Philadelphia Inquirer interviewed Dr. Stephanie J. Creary, of the Wharton School Hopkins pointed to the politicization of DEI and how recently it’s faced a lot of legal and political backlash. “Which has prompted many companies to retreat on their initial commitments, or at least...keep their head down amid the storm,” Hopkins said. For example, Ford Motor backed out of its DEI initiatives this past summer, no longer participating “in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.”The headlines can be misleading and frustrating. “I lead with evidence, and every day I get some person in HR or DEI calling me saying, ‘Can you come speak at our organization and help us?’” There's a contradiction between the headlines and what she sees in her inbox.Right now, she and her team are “combing DEI reports from 2019-2023 (2024 data won’t be available until next year)” in Fortune 100 companies in three industries: financial services, pharma, and tech, which all show DEI efforts as stable or increasing.“Now that’s not to say that a few companies are reducing their commitments, changing practices, but it’s not a trend. It’s not an empirical trend in the way that is being suggested.” Still, the reported decline in DEI in the media, she adds, isn’t accurate to reality and may be more related to how news is covered and how we consume it.“I think what we’re suffering from is people who are covering these stories, the people consuming them, are very new. They’re novices. And I can say this as an educator, when people are new and they’re learning something the first time, they tend to make concrete generalizations about things that are complex.”She points to our innate tendency to “reduce the complexity of the world around us,” she said. “There’s an over simplistic reporting and consumption and interpretation of something that is much more multifaceted and dynamic and nuanced.” Basically, we’re not hearing enough from experts in the field. “And certainly political leaders are not experts on this conversation.”Looking to the future, does Creary think DEI is going in the right direction? She says she’s hopeful but skeptical.“So the challenge with the field of DEI practices [is] that there's not always evidence being used to justify the problem that needs to be addressed. And, there’s not always evidence showing that we should continue down this path with these practices, because they’re working.”There’s hope, she added, in organizations that are “leaning” on the data to identify the problem that needs addressing but also looking to see if the interventions they put in place are working.However, having access to the right data is still a problem, and Hopkins pointed out a wide discrepancy between quantitative data and qualitative data. “We’re beginning to understand what's happening with people who are in the minority. Oftentimes that doesn’t show up in the quantitative data because they’re underrepresented,” Hopkins said.Creary confirmed this in a recent analysis conducted with a media company. In her team’s analysis, they looked at the performance reviews between Black and white employees, where the performance reviews were “way more telling than” the quantitative data. “The quantitative data would say that Black employees don't perform as well as the qualitative data. But when you look at the qualitative data, it's very clear that the managers are not all using the same metrics to assess performance. And sometimes the Black employees are getting measured on things like, do they turn their cameras on during meetings and not on things that are actually agreed upon performance indicators.”“The qualitative data can often tell a much richer story about what's happening and why something is happening than the quantitative data can,” Creary said.Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.
To Be a Successful Benefits Leader, Think Like a Marketing Pro
BY Matthew Koehler October 23, 2024Employees often have a clear understanding of benefits like vacation and paid time off, but other valuable offerings such as health and housing benefits may not always be as visible. By shedding light on these, companies can help employees take full advantage of the support available to them.“As benefits people, we have a product to sell, which I don’t think benefits folks always think about. You have a very impactful opportunity to sell what you have to people who need it,” said VP of global benefits at News Corp, Kim Duck. Duck spoke to the founder of Apparata Media, Kelly Bourdet, about the value of approaching employee benefits from a marketer's perspective during a fireside chat last month at From Day One’s NYC Benefits conference.Duck says she has no “secret sauce” but knows what works. One of the things that works is transparency in their benefit website. “It sits out in the general public. So if you are a prospective employee, and you're thinking about coming to News Corp, you're going to want to know what we offer,” Duck said.In addition to an open website, they use other delivery methods to communicate benefits to workers in the form of newsletters and social media. “We do newsletters on a monthly basis and that hits people’s top line. We’re at about a 60% open rate.”With the newsletter, Duck says they break it up into several sections that highlight a company benefit in different ways over the course of a campaign. “Our approach lately has been cadence. Maybe in month one, you're in our big news highlight. Month two, you are in our ‘Did You Know’ section. And then month three, you are our app of the month. Because we know that it takes a lot of time to promote [these offerings].” They might supplement this process with a few Instagram posts that highlight the benefits a company is promoting.Kim Duck, VP of Global Benefits at News Corp, was interviewed during the fireside chatNavigating benefits can seem overwhelming, but it's an opportunity to find options that fit your needs. “There's five generations in our workplace right now, which forces employers to really offer a diverse slate. And it feels overwhelming. You come to the website, there’s articles upon articles,” Duck said. To help navigate, she’s made liberal use of tags to narrow down people’s searches.“Maybe you don’t care about prescriptions. What you care about is childcare. So you can come to our website, type in baby, and then boom! Every article that pops for [babies]. So the tags become really important with helping people.”To make the path even more navigable, they put their benefits into pillars: financial, emotional, physical, caregiving, and lifestyle. “We have to take a step back, and think about that general employee who's going to be coming in. What is their experience going to be like? How do [we] make it simple and easy for [them] to navigate?”Vendor management is a huge piece of what benefits pros do, says Duck, “especially when you have a diverse slate of programs.” They used to meet every vendor quarterly, which required a lot of time and conversations. “We took a step back and said, ‘Okay, your deals and discount provider is not at the same level as your healthcare insurance or your TPA (Third-Party Administrator).’” They now tailor their approach to the level of services each vendor provides. You need to have conversations about their goals, your goals, and how you plan to work together.“And a lot of that is campaigns about communications, right? What are we going to do? Is it going to be postcards? Is it digital displays? Is it newsletter content? Do I need something for Instagram? How do we do this together? Because you’re not just going to sell it to me and run,” she said about the importance of collaboration.Looking to the future, Duck says that being consistent with messaging is important to keep folks informed. “And no surprise, AI. AI could revolutionize our communications campaign.” Having AI built into your website, Duck says, will further streamline the process and give exactly what you’re looking for with less wasted time. “You come in and ask it a question, and it says to you, ‘Here’s an article about a baby.’ [Or you’re] interested in parental leave? Let me dish that up to you.”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.
Building Cultures of Connection
BY Matthew Koehler October 21, 2024Company culture plays a major role in key outcomes of any organization. It is part of a central nervous system that plays an important role in the health of a company. A healthy company culture fosters coordination, teamwork, engagement, and resilience.Theodore M. and Catherine C. Alfred Professor in Management, and Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University, John Paul (J.P.) Stephens studies company culture. More specifically, he studies work relationships and coordination in groups. During a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s September virtual conference, Stephens shared several key areas of his research to equip organizations with the tools to build cultures of high quality connection.The Value of High Quality ConnectionsStephens cites Jane Dutton and Emily Heaphy, two researchers who developed the concept of high quality connections “during the early days of the field of positive organizational scholarship.” In a paper from the early 2000s, Dutton and Heaphy describe high quality connections in the workplace as ones that “compose the fabric of daily life.” More specifically, “a connection is the dynamic, living tissue that exists between two people when there is some contact between them involving mutual awareness and social interaction.” They add that this connection means “the individuals have affected each other in some way.”“This concept is rooted in the idea that human development and growth occurs within connections with each other. Rather than in terms of developing independence or coming apart,” added Stephens. And while high quality connections are built over time, Stephens says they could manifest simply talking to a stranger where there’s “mutual experience in the moment of being seen, of feeling cared for, and physically and emotionally enlivened.”High quality connections were originally conceptualized as having three sets of markers: the physical experience (also includes what happens in our brains and vascular systems), the subjective experience, and structural features of a connection, says Stephens. “I often think of these structural features kind of like the characteristics of a blood vessel. So, is that blood vessel healthy? Are resources flowing back and forth? Is it flexible?”In his research, Stephens focuses on the structural features that deal with connection health, or emotional carrying capacity. To frame this feature, Stephens asks three questions: How much overall emotion can we express with each other? Can we express both positive and negative emotions? And, how much do we express those emotions constructively?“It can't just be that I feel free to express a broad range of emotions, but my connection partner also has to feel like that. They get to express freely and constructively what’s going on in their heads and in their hearts,” Stephens said.High quality connections go beyond simply feeling good in the company of your coworkers, though. In a study Stephens conducted on emotional carrying capacity, or the ability to express emotion in a constructive way, he found positive performance metrics followed in the wake of high quality connections. “From staff to top management, being enmeshed in a set of high quality connections, where you could share positive and negative emotions in a constructive way, seemed to predict resilience – a sense of being able to bounce back from adversity.”In another study with product development teams, he found teams that were able to constructively express negative emotions could “better access crucial knowledge and then integrate that knowledge in ways that enhance[d] both the project outcomes, in terms of performance, and budget adherence.”Promoting Relational Significance“I do think that leader role modeling of constructive emotional expression is really important. [But] Leaders matter, both for good and for bad,” Stephens said.Stephens praised Pixar for its community-driven approach, where trust, respect, and strong relationships are key. He said Pixar's leadership cultivates an environment where employees feel valued and part of a talented, collaborative team. “The sense is that it's a community, right? They think that lasting relationships matter. They share some basic beliefs. They want to get talented people to work together and engender trust and respect,” he said.Moving on from big tech, Stephens and his team pointed their lens to construction sites. “Folks from different roles have to coordinate their collective performance. So they need to continuously work on developing a mutual sense of understanding, and that’s really hard to come by. The [construction] industry as a whole is typified by not having a shared sense of understanding, or poor communication.”When studying high performing sites, Stephens looked at how different team members created a connected environment. “One practice that I found is what I'm calling [a] cultural tool transfer. A cultural tool could be a set of values or frames, and they're embedded in one culture, and they can be transferred to another culture.”Stephens spoke about cultural tools during his presentation (photo courtesy of Stephens) One of the high-performing sites, The Cleveland Clinic, applied its patient-centered team approach to its construction projects by encouraging hired contractors to adopt the same mindset as the healthcare workers. They facilitated this through large meetings, where project progress was linked directly to the goal of improving patient care.So, how do you know you're building cultural connections? “Look at the current practices you have in mind and use what you already have, rather than reinvent the wheel,” he said. “Are you talking to the people that are involved in that practice and asking them what they value from the practice? What is it that gets in the way from them participating? What can we do to redesign it so that it's more engaging and compelling?” he asked.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Case Western Reserve University, 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.
Enhancing Employee Support With Technology and Community Building
BY Matthew Koehler September 25, 2024Talkspace, a company dedicated to offering accessible mental health services, recognizes the importance of mental health and well-being for all employees, from therapists to corporate staff. To support this, they've harnessed technology to foster a community-driven culture, providing the tools employees need to thrive.Andrea Cooper, Talkspace’s chief people officer says that from the time an employee first joins the company, they try their best to meet them where they are and connect them with the technology and services to help them succeed. Cooper spoke in a thought leadership spotlight titled “Enhancing Employee Support and Engagement Through Technology and Community Building,” at From Day One’s August virtual conference.Given the broad range of employees at Talkspace, about 50% are therapists and the other half are on the corporate side, she says it's important not to make assumptions. “Because we have a broad range of employees with a lot of different backgrounds, we shouldn't assume that people are going to be immediately comfortable with the technology that we’re asking them to use. And we shouldn’t assume that they know all the functionality available to them.”The company uses some of the common business tools like Google Suite and Slack, for example, but they try to maximize those platform’s effectiveness by really understanding how to use the technology better.Ahead of 2024, Cooper says her team took some time reflecting on strategic objectives and what OKRs (objectives and key results) they wanted to commit to for the new year. “We spent time reflecting on our people leader experience, and candidly, what we found is that it was inconsistent,” Cooper said.Andrea Cooper of Talkspace led the thought leadership spotlight (company photo)“It wasn’t that it was not there, but it just could be better.” Cooper says they had to acknowledge that people leaders are critical to the experience that employees have. “[They] really often set an important tone for the company.”Being fully remote, Cooper says their people leaders were not always pausing to take care of themselves. They had to self-reflect on what, as a company, they were doing, what they weren’t doing, and what they could do better.Despite being a “Slack company,” they didn’t previously have a channel for people leaders. So, they created a channel just for their people leaders, and used it to communicate with them ahead of company news. “Historically, we would just send [news] out to all employees and leaders at the same time, and [we] didn’t really position them to support their teams effectively. So we use this channel as a way to give advanced communication to people leaders to make their job better and easier.”Cooper says that in addition to giving advance notice of company news, they’ve opened their Slack channel as a safe space to simply ask questions, instead of everything being routed to one team leader. This has opened “the door to a broader support system for people leaders,” which has led to “more interactions and [a] sense of support and community.”Talkspace also offers a drop in session once a month. It’s an informal Q&A format without an obligation to show up. “If you’re someone that enjoys the live discussion, join us. If you're someone who prefers to read and reflect on your own, here are the slides that we talked about,” Cooper said.Finally, to bring it all together and connect the dots, Cooper says they started using tools like JIRA and Confluence to automate various aspects of the employee and people leader experience with their People Resource Center. Building Connection Through Community“I’m sure we all have a clear memory in our mind, if you went to the office four or five days a week, and then that day in March of 2020 [when] many of us just suddenly started working remotely. If you were in HR, you probably also remember how hard it was to build culture and to maintain the sense of community in the absence of going in-person five days a week.”To build community among their nearly 500 mostly remote employees, Cooper says Talkspace does an “all hands” meeting once a month. In July and August of this year, they did a Co-worker Feud, live classes (like cultivating healthy adult friendships), and tips on coping with loneliness, for example.“We’re trying to meet people in all different places. Some people like to go to a live webinar. Some people like to do self-reflection with a worksheet. Some people like to join a game and just have fun and forget about work for 30 minutes,” she said.Cooper points to three things she’s learned in how they’ve used technology to help with creating a sense of community and culture: Little things can have a big impact on employee experience.People leaders need support and a safe space to learn and grow.Investing in people and making time for connections isn’t just a feel good thing, it's essential to collectively succeed and deliver on business results.“I hope that we continue to learn and grow and experiment in a way that helps our employees feel that sense of community and as they continue to be fully remote.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Talkspace, 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.
Regenerating Your Leaders and Teams With Sustainable Energy
BY Matthew Koehler September 25, 2024While compensation and benefits are important, they’re not the only factors that influence job satisfaction. Seventy percent of preventable leavers say that if their general work culture had been better, they would have stuck around. In other words, if the energy was better, they’d stay. And engaged employees could save U.S. companies trillions of dollars.Andrew Deutscher, the founder of Regenerate, knows about energy–especially how a work environment that drains you of energy can lead to disengaged employees. After a career in sales, marketing, and media leading to burnout, he learned the value of understanding energy and managing it to create sustainable performance for himself. He started Regenerate to spread this message to other companies, their leaders, and employees to help “develop energy-inspired sustainable practices to transform their workplaces.”Deutscher told me during an interview for From Day One that his goal at Regenerate is to “teach people how to better manage their energy inside of a lot of demands and accelerated burnout in this era of work.” Poor Leadership, Not Bad WorkersDeutscher points to high turnover among leaders because many companies don’t provide proper support, and the high turnover often occurs because leaders are overstretched and their capacity is drained.“Part of the reason that engagement is the core issue for so many people around burnout and turnover, is because leaders are so busy and under the weight of a lot of responsibility. If you’re running a full time job [while] also having to lead, which is a full time job, there’s really going to be a strain,” he said.There’s an opportunity for growth and improvement when teams step up and speak out. Oftentimes, bad leaders stick around because the people around them don’t have the courage to speak up or don’t understand the damage being done to teams and company culture, Deutscher says. When awareness is raised, these challenges can be addressed before “it infests, and those leaders get to stay and [create this] really bad environment.”Employees may not approach their managers to express their feelings of disengagement, which provides leaders with a valuable opportunity to proactively foster open communication and create a supportive environment. It's part of a leader’s role to recognize and address these needs.Deutscher shared a graphic from a 2022 study done by McKinsey showing the primary drivers of disengagement, where uncaring and uninspiring leaders were among the top. The focus on leadership shows up just behind a lack of career development and inadequate compensation. “There are six or seven different things here, but they’re all about energy,” he said. “Energy is the X factor for creating sustainable high performance. Energy is the internal strength and vitality required for sustained physical, emotional and mental activity,” Deutscher wrote for Forbes.Leaders also play an important role in articulating purpose to their workers. Leaders who create a culture around purposeful work cultivate employees who are more engaged because they understand what they’re working for and have a common goal to achieve. “When leaders are moving too fast, they fail to articulate how the work matters and how it's meaningful–both to them individually and to the company.”When leaders effectively manage their teams and employees have a clear understanding of the goals, everyone’s efforts align, creating continuity. This synergy fosters a stronger company culture, where everyone’s collective energy is directed toward shared objectives.Commitment to CollaborationWhen Deutscher gets hired to coach and help leaders restructure their energy for a better work culture, the outcome is a more engaged and cohesive team that values commonality and goal orientation over individual agendas and scarcity. Some of his assignments focus on helping the leader bolster collaboration and teamwork.Leaders who prioritize building strong connections with their teams are better positioned to drive meaningful change, says Deutscher. When companies embrace this approach, they create the conditions for long-term success through healthy leadership.From Day One spoke with Deutscher about energizing the workforce (company photo)Sometimes these businesses have a solid strategy or product, but they can't overcome the human energy aspect needed for success. Deutscher helps leaders create alignment within their teams, so not only do they have a great product, but also a great culture. “[A]t the top end, if we’re customizing content, if you want commitment from people, you need to be aligned. If you want alignment, you have to be really clear on where you’re going.”Deutscher has golden rules for achieving this. “Look people in the eye. Be respectful. Ask questions. Give them a chance to be heard. Be receptive to what they’re saying. Have a good value exchange of candor and receptivity. Speak your mind, but do it respectfully.”Cracking the Code to Energy EngagementFiguring out the energy coefficient on engagement and retention is about getting the fundamentals right and doing the deeper work. “Getting back to the basics is hard for people, teams, and leaders [because] it’s boring.” It takes a long-term commitment to working more sustainably and to building a workplace that prioritizes well-being alongside results.Preparation is key for leaders and companies when thinking about the longer horizon for sustainability. “All we want to do is play the game. We don’t want to prepare to win the game in the workplace. That’s essentially what regenerate means. You have to renew, recover, strategize, plan, spend more time thinking and planning than doing. [That’s how] you prepare to win.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner Regenerate, for supporting this sponsor spotlight. To learn more, tune into Andrew’s workshop at our October virtual conference.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.
The Four Pillars: A Psychology-Based Approach to Developing Leaders
BY Matthew Koehler July 29, 2024The pandemic didn't just disrupt the workplace, it effectively disengaged millions of workers from their core mission, work culture, and ultimately their jobs. With only about a third (33%) of the workforce engaged at work, according to Gallup, disengaged workers cost up to $1.9 trillion in lost productivity.“The problem with disconnection: it’s not only a business problem, [it’s] really correlated with poor retention, poor performance for profitability, and also health outcomes,” said Dr. Bobbi Wegner, the founder and CEO of Groops, a platform that helps build stronger relationships through programs grounded in group psychology.Wegner spoke to From Day One founder and chief content officer, Steve Koepp at From Day One’s virtual conference. During this thought leadership spotlight, they covered the four pillars of building leadership, and how those leaders can build connections amongst their teams.Disconnection in the workforce isn’t one thing or another, says Wegner, it's amorphous. It includes virtual and hybrid cohorts, as well as full-time back-in-the-office workers. “There’s different generations entering the workforce with a different value set and different needs. We as leaders really have to figure out how to create an inclusive space for everybody.”The disconnection is driven by a lack of cohesion, or strong working relationships in work groups and teams, says Wegner. “We’ve all been on teams that just weren’t clicking. There's a lack of cohesion, a lack of trust.”However, this disconnection isn’t like the Great Resignation, and workers aren’t leaving their jobs. Less workers in the second half of 2024 are looking to change jobs – just 35% say they'll make a change. “A lot of people are staying put now, but not necessarily because they’re loving it,” said Koepp.Dr. Bobbi Wegner led the thought leadership spotlight (company photo)Wegner points to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and our need for stability. Even though people are staying put, they still want something dynamic in their work culture. “We have to have some stability in life. We need to make enough money to support ourselves. But humans are purpose maximizers, right? People need to feel a purpose in their workplace.” Growth is a part of that, but so is being connected to the company mission and the people you work with, says Wegner.“We don’t think of ourselves this way, but we’re hardwired for connection. We’re social by nature. We’re always constantly assessing our social cues in our social environments. Like, am I safe? Do I belong? And so that’s why groups really matter,” Wegner said.That comfort of belonging and safety are also important factors in taking risks. Wegner says people are less willing to take risks when the sense of trust and safety is low or non-existent. “Innovation lives in risk-taking. The biggest, wildest ideas don't get put on the table when there's not a high level of safety, belonging, and trust.”To build that level of trust and security, organizations need to create a culture that feels good for everybody. To create a good work culture, Wegner identifies four pillars to develop good leaders.The first step, or pillar, is evaluating yourself as a leader and understanding what your values are. “The best leaders are leading from their own values and communicating well,” Wegner said. Leaders then line those values up with the business model.It’s important to encourage leaders to self-reflect and assess their own values, strengths, and common behaviors. This involves creating a safe environment to share their strengths and weaknesses, and providing feedback from organizational psychologists and peers. By doing so, leaders can align their personal values with business needs, leading from a place of authenticity.This leads to the next pillar, the frame, where the groundwork is laid. “There are so many parallels between parenting and leadership. You want to have clear views. You want to have clear values. You want to have a clear structure around expectations and communication.”Here, leaders establish a clear and structured team culture rooted in defined goals and values. They set clear expectations and communication guidelines, determine the right team size, and map the structure of the team. Wegner says leaders should create a culture blueprint that outlines the mission, vision, and values of the team to foster alignment with both business and cultural objectives.The third pillar, workgroup dynamics, focuses on how leaders see their teams. “We help leaders really start to have words for what people are feeling, what they’re feeling, and then help them understand what to do or say.”Leaders should understand the psychological roles and dynamics within their teams. This includes recognizing common roles like the leader, disrupter, and peacemaker, and understanding how these roles impact team cohesion. Part of this pillar of training is also learning to address team members constructively.The final pillar is giving your leaders the tools for their role. “Your job is to really listen first. And then solve [this together] as a team. This isn’t just your problem to solve.”By equipping leaders with practical psychological tools and skills, like motivational interviewing and effective questioning techniques like asking open-ended questions, they can better support their teams and address challenges constructively. With these pillars in place, Wegner says they see increase in connection and cohesion, which leads to employees feeling more valued.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Groops, 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.
How Focusing on the Candidate Experience Helps You Hire Faster and Better
BY Matthew Koehler July 16, 2024Today’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.
Reducing Healthcare Costs by Reversing Chronic Care Conditions
BY Matthew Koehler July 01, 2024Chronic health conditions don’t just impact the individual and their personal sphere, they have loud, wide-ranging implications for the workplace and economy at large. Obesity, and the litany of secondary conditions linked to it, such as heart disease and diabetes, cost the U.S. economy alone over $4 billion annually.The question is, how can employers be more proactive in fighting obesity among workers to help reduce healthcare costs and support employee well-being?“According to the CDC, 70% of the U.S. population is overweight, and 40% are technically obese. These are pretty staggering numbers,” said Dr. Connie Huang, the chief medical officer at Accolade. She also pointed out that obesity leads to nearly 200 other chronic diseases.Dr. Huang spoke with her colleague, Dr. Marika Holte, the associate medical director at Accolade, during a From Day One webinar. Their conversation covered the relationship between obesity and chronic conditions as well as effective measures to combat them.Dr. Marika Holte knows about weight management and cardiometabolic health – she guides the program at Accolade. She says patients don't always have a good partnership with their doctors in terms of losing weight and managing chronic diseases. “People have struggled with diet and exercise recommendations. And we really tried to recreate a space, both as physicians and as a program overall, that would make people feel really empowered to understand the factors that contributed to weight gain and chronic diseases.”She says it’s key that people succeed in taking care of their own health outcomes. “It’s often a progressive disease, and it causes inflammation and organ damage throughout the body. The link between obesity and life-altering chronic diseases can’t be overstated,” Holte said.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 42.4% of all adults in the United States are obese, and obesity affects 650 million people worldwide.“11% of the U.S. population, or 38 million adults, have type two diabetes. 38% of the U.S. population, or 97 million adults, have prediabetes,” Holte said.Elevated blood sugars of any kind are toxic in terms of blood vessel health, and leads to higher risk factors for heart attacks and strokes, Holte says. “Heart disease costs the U.S. about $240 billion annually. And this included the cost of healthcare services, medicines, and loss of productivity in the workforce due to death. Obesity also increases the risk of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and liver cancers,” Holte said. “These facts really underscore the need to treat obesity and weight-related medical diseases in order to prevent chronic diseases as secondary outcomes.”Treating Obesity as a Chronic ConditionHolte put obesity into stages, where zero represents a normal, healthy weight and stage four being “irreversible complications of obesity.” Waiting until the end stage exacts a high financial cost, but there is a bright light at the end of the tunnel.Dr. Marika Holte of Accolade led the webinar (company photo)“The biggest breakthrough that we’re really seeing in the past few years is that we both know how to diagnose and treat weight-related conditions before they lead to secondary medical conditions.” Diet and exercise programs that many companies promote don’t always work, though. About 90% of patients regain the weight, and then withdraw from the programs.“We now understand that obesity is [a] multifactorial, chronic medical disease caused by a combination of easily accessible high calorie foods, lack of exercise, loss of muscle, poor sleep, chronic stress, unhealthy fat, and abnormal body signaling and lack of ability to feel full. Anyone who’s supposed to lose weight with diet and exercise is going to struggle if they're always feeling hungry,” Holte said.Newer treatments that affect Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), a hormone that helps regulate blood sugar and appetite, like Ozempic, Saxenda, and Wegovy, are major breakthroughs Holte says. “The first thing that most people say when they start these medications is 'I'm not always thinking about food.’ So these medications have been profoundly effective [at] helping people lose weight.”Yet, knowing how to implement cost-effective programs in the workplace remains a major hurdle for employers. According to Holte, HR benefit managers can play a valuable role."You play a crucial role in identifying your employees health needs, you can also drive the shift and the perception of viewing obesity as a chronic disease, rather than a lifestyle choice, and prevent secondary complications of weight related diseases."The Way Forward to Combat ObesityDespite the overwhelming cost of obesity in the workplace, and the fact that these treatments are popular, Dr. Huang says many employers are still on the fence.“How should [employers] consider approaches to the initial medical evaluation [and] digital solutions to manage obesity and chronic disease among their employees? And what would this ultimately mean for employers and the workforce?” Huang asked.“The best way to really improve access to treatment for weight loss and these chronic conditions is to have a primary care-based program with physicians who understand how to treat obesity as a chronic disease, and can provide medical supervision and comprehensive support,” Holte said.Holte breaks up effective treatment into four categories. A visit to a primary care physician is the first category. The others are designing and outlining a comprehensive program (this could include long-term care), making sure the programs are proactive and data-driven, and having a personalized plan.Digital solutions can also play a big role in people’s personal weight loss journey, says Holte. “I’m in a telemedicine world, and I really [have] been blessed to be able to use digital solutions to help our patients with weight management and chronic disease management.”Holte points to the stigma of being overweight that keeps people from showing up in-person. Being able to have an appointment from the comfort of home brings more people to the doctor. And where there’s a lack of availability for appointments and time, telehealth can fill a gap. “Patients can often schedule an appointment with me within a week or a few days, or sometimes even the next day, if they want to.”“I think what matters most for our patients is really what makes them feel healthy. That’s the big question that we often try to get to. Listening to their stories and understanding what these goals are can really help us figure out how to achieve those goals and engage them in the process. And it helps them feel like they’re in control of this journey, and that they can really learn how to learn how to maximize their own health.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Accolade, for sponsoring this webinar. 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.
How Employers Are Boosting Talent and Career Development
BY Matthew Koehler June 26, 2024Millennials and Gen Zers are often accused of being feckless employees, ready to jump ship at another opportunity. But this isn’t entirely true. Gen Z is loyal when there’s connection, collaboration, diversity, and growth in their jobs. To earn that loyalty, companies have to offer collaborative spaces where younger workers can grow their career.Christa Emerson, VP of talent for UnitedHealthcare Group, says that since July of 2022, turnover is trending down and retention higher. “[We often hear that] the reason an employee joins UnitedHealth Group is because they see this opportunity for a huge growth, career, and ability to grow over time. We also hear when people leave that one of the reasons that they leave is because they’re able to find more growth or broader responsibilities at another company.”During an executive panel discussion at From Day One’s Minneapolis event, Evan Ramstad of the Minneapolis Star Tribune spoke to Emerson and several other experts in the field of HR and talent acquisition (TA) on what younger workers want out of a career, and what employers can do to keep them.Internal Mobility Matters BigAt UnitedHealthcare, Emerson says they've leaned into internal hiring and mobility. “We specifically put a practice in place that required almost all positions to be exclusively internally posted first, and you have to exhaust all of that before we can go external.”According to Emerson, internal hiring is now at 55%, up from 45% the previous year.“We’ve really been clear and intentional about our key strategic priorities and how everyone sees themselves in that vision. If you want to be a contributor, if you want to be a leader, you really can see yourself through succession planning, through our executive coaching, we really invest in those key players,” said Monica Gockowski, the SVP of leadership development at U.S. Bank. They’ve also seen a decline in turnover.“I think what it always comes back to is, how do we focus on identifying the future skills? And then how do we focus on putting together the appropriate collections, pathways and programs that really look at identifying upskilling opportunities that tie back to how we’re going to deliver ROI at our organization, while also increasing retention or employee mobility," said Korie Holden, enterprise account director at Coursera.Holden says that top of mind for everyone in the industry is not how AI will automate certain roles, but, instead, how companies will need to upskill and reskill their HR organization to “move the needle forward, both from a business perspective, but also as that human-centric perspective.”SVP of Sales and Customer Success at Randstad RiseSmart, Chris Harrington says that turnover for a lot of adaptive companies has gone down since the Great Resignation of the Covid years. “Organizations are beginning to invest more and more in solutions and benefits, perquisites, whatever you want to call it, to retain people,” Harrington said.“It’s not just about your high potentials, or your executive leaders, it’s really about how you can do it for everybody within the organization. The second thing is about internal mobility. And candidly, we're still trying to figure out how to answer this one.”In a recent survey they did, Harrington says that 45% of TA professionals said that it was easier to fill roles from outside the organization. Another 55% of employees said it's easier for them to find their next job outside the organization. “So there is some sort of a trick that we need to unlock within this space,” Harrington said.There’s a lot going on in practice in bringing in new talent and retaining it, but the conversation on internal mobility is just beginning. And, for younger workers, not getting those new on-the-job skills and growing their careers “is a deal-breaker when it comes to joining an employer.”Evan Ramstad, Business Columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, moderated the executive panel discussion “I think there is a stigma that if we just focus on internal mobility, there’s no innovation. There’s not a diversity of thought or imagination,” said Gockowski. She says that to make internal mobility work, companies have to be intentional about skill development, and not just be focused on ‘the shiny new talent’ they bring in.“Think about answering that question around mobility and what’s the benefit. The benefit is the person, right? The person feels like they’re cared about, and that what matters to them in terms of how they care for their families, or their lifestyle, is important to the company. And that’s what gives you that kind of stickiness with a company where people feel like this is where I want to stay. This is where I want to grow my career,” said Chief Talent Officer for Schwan’s Company, Kari Ziemer.It’s not enough to just talk about new skills, says Holden. You have to have a way of identifying them, testing them, and measuring them. “We’ve moved away from this buffet style of learning. We’re providing learning as a benefit [and] creating it all in house. It’s very intentional learning that delivers ROI. You are consistently reporting to your executive team on how this learning is really making an impact in our organization.”Emerson pointed out that even if your company doesn't have the tech, or can’t afford to invest it, there’s still an important role to play in collecting and fostering talent. “What is your culture of mobility? What are managers looking at as their accountability for being talent stewards, instead of talent hoarders? And what are the cultural elements that you can work on, either ahead of a technology, or despite not having funding for technology.”Ziemer says that companies need to dial in to what they are trying to accomplish. “We’re trying to solve a problem, right?” After seeing a spike in supervisor turnover, Ziemer says they created a supervisory development program, and tested it to great effect. “If they’re not good leaders, and supervisors, they're not leading people in a way that’s helping us produce the product.”Opportunity for New Skills“Historically, coaching was kind of reserved for the top segment of leaders within the organization. So it wasn't the most inclusive solution out there,” said Harrington. But now, there’s a focus on scalable coaching, says Harrington.Harrington says this type of coaching is as needed, whenever the employee needs it. Some of this coaching is done through external, more generalized solutions but many other companies are creating their own internal bench of coaches for a pool of those in leadership roles and those who want to learn to mentor.“The more you can create personalized learning and development spaces, for really the most personalized thing you can have, which is a one on one interaction with a human – we think that that’s really powerful.”Gockowski says that at the end of the day, people are concerned with their career and what they can get from it. “It doesn’t matter about all those different things, but what am I doing to use these tools for the end game for me.”“What the research is actually telling us is that though it seems like we need to shift our focus to upskilling in these really technical areas, no matter what part of the business you fall in, what we really need is a focus on the human skills. Because human skills drive everything else,” Holden said.Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.
Establishing a Well-Being Culture That Actually Works
BY Matthew Koehler June 11, 2024Wellness has always existed as part of employee health concerns, but the pandemic hyper-focused our attention on the importance of well-being and the needs of workers. Yet, in an era of hybrid work, tighter profit margins, and AI, the range of well-being needs are challenging to meet. Companies are having to learn to do more with less but not lose sight of their employees well-being.“Two things have to be true for a benefit to be used. Number one, the benefit itself has to be designed in a revenue model perspective, meaning the cost has to be incentivized for your employees to use them as much as they possibly can. If the company has a business model where they make more money when less people use it, it will not get used. The second thing I'll say is that we have to focus on the science of behavior change," said Elena Gambon, chief strategy and growth officer at First Stop Health.A panel of business leaders came together to discuss the ins and outs of well-being, and how to create a culture of wellness at From Day One’s Dallas conference. The discussion was moderated by Will Maddox, senior writer for D CEO magazine and editor of D CEO Healthcare.“We’ve given so much permission to say I'm overwhelmed or I’m worried about my well-being or my workload, yet, have we equipped the people that have to handle that?” said Dennie Laney, VP of HR at Associa.Gambon says that at First Stop Health, they use behavioral scientist B.J. Fogg's model for human behavior: B=MAP (Behavior ‘B’ happens when Motivation ‘M’, Ability ‘A’, and a Prompt ‘P’ come together at the same moment).The first thing people need, Gambon says, is motivation. “The pain or the pleasure to act has to be high enough for someone to actually make a change. Second is the ability needs to be there. And for us, that means the service needs to cost $0. For the patient, the time that it takes to get to talk to one of our doctors needs to be minutes. Not hours. Not days. The third prong of that stool is promoting. If you’re not constantly reminding people that you exist in creative ways that resonate with them, no one will remember that it’s there.”Greg Miller, SVP, talent management and human resources, at AccentCare says this idea of prompting and promoting is a good one, but when push comes to shove, wellness gets sacrificed. "I think one real challenge for us and others is how do you really tie wellness and flexibility to tangible business results in ways in which we can talk about them as retention drivers, as attraction drivers."Hope Gladney, global lead of client relationships at AceUp, says you have to meet the individual where they are. “A lot of these programs really need to be done within the flow of work. So I think we really need to understand what it is that each individual needs, and try to tailor benefits that are actually going to meet them in the area where they're going to achieve the most benefit for them personally.”But, Gladney points out, the benefit has to also relate to the overall success of the organization.Covid was especially hard on the healthcare industry because they were the frontline, and there was a lot of panic and silent hardships in the beginning. “A lot of people left the industry because of that,” Miller said. “What we’ve tried to do within healthcare is to create the space to say I'm not okay, I’m scared and I need some help. We’ve tried to better leverage the resources we already had in place like employee assistance programs.”Healthcare is hard and there are still more questions than answers when it comes to supporting a 24/7 industry and social need, says Miller. The 24/7 reality of healthcare doesn't just apply to paid professionals, though. Being a caregiver is something that extends to unpaid work, the family, and your extended support network.Gambon says there’s a full spectrum of caregiving that’s invisibly happening behind the scenes with every healthcare worker.The executive panelists discussed the topic "Establishing a Well-Being Culture That Actually Works" in conversation mdoerated by Will Maddox of D CEO Magazine“All of this unpaid labor that predominantly female identifying individuals [do], not always in the home, whether it's to care for a neighbor or a family member or an aging parent or their own kiddos, who are well or special needs – there's just a full spectrum of caregiving that is happening invisibly behind the scenes. With almost every single employee. How do you make sure that anything you provide to your employees across the board is not only equitable, but available to all members of the family? However the employee defines family?” Gambon said.Understanding your work culture means also understanding your workers and who they are. Meaning there is no one size fits all approach to well-being. Gladney says you have to have self-awareness and understand your own triggers and biases. “When you take an inclusive approach to it, it’s first recognizing that everyone’s well-being journey is uniquely theirs.”Michelle Howard, the diversity and inclusion director at Vizient, says it’s about knowing what kind of organization you have. “People like to say, 'Oh, we have a culture of blank.' But you accidentally created a culture of blank. So understanding truly what your culture is. And then determining, is that what you want? And if it's not, it takes time to move that.”“Often when we think about creating inclusive benefits, we give people what we think is inclusive, and we don't ask them what they want or need. As hard as it is to invest the time and the money to listen and gather data, it is the most important step in creating something of value. I like to say that diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, the ‘D’ is both for diversity as well as data. Because it is a science, and a proven science. The more you focus on the individual, the better off they will be,” said Gambon.“Everybody knows the golden rule, right? Treat others how you want to be treated? It is the platinum rule. And you have to tap in to understand what that is," Howard said.Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.
Navigating the Maze: Ensuring Appropriate Care for Employees with Complex Health Conditions
BY Matthew Koehler May 29, 2024Heidi Guetzkow, vice president within Aon's health transformation team, knows the difficulty in finding the right solution to complex, sometimes impossible, diagnoses, and sees herself as a puzzle master. “How do we put it all together and come up with some really good insights? And even more importantly, how do we figure out and identify the right resources for members and their employees during one of the most difficult times in their life, when they’ve had a difficult diagnosis.”Guetzkow provides guidance in worksite well-being strategy, targeted risk reduction programs, and improved access to care solutions including employer sponsored clinics. At From Day One’s conference in Chicago, she spoke with Todd Kor, M.D. an anesthesiologist at Mayo Clinic to discuss some of the differences between routine and complex care.Complex Care: What and Who?“People oftentimes will ask, what are complex cases? What does that really mean? If you think along the continuum of medical conditions, routine conditions that people see the regular doctor on an infrequent basis. That’s not what we’re talking about.” Complex cases are the rare cancers and diseases where you're not getting answers from your local provider, says Kor.Guetzkow says that within the realm of the workforce, when complex care is needed for a worker, you’re not looking at thousands of patients, it may just be one person. But that one person's devastating diagnosis has the potential to affect the whole team, or company, and their family. Especially financially.“If my kid breaks an arm, I want to get to the best orthopedic place as soon as possible. The same really should be true when we think about these complex care conditions. And oftentimes, as the employer, we don’t get the chance to be able to make those decisions and we get stuck in a smaller network, or have to be in a regional place of care, and not always have access to the full scope of experts," Guetzkow said.People can incur a lot of debt trying to figure out the correct diagnosis, which Kor says is one reason to consider a place like the Mayo Clinic early on. Accuracy and correct diagnosis aren’t the only benefits, Mayo Clinic also has access to clinical trials, new innovations, and new technologies.Todd Kor, M.D, Anesthesiologist, Associate Medical Director Contracting & Payer Relations at Mayo Clinic spoke with Heidi Guetzkow, Vice President, Aon Health Transformation Team during the thought leadership spotlight "What we find is that not infrequently, patients are referred to us after that cost curve is already established, the sooner that you can engage with us the better,” Kor said. For example, of the people referred to them for spine surgery, half don’t actually need surgery. Another condition referred to Mayo frequently is multiple sclerosis (MS), but "roughly two thirds of them are found to either not have MS" or have something else. For prostate cancer, they can reduce your radiation oncology visits by more than half.“Some of these things that even may appear to be sort of mid pyramid care topics, I would encourage think early because the sooner that you intervene, the sooner that you introduce them to a Mayo Clinic, the sooner that we can bend that cost curve, get the accurate diagnosis, and then on their way back to recovery as quickly as possible.”Eliminating Lost Time and CostLost time searching for the right diagnosis, or getting the wrong treatment for the wrong diagnosis, is a major problem, says Guetzkow. “How much time are people spending spinning in the system without being on the right course of treatment, for instance, over diagnosis or over imaging, it's just waste. And ultimately, what we really want is getting people to the right place of care, and really what is required of them.”Kor says the first thing they do is provide a condensed itinerary. He referred back to his 20 years of private practice where if someone had to get a new lump checked out, and it turned out to be malignant, the timeframe from first visiting a doctor to seeing a specialist could take months.“One of the things that’s unique about Mayo Clinic is that we take care of patients from over 150 countries and all 50 states. Because of that, we don't have the luxury of telling patients to come back every two weeks.” He says that you could be seeing all the specialists you're traditionally going to see for a cancer screening all in one day. “We oftentimes are able to see you at the beginning of a week, and you're having your surgery, and resection of whatever you're there for by the end of the week.”Kor points out that one of the benefits of the condensed schedule is that patients can very quickly return home, where they usually recover best. “We’ve got this really robust concierge service that helps the families. It’s not just the patients that are coming for care. It’s really the entire family unit, as well as all of the downstream other individuals, whether it's their employers, their other family members.”Kor says that part of the success of their model is that care is based on quality, not quantity. They are also salaried. “I have zero incentive to see more patients to do things that are inappropriate. To order tests that I don't need. Even the review process. You refer to Mayo Clinic, we review that chart. Some we accept, some we don’t. We’re not out begging for patients, because we actually have enough demand and capacity that we don’t need to do that.”“What [we] really focus on is, ‘Can I help the patient with a condition that they have?’ If the answer is yes, we figure out how to take care of the patient. If the answer is no, that they're better served locally, or if there's no reason that they would need the elevated level of care, then we encourage those patients to stay where they are,” Kor said.Guetzkow spoke about her own experiences with Mayo and the care they provided to her brother-in-law and father. Even though both have passed, she couldn't stress enough “the care they received, not only for themselves, but also the information that the family received and just the experience in itself.”“I have another journey coming up. My mother-in-law is going to receive a cochlear implant on May 21. And she just had her workup appointments again, all condensed into one day, and it was super efficient. She knew exactly what she was getting, and had all her appointments and now has her surgery scheduled.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Mayo Clinic, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Matthew Koheler 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.