From Recruitment to Advancement: How to Keep Momentum Going on Diversity and Inclusion
BY Samantha Campos August 03, 202384% of CHRO’s say that their organizations are increasing investment in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) initiatives. But only 31% of employees say that their organization is committed to improving equity in the workplace, according to a Gallup poll conducted in the spring of 2022. Workplace diversity is experiencing a disconnect.“A lot of companies make very public commitments to diversity inclusion, especially in the Bay Area,” said Shawna Chen, a breaking news reporter for Axios. “But obviously, it's not as simple as enacting a program or two or doing training.”Chen moderated the panel, “From Recruitment to Advancement: How to Keep Momentum Going on Diversity and Inclusion,” at From Day One’s San Francisco conference. She was joined by corporate diversity experts, as they discussed what companies are struggling with when it comes to DEIB.“There's a focus on either diversity or inclusion over everything else, of thinking there's just one number that they need to get to,” said Meghna Majmudar, head of executive and leadership engagement at ReadySet, a database software company. “[And] thinking about internal stuff, about hiring only in terms of DEI and not thinking about what this means in terms of our experience. And a disconnect between leadership and what people are really thinking.”Making the connection between the internal and external means having a workforce that reflects the diversity in a company’s customer base. Majmudar acknowledged that leaders tend to come from more privileged backgrounds. They might not be aware that someone who has a different background doesn't have the same access to resources, and may focus on initiatives that employees do not care about.“Sometimes the approach can be more programmatic instead of strategic,” said Shai Poulard, global head of diversity, inclusion, and belonging at NerdWallet, a personal finance company. “The approach is always to roll out programs, whether it's a recruiting initiative or employee resource groups. Very rarely do you see leaders take it a step further and understand, how do I regard this as a function similar to finance?”In Poulard’s analogy, everyone at a company is a steward of finance. They own a budget. They’re efficient, ensuring spending benefits both the internal organization and consumers. Finance teams are rarely dismissed or viewed as a programmatic function. The disconnect with DEIB programs is that they’re often viewed as a ‘nice to have’ instead of something embedded into the organization.“For it to be an effective strategy, it needs to be integrated into the employee lifecycle from day one,” said Poulard, “from onboarding through someone making a decision to leave the company. They have to see people that look like them. They have to feel included.”“We are aspiring to ground our diversity-equity-inclusion work in our strategic plan and recognize that we have to begin with our employee base, our staff team,” said Chad Nico Hiu, senior vice president of strategy, equity, and impact at YMCA of San Francisco. “Sometimes in the polarized context of our society, issues show up. We have to not see [DEIB] as separate from what people are experiencing in their lives. What are the tactical ways we can create space for all of us to bring our authentic selves, especially when it's messy, conflictory, and challenging?”“It's also about understanding that [DEIB] would help in driving core business growth for the company, driving a key strategy for the company,” said Sumit Khandelwal, co-founder and CEO of Xoxoday, an engagement software platform. “When you start hiring people across different geographies, it becomes very apparent that the leaders understand the culture of different countries.” Embracing DEIB is vital in effectively communicating with a global marketplace.“What I’ve seen make a real difference is the specificity of behavior,” said Majmudar. “There were many clients at a financial services firm where they didn't want to give feedback to women because they're like, ‘but what if she cries?’ If you're thinking about her crying, you're focused on your comfort and not helping her be better at her job.”The leaders discussed how they are maintaining and enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging efforts in their organizations (photo by David Coe for From Day One)Leaders can coach each other to handle vulnerability and allow humanity to exist at work. Leaders can also use their influence to impact and affect change, at all levels of the organization.“Become more comfortable being uncomfortable,” said Hiu. “Be comfortable with being more authentic in spaces where we may not feel authentically safe and surround ourselves with different perspectives.”“DEIB is a co-op,” said Poulard. “And how to do that is you systematize as much as you can.”Sometimes there's resistance to participation. Poulard’s team started integrating DEI concepts into other forms of training, like management. “So instead of saying we're rolling out ‘inclusive management training,’” she said, “it's expected at NerdWallet that you are an inclusive manager, and that's going to be embedded in the training.”Her team also started emphasizing allyship and what it means to the organization, both internally and to external stakeholders. NerdWallet employees (aka, “Nerds”) are told that allyship is a verb, not a noun, and missteps will be made. But that’s okay.“Let's get comfortable making those mistakes—fail fast, learn faster,” said Poulard. “We found by implementing those pieces, we've seen a change in engagement.”“One thing we can do is focus on symbols and signals,” said Antoinette Hamilton, global head of inclusion and diversity at Lam Research. “How do you incorporate and signify that it's okay to celebrate culture within your organization?”“We have to think about what belonging means outside the US context,” said Hamilton. “When we're on a Zoom call, sometimes my colleagues who are in other countries are very silent. So when I think about belonging, it's understanding and recognizing that that looks different in other places. And then my job as a leader is to be able to articulate and voice up for that.”There’s a US-centric way of operating, and then there's a global way of operating. Inclusion means nothing without equity, said Poulard, who advises meeting employees, colleagues, and consumers where they are.“If we're focusing on increasing representation and making sure our internal representation matches the communities that we serve,” she said, “we have inclusive practices, we are being equitable in our approach, then ideally everyone should feel that sense of belonging. If we build with the person with the most need in mind, everyone wins.”“It cannot be something which you speak about once in a while,” said Khandelwal. “It has to become the DNA of the organization.”“Before it was so much on the interpersonal,” said Majmudar. “Now we get to do the systemic change. We are asking fundamental questions about how we structure work and our societies. And that's very exciting.”Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, California.
How to Build a Culture of Inclusion at a Time of Backlash
BY Samantha Campos July 14, 2023Cynthia Owyoung knows diversity because she has lived and breathed it her whole life. She is the daughter of immigrants in San Francisco’s Bayview District, a primarily African-American neighborhood. Her father served in the Air Force. One of her brothers is gay; another brother is developmentally disabled. When that brother lost his job during the economic downturn of the early 2000s, Owyoung was responsible for finding him a new job. The challenge inspired her to leave marketing for work in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to break down barriers for people like her brother experiencing the same thing.“DEI was kind of the natural evolution of my entire life experience,” said Owyoung, “and bringing that to bear to help people thrive in their workplaces, no matter where they come from or what background or abilities they might have.”Owyoung is now the author of All Are Welcome: How to Build a Real Workplace Culture of Inclusion That Delivers Results. She spoke in a fireside chat titled, “How to Build a Culture of Inclusion at a Time of Backlash,” with David Thigpen, director of the University of California, Berkeley undergraduate journalism program. The talk happened onstage at From Day One’s San Francisco conference in Mission Bay.As a field, DEI has advanced in the last 20 years. When Owyoung first became involved, DEI was mainly about affirmative action and compliance programs. “People were doing it because the government said you had to,” she said. Then DEI started to evolve into more of a business strategy, as people became aware that more diversity could help drive innovative problem-solving, better decision-making, and an improved ability to serve their marketplace and customers.In recent years, DEI initiatives have expanded as a greater number of leaders realized that it’s not just good for business, there’s also a wider moral imperative to correct social inequities beyond the workplace.“We all want to live in a more just world, and companies are now more and more being seen as places that can affect some of that change,” said Owyoung. “Because we have so much more distrust in government and other types of institutions that would normally be playing that role, there’s a grounded expectation of companies and organizational leaders really driving in this area.”Thigpen and Owyoung spoke in the grand finale fireside chat during From Day One's San Francisco conference (photo by David Coe for From Day One)Owyoung acknowledged that companies are still struggling with balancing those things, especially when talking about DEI can be so divisive. And everybody has differing opinions on how to do it well.“A lot of companies make this mistake of focusing only on representation numbers,” she said. “Often that translates into, ‘I have to hire more people from different backgrounds into my company and so let’s build up the talent pipeline [and] our recruiting organization to do that.’ And what ends up happening is that they haven’t done the foundational groundwork on their culture to make sure that it’s inclusive.”An inclusive company culture connects to people of all backgrounds and experiences and creates a working environment in which employees want to stay. “Staying usually involves being developed,” said Owyoung. “Seeing your career grow, seeing opportunities for yourself, seeing role models of yourself in the upper levels of the company. And oftentimes companies fall down on that part.”Companies lack inclusivity when they don’t invest in employee development and don’t pay attention to who’s getting promoted or picked for leadership opportunities. They can also fail to acknowledge whether employees feel a strong sense of belonging or if they’re feeling alienated because they’re the only one who is a person of color on a team.“All of that ends up creating this revolving door where you might be bringing people in, but they’re leaving at the same rate,” Owyoung said. “So you’re not moving your representation numbers at all. If you’re not focusing on all those other aspects of the culture, and that has to be tied to your values as a company, then you’re not gonna make progress.”Previously companies focused on DEI programs and partnerships with organizations to provide a sourcing pipeline for people of diverse backgrounds. “And that’s all great and necessary,” said Owyoung, “but not enough.” Companies must now take a systematic approach to fix the problem.“You’re looking at what are the institutionalized structures that are reinforcing our current biases and stereotypes and the status quo,” she said. “Those are the things that have to be dismantled. When you think about hiring, promotion, succession planning, talent review—any kind of talent process inside your company—attacking every step in that process becomes necessary to be more inclusive. Changing structures like that are how you drive change and progress in your organization.”Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, California.
How to Enhance Employee Well-Being? Manage the Whole Person
BY Samantha Campos July 12, 2023“We are booming in terms of productivity,” said Claire Zhang, VP of HR for Samsung. That’s the good news. However, there’s a flip side: “We worry that people burn out. That’s where we started creating more programs, especially awareness training for our managers and employees to create boundaries, [that] it’s OK to stop at a certain time.”Zhang joined other HR experts in a conversation about “Enhancing Employee Well-Being Through Whole-Person Management,” moderated by Pete Suratos, a news reporter for NBC Bay Area / KGO-TV, at From Day One’s San Francisco conference last month.People tend to cringe when they acknowledge positive outcomes of the Covid pandemic, yet a few social advances are undeniably beneficial. The pandemic greatly influenced how we measure health. It also blurred boundaries between home and workplace, allowing leaders to get to know their employees on a more personal level, with a focus on mental health and psychological safety. “One of the silver linings is a normalization [of] the psychological aspect of well-being,” said Elizabeth Pavese, Ph.D., a senior business psychologist for Workday, an HR software company. “We are whole people. We don’t just park that at the door. I read a [mental health] report recently that 74% of employees are now more comfortable talking [about it] to their co-workers; 64% are more comfortable talking to their managers.” The employer approach to well-being needs to be holistic, the speakers asserted. “Covid put a spotlight in terms of, you can’t just think about physical well-being anymore,” said Heidi Schisel, VP of people and culture of commercial, medical, and government affairs at Genentech, the biotech corporation. “Are you exercising? Are you getting enough sleep? How do you continue to foster that sense of well-being, but also make sure that our leaders are modeling that as well, and giving space for people to be able to take care of things in their lives?”“When we think of whole-person health, it’s no longer about the health benefits for organizations,” said Justin Holland, CEO and co-founder of Healthjoy, a health care-navigation platform. “It’s how do we bring the mental-health benefits into place? How do we think about financial wellness? Because if someone is stressed out, they’re probably not going bring their best self to work.”“We talk about it from the World Health Organization’s perspective—well-being as a state where a person is realizing their potential,” said Pavese. “They’re able to cope with daily stressors in their lives, be productive, and make a positive contribution. So it’s a very action-oriented, not an end-state kind of definition. That allows us to understand, assess, measure, and then put the right pieces in place that help support the growth of somebody's well-being.”The panelists, from left: Samanntha DuBridge of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Heidi Schisel of Genentech, Claire Zhang of Samsung, Elizabeth Pavese, Ph.D., of Workday, Justin Holland of Healthjoy, and moderator Pete Suratos of NBC Bay Area / KGO-TV.A corporate culture of well-being needs to recognize the individual. “As a 60,000 team-member company, we're not all going to agree on what's going to work for us,” said Samanntha DuBridge, VP of HR for Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the information-tech company. “We all have different types of jobs with different types of responsibilities. And so we try to make sure that everybody has the resources and tools available to themselves and their families to think about what they want to prioritize, what's most important to them, and what can they take best advantage of.”“We do need to focus more on the mental health piece,” she added. “We need to focus more on how people can take advantage of resources and feel comfortable.” Hybrid work is a big challenge for people leaders, since employee needs for flexibility can vary so much. Panelists spoke of a need to get creative about what they could offer employees that might be different from what was done pre-Covid. Access is another challenge. More than 150 million people live in federally designated areas with shortages of mental-health professionals, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The shortage could reach as many as 35,000 full-time employees by 2030.“There’s not one county in California that doesn't have a shortage of mental health professionals,” said Holland. “If you have a mental health [issue] and you can't get an appointment for three months, it’s challenging. So how do we help increase that access to employees to help meet them where they are?”Some larger companies focused on well-being can provide wellness resources onsite, to make it easier for employees to access. “We do have a lot of amenities on campus in terms of a health center, gym, doctor, acupuncture, you name it,” said Schisel. “Also, we’ve provided options throughout the day for employees to get to work safely, as well as childcare.” Greater efficiencies also emerged from the pandemic to prevent employee burnout. Leaders learned that meetings were a sore point, so they flexed. It became another opportunity to model self-care and well-being.“Are all the meetings productive?” asked Schisel. “Do they all need to be an hour? Could they be speedy meetings of 20 minutes? And factoring in focus time, making sure you’re taking your lunch. Instead of getting behind the screen all the time, let’s just call each other and take a walk or get outside.” “It’s building new habits, new behaviors, modeling those habits and behaviors,” said Pavese, “and having the system and structures around it.” At the height of the pandemic, Workday began implementing “interventions” with the nurses of one of its health care customers, a large hospital in New York City. “This idea of deliberate rest and taking a break from your day-to-day for 10 minutes,” Pavese said. “They did art walls in their break rooms. Colors are meditative. It allows you to focus your brain, to quiet things down. Having small things like that are investments in employee well-being to curb burnout.” Many workers deferred health care during the pandemic, leading to delayed discovery and treatment of illness, along with greater costs and lost productivity. “There's no shortage of evidence that shows the connection between well-being [and] job performance,” said Pavese, who pointed to burnout as one of those insidious conditions. “We put an undue burden on individuals to cure their burnout. The fact is, burnout is an organizational phenomenon, it’s not an individual phenomenon. It disproportionately affects your high performers because to burn out–it's not working more hours. It's about being highly engaged but not being able to manage and cope with the stress that comes with it. You end up feeling exhausted, you become cynical, and then you feel completely ineffective. So it is a very big detriment.”Pavese encouraged utilizing more proactive analytics and insights to detect burnout risk. Indicators of well-being dropping can help leaders deter absenteeism, attrition, health risks, and workplace accidents. “If we're investing in our people and our people are thriving, our organizations thrive,” she said. “We are all in the business of people.”Leaders are also resetting expectations of what great performance looks like. “And it's not, here are the 20 things you did,” said Schisel, “but what was your impact in the organization anchored in specific strategic goals and outcomes? Here’s the standard of excellence that we’re seeking so that it’s consistent, it’s equitable, and people understand that it’s about the impact moving forward–and that’s how your performance will be gauged.”Communication and intentionality are keys to enhancing employee well-being, especially while managing a hybrid workforce. Not all work is suited for intense collaboration and not all work is suited for heads-down individual time. Integrating with local culture, implementing multiple modal programs based on regions, team check-ins, and flexibility are all tools to utilize in supporting workers’ holistic health. The panelists said they support progress over perfection. Managers should be given discretion to adapt policies to unique situations, said Zhang. “We provide guidelines, but the guidelines are wide enough for you to have open interpretation. Then the leaders are empowered to do what is the best for their team as well as communicate with the employees to get the best outcome.” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who has written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif.
Why Career Growth Is a Mutual Benefit for Both Workers and Employers
BY Samantha Campos July 03, 2023Who has an interest in a worker’s career growth? Turns out, everyone involved. Workers want to make sure their future roles are satisfying and rewarding. Employers, for their part, want to make sure that workers will have the right skills for future competitive demands. According to a Pew Research survey, 63% of people who left jobs in 2021 cited a lack of advancement opportunities as a reason for leaving.“We spend a lot of time and energy focusing on what an employee really wants,” said Joji Gill, VP of HR at Applied Materials, which provides key ingredients for the semiconductor industry. “We realized, as our demographics have changed, that we actually did not understand–and we were making assumptions of what an employee wanted in terms of their career growth.”Gill’s team learned to enable supervisors as career coaches for their workers. “In the end, we think an employee really owns their careers,” Gill said, “but we facilitate it for them through their managers and through the opportunities we provide in terms of roles that are available, but also in terms of learning and development.” How can companies meet business needs, as well as the needs of their people, while boosting productivity, retention, and general happiness in the workplace? Dan Ashley, anchor and reporter for ABC7 KGO-TV Bay Area, asked HR leaders how they’re facing the challenge in a panel titled, “How Career Growth Can Be a Part of Employee Experience from the Beginning,” part of From Day One’s recent San Francisco conference.The disruptions of the pandemic, and new attitudes about work, have inspired employees to be more demanding when it comes to opportunity. “There’s a shift from this mindset of ‘What can I do for the company?’ to ‘What can the company do for me?’” said Sid Prashar, director of executive recruiting for global functions at Google. “This is as true for early-career professionals as executives.” A new employee’s role is understood to be merely a starting point. “And the conversation already is evolving into ‘What's next for me? How is the company going to support me?’”Leaders are expressing more enthusiasm for coaching skills to help their employees in their career paths and identify areas where they can grow within the organization. “Another skill of a leader is not just putting it all on the employee,” said Tim Davisson, director of business development at Stewart Leadership, a talent management and leadership development firm, “but finding opportunities for your employees to grow and expand their skills.”The best approach may be to foster more of a dynamic dialogue between workers and employers about what they both need. “We saw this shift from a more traditional model of career pathway that was very focused on a top-down approach where the company said, ‘Here's what we need within the next year or five years—how do we find the people within our organization and put them into boxes that they may or may not want to be put into?’” said Elan Kawesch, chief product officer for Claira, an AI-powered workforce-management platform. Speaking on career growth, from left: Dan Ashley, anchor and reporter for ABC7 TV, Sid Prashar of Google, Elan Kawesch of Claira, Tim Davisson of Stewart Leadership, and Joji Gill of Applied Materials (Photos by From Day One)“What we’re seeing with the most successful organizations is what we’re calling this ‘edges-in’ model approach that takes this hybrid between the top-down and saying, ‘What does the firm need in the next few years?,’ but also taking an ear to what the employee is looking for and making sure that we’re promoting the best interest of both parties.” As new generations of workers arrive with fresh expectations, notably Gen Z, businesses are challenged to identify potential leaders earlier in their careers. Managers must spend time understanding and guiding these future stars within their organization.“We put them on very complicated projects,” said Gill. “We test them, we rotate them, and we evaluate them. Then also we track their careers for the next five, 10, 20 years because we're hoping to find our next CEO out of our younger engineers that we’ve just hired.”“This is a really great opportunity for us as the younger generation to step up and do some reverse mentoring,” said Davisson. “Because I don't think it's about upskilling the younger generation–it’s the other way around.”Kawesch and his team recognized a post-pandemic age divide between three main employee groups: workers motivated by financial reward, others seeking career growth, and still others craving social interaction. “We saw this large shift, especially among younger employees, who were saying the most important thing that they were looking for is a social outlet,” said Kawesch. “In the age of Zoom, where we’re not necessarily going into the office every day, where we can’t build the same kind of interpersonal relationships that we used to be able to, face-to-face, employees might only get their social needs out in the workforce.”“We have to understand and know our people,” said Davisson. “It’s about thinking about the person and their career path, and how can you help support that person.”It’s a vast change from decades past, noted Ashley, “of what it meant to work and how corporations approach their employees. Where companies were not worried about meeting the needs of the employee. They were solely interested in how the employee could meet the needs of the corporation.”Speaking directly with younger talent can help leaders better understand their motivations and increase engagement. After having some of these conversations, Gill was struck by the shift in workers’ values. “What was strikingly interesting was that what was not top-of-mind to them was compensation or career,” she said. “Those they take as basic needs. But what was important to them was equality issues, race relations, sustainability, connectedness.” “Leaders no longer have the luxury of choice,” said Prashar. “We used to learn in business schools about profit maximization as the goal of the enterprise. That is no longer the case. All these different stakeholders have to be optimized or harmonized and balanced. [Making money] is something you do in the process of not doing harm. And how much good you do is really where you optimize.”“It's really about having an employee base that you truly understand,” said Gill, “that you engage [and] motivate, which then results in higher productivity, higher engagement, higher innovation, and high results.” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who has written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif.
How to Give Workers the Resources and Opportunities They Need to Thrive
BY Samantha Campos July 01, 2023At a time of uncertainty and rapid change in the business world, the keys to a happy workplace are flexibility and intentionality. So says Jessica Swank, chief people officer for Box, Inc., a cloud content-management company in Silicon Valley that is consistently rated a “Great Place to Work.” Like most tech companies prior to the pandemic, Box operated largely in person. Now, after many iterations of working remotely, employees–called “Boxers”–have embraced a hybrid approach, which Swank admitted has been challenging.Swank spoke at From Day One’s San Francisco conference with Erin Griffith, a New York Times reporter, in a fireside chat titled, “How to Give Workers the Resources and Opportunities They Need to Thrive and Do Their Best Work.”As work arrangements sort themselves out in the post-pandemic era, employee preferences vary widely. Workers who are earlier in their careers may want to return to the office for in-person mentorship and camaraderie. Other employees who are caretakers of young children or elderly parents, or both, will have contrasting needs. “We’re trying to be flexible and accommodating,” said Swank. “There’s a lot that all of us are juggling. So we’re trying to be really thoughtful about that approach.”Even prior to the pandemic, Box has had a longstanding commitment to diversity and belonging at every step of its employee lifecycle. Its culture is built on core values expressed in maxims like “Make Your Mom Proud,” while placing importance on trust and “assuming good intent in what we do.” Weekly leadership lunches, transparent decision-making, and a focus on team efforts help create an environment “where everyone can thrive,” said Swank. “We all have good days, we all have bad days,” she said. “It's not just about an individual but about coming together and supporting each other through all the ups and downs.”Box leaders regularly engage their 11 distinct Employee Resource Communities (ERCs) and listening circles to foster greater psychological safety for their workforce. “We rely a lot on our internal communities to help be that voice,” Swank said, “to create that safe space.” ERCs are engaged after any significant social or political news events as part of a matrix for deciding when and how the company should respond, which is, according to Swank, a bit of art and science. “We have we look at it by what are our business priorities, our values,” she said. “Then we look at it based on geographies and the impact to our Boxers around the world.”Erin Griffith of the New York Times, left, interviewed Jessica Swank, chief people officer of Box, Inc. (Photos by From Day One)Box has increased benefits for its employees, including coaching or mentoring, and expanded healthcare to ensure access for family members. “We want anybody, no matter where you are around the world, to be able to access our resources,” Swank said. “I think about it as sustainability. That ability to invest in the wellness and the well-being of our employees is so incredibly important.”The goal for Box and its people, Swank said, is to deliver results while living by the company’s values. “We believe that if we can do both of those things and invest in our employees, that ultimately it's better for business.”The pandemic brought many challenges to the workplace, yet Swank believes it also helped bring more heart, humility, and humanity back into leadership and companies. And she believes the lessons being learned from the past three years are far from over. “How do we continue to not lose some of the benefits from the pandemic and working from home?” said Swank. “How do we continue to be innovative and create new solutions?”Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who has written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif.(Featured image: Erin Griffith of the New York Times, left, interviewing Jessica Swank of Box, Inc., at the San Francisco conference)
How to Overcome Fears of Talking About Identity, Diversity, and Justice
BY Samantha Campos June 20, 2023What we say is just as important as what we do, when it comes to matters of identity, diversity, and justice. Every action begins with a conversation. But with evolving societal standards and heightened awareness, a conversation about identity can be constructive or harmful, which increases our anxiety about having them. So how do we talk about it?Nicole Smith, editorial audience director at Harvard Business Review, addressed the issue in a fireside chat during From Day One’s June virtual conference. Smith spoke with Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow, authors of Say the Right Thing: How to Talk About Identity, Diversity, and Justice.Yoshino and Glasgow trust in the power of conversations. Both authors being gay men, they remember every single conversation they had when they came out to their friends and family. “[We] remember all the ones that went well, which were transformative,” said Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law. “And we remember the ones that went not so well, which could often be quite devastating.”Yoshino acknowledged that a conversation is not an ending point. “We ultimately are lawyers,” he said. “We believe in policy, we believe in law, we believe in culture. But all of those actions, we think, emanate from good conversations.”Identity conversations, as defined in the book, are any conversations about the social identities we all hold. It could be an identity based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic status, disability, and more.“There's a really long list, and we're trying to encompass any conversation that relates to that topic,” said Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. “It could also be a broader conversation about identity-related social movements, like Black Lives Matter, or the Me Too movement, or Stop Asian Hate. And we're ambitiously trying with this book to give people tools to have all those kinds of conversations.”The book cautions against ignoring people's group identity, while also not reducing them to their group identity. “Is that possible?” Smith asked.“People say to us, ‘That's contradictory, you can't have it both ways,’” said Yoshino. “I think we have to have it both ways. We have to be able to find that middle path. All of us are more than just one identity. But if you don't see the identities that are salient to how I navigate my world and my own lived experience then you're not really seeing me.”Nicole Smith moderated the fireside chat discussion with co-authors Glasgow and Yoshino (photo by From Day One)Other undesirable behaviors that jeopardize having healthy conversations about identity, diversity, and justice are what the authors call the four conversational traps: avoid, deflect, deny, and attack.Deflection is when you change the subject to some other topic that you want to talk about. Deflecting to yourself is a subset of deflection, which can be done in a few different ways. One way would be to deflect to your own moral credential.“So if someone criticizes you, if someone suggests that you displayed bias,” said Glasgow, “you would respond by saying something along the lines of ‘Don't you know that I'm in an interracial marriage?’ or ‘I grew up in a diverse neighborhood,’ or some other reason why you can't accuse me of doing anything wrong, because I have strong moral credentials.”Another form of deflecting to yourself is by broadcasting your hardship, such as mentioning you had a difficult upbringing and therefore can’t be accused of doing anything wrong in the conversation. Yet another way would be deflecting to your good intentions, or saying something like, “I didn't mean it that way.”All of these forms of deflection impede effective engagement in conversations about identity because they're changing the subject from the issue that the other person has raised with you.“If someone comes to you and shares an experience or a perception that they've had,” said Glasgow, “they want to talk to you about an issue of bias or exclusion that they're experiencing. And then [if] you're pivoting away to some other topic, that person is going to feel frustrated, they're going to feel unheard, they're probably going to feel like you're not someone that they can come to with concerns that they might have in the future.”Thoughtful conversations are an integral part of true allyship, or active support for the rights of a marginalized group you’re not a part of, versus performative or optical allyship. Yoshino thinks of allyship as an interaction among three different parties, or what he calls the “empathy triangle.”“There's the ally, ‘I saw it,’” he said. “There's the affected person, ‘it happened to me.’ And then there's a source of non-inclusive behavior, ‘I did it.’ Effective allyship means going through the process of reflecting on yourself, as an ally, reflecting on your relationship to the affected person, and then reflecting on your relationship to the source of non-inclusive behavior and making sure that all three of those parties are fully in mind before you step into allyship.”In order to be a true ally, it’s important to ask yourself questions about your motivations, your relationship to the affected person, and your relationship to the source. These questions could include: Am I doing this to virtue signal? Am I informed enough to ask? Does this person want this kind of help? Am I unintentionally burdening the affected person in some way? Am I challenging the source’s behavior, instead of calling them out as a “bad” human being?“We want to give people broad principles for how to have these conversations,” said Glasgow, “but allow people to develop the actual words themselves, emanating from those principles that they've absorbed.”Often when you witness non-inclusive behavior, it requires an immediate response. But when you can't think of what you're supposed to say in the moment, you experience a phenomenon called “staircase thought.” It’s what happens when you leave the room and you're walking down the staircase, and you immediately think of the perfect comeback that you should have said when the comment was made.“We wanted to provide people with a sort of menu of options that would enable them to overcome that staircase thought,” said Glasgow. “The first step is go down the list, figure out which one sounds authentic to you, commit it to memory so that you can have it when something happens.”“Inevitably in these conversations, we are going to mess up,” said Yoshino. “It's not a question of if, it's a question of when, and so we thought it would be really useful to have a strategy for how to apologize.”It's important to be generous to people who make mistakes because it's only a matter of time before we're the affected person, and only a matter of time before we ourselves put our foot in it, and are the forces of noninclusive behavior.“We actually want to create something that's a bit more like a coaching culture,” said Glasgow, “where people commit to coaching each other to do better in these conversations, rather than condemning them out of hand.”Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, California.
The Talent Shortage Is Coming. Is Your Employee Experience Strategy Ready to Combat It?
BY Samantha Campos May 04, 2023More than 85 million jobs globally could go unfilled by 2030. A talent shortage in the U.S. alone could equal 6 million people. The potential annual revenue loss for all those unfilled jobs: $8.5 trillion. With 69% of employers reporting difficulty filling jobs, Carolyn Clark believes that the best way to overcome the projected employment deficit is to “create a talent magnet, not a mandate.” Engaging and inspiring employees now will be critical to attracting and retaining talent in the future. Clark is vice president of employee experience strategy and transformation at Simpplr, an AI-powered employee experience platform. In a talk at From Day One’s 2023 Silicon Valley conference, she explained her three-part plan to attract and retain top talent.Measure Engagement DifferentlyMost companies obtain worker data from annual or biannual employee experience surveys, which is a good start. But employers may be missing what’s below the surface. Clark advocates using “sentiment AI,” which analyzes text for subjective information.“It allows you to access [employees’] true feelings day to day,” said Clark. “You're measuring all the time. So, as employee experience and HR people, you're able to answer the questions, ‘What do employees want? What do they need? How can you support them?’” Ensuring that employees’ voices are heard will enable more effective communication and greater engagement. Increased engagement leads to higher earnings per share, based on Gallup research. Establish Employee CommunicationsHR and communications are what Clark calls the “peanut butter and jelly” of an organization. It’s a relationship that’s critical to elevating your overall employee experience. LinkedIn recently listed Employee Experience Manager as the fifth fastest-growing job over the past five years. And according to a Towers Watson study, companies with effective internal communication are 3.5 times more likely to outperform their peers when it comes to revenue growth.Carolyn Clark, the vice president of employee experience strategy and transformation at Simpplr, led the thought leadership spotlight (photo by David Coe for From Day One)“Employee experience is what it's like to live somewhere,” said Clark. “It's the language you use as an organization. It's the expectations you put on your employees. It's the work style, the values, the rituals that you all have. It's how you reward people, it's how you recognize people.” Employee communications are no longer a “nice to have,” but a strategic advantage for companies looking to increase engagement with their workforce. Expect More from TechnologyWe go online to read the news, pay our bills electronically, broadcast our activities, or visit with friends on social media. And then, especially if we’re working remotely, we connect with colleagues, track our progress on projects, and send and receive emails, all through various technological platforms. The average person uses over 30 apps every month to accomplish their daily and weekly tasks. “Why are we making work so hard?” asked Clark. “It’s slowing our productivity. We want a unified solution. Let's start making it in one platform where we can actually have an effect.” It’s time to make sure your digital experience matches your in-person experience, said Clark. A competitive employee experience strategy built on connection, community, and communications will ensure that your company inspires and retains talent through the changes to come.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Simpplr, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, California.
Embracing Flexibility Increases Employee Satisfaction
BY Samantha Campos April 14, 2023Two and a half years ago, Sheela Subramanian was a mother of two young children and worked a traditional nine-to-five office job, five days a week. When the pandemic hit, she noticed that her office, as well as most organizations around the world, simply did the “lift and shift.” “We lifted office space norms and shifted them into people's living rooms,” she said. “And we realized quickly that it wasn't working.” Subramanian is the co-founder of Future Forum, a consortium reimagining workplace flexibility, inclusivity, and connection. She is also the co-author of How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to Do the Best Work of Their Lives, released in May 2022. In December she spoke with moderator Katie Johnston, a reporter for the Boston Globe, in a fireside chat entitled, “Flexible Work and the Future Workplace.” The conversation kicked off a From Day One virtual conference on “The Future of Jobs: Trends Shaping How We Work in 2023 and Beyond.” “So much of the way that we work is focused on trust, it's focused on transparency,” said Subramanian. “It's also focused on giving people choice–not just in where they work, but when they work, and ultimately how they work.” When Subramanian and her team began studying how work was changing in 2020, they also discovered that flexibility played a huge role in terms of creating greater belonging, especially for historically discriminated groups, including women and employees of color. “We wanted to better understand how managers could build cultures of inclusion, and rebuild work to work for all groups of people, rather than the select view that built these traditional norms decades ago,” she said. “How can technology play a role? But also how can in-person gatherings play a role for people as they thought about building culture, camaraderie, and action across an organization?” Flexibility is a core expectation among employees, according to Future Forum research. It ranks second, only behind compensation and benefits when it comes to determining job satisfaction. While 58% of workers are open to looking for a new job in the next year, that number increases to 70% if they're not happy with their current levels of flexibility.Sheela Subramanian, bestselling author of How the Future Works, and co-founder of Future Forum (company photo)“The conversation prior to the pandemic was, how’s my life going to fit into my work? Work was the nucleus of people's identity,” said Subramanian. “And then, as people had more flexibility, they're able to get things done and live their lives, the conversation has shifted to, how is my work going to fit into my broader existence?” While employees want more choice in how they work, they also want to be measured on the outcomes that are delivered instead of outdated in-office metrics prone to “proximity bias.” Managers will require additional training in order to shift from gatekeepers to empathetic coaches, said Subramanian. “So much of traditional performance management has been based on how many days or how many hours is this person spending in the office or this person is responding to my email at midnight, or responding to my message within seconds–they must be a hard worker. But activity is not necessarily a measure for performance.” Subramanian encourages leaders to evaluate their employees on the impact that they're producing for the organization rather than the way they're sacrificing their health or their lives in order to show that they’re good employees. Speaking out against activity monitoring, she advocates for the “boom loop” rather than “doom loop” approach. “The doom loop is measuring keystrokes, or measuring when someone is clocking in and logging off,” she said. “Whereas the boom loop is saying, ‘This is what our team is held accountable for, this is what you are responsible for. Now I'm gonna give you the resources, the budget in order to help you get there and the guidance that you need, but figure out how to get there on your own.’” It's important for leaders to set behavioral guardrails as well as the overall principles of how they want their organizations to work. Then leaders need to get out of the way and empower managers to set team-level agreements. “Team-level agreements go a long way in terms of fostering psychological safety and trust amongst the team,” she said. Two-thirds of executives are not including their employees as they think about the future of work planning, according to Future Forum data. And applying a one-size-fits-all model across disparate organizaitions, and teams within organizations, is actually burning people out. Collaboration, experimentation, and a fundamental shift in performance metrics can aid leaders in creating a culture of connection, increasing satisfaction and productivity, by offering their workers more of what they want. “How can we help people live fuller richer lives,” said Subramanian, “both as employees as well as human beings?” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, California.
Developing Future Leaders Inclusively
BY Samantha Campos April 07, 2023Diversity and inclusion drive corporate innovation and profitability, as cited by multiple studies. While companies have largely addressed a desire for inclusive leadership, more progress is needed. McKinsey reports that 7% of managerial roles are held by Black employees, even less for executive roles. Last year Women Business Collaborative reported that 8.8% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, 1% of whom are women of color.Panelists discussed the obstacles and potential solutions to increase leadership diversity in a discussion entitled, “Developing Future Leaders Inclusively,” held at From Day One Silicon Valley conference, “Rediscovering Community Amidst Changing Corporate Values.” The panel was moderated by David Thigpen, director of the undergraduate journalism program at the University of California, Berkeley.In a tightened economy with continuous reports of massive layoffs, companies are redirecting their funding into new areas for the future, which presents opportunities for inclusivity. Christa St. Cyr, senior vice president and director of workforce experience at Citizens Financial Group, noted the mismatch between what the workforce has and what businesses want.“Digital disruption is requiring large-scale transformation that requires new capabilities,” said St. Cyr. “It requires new ways of leading and creates a whole host of new opportunities for the workforce. So we're leaning into things like upskilling and reskilling to expand our pipelines for the future.”“Systems and structures are also people,” said Swen Ervin, executive director of HR operations for San Francisco Unified School District. “We not only have to change the makeup of leadership, but we also have to change how we do business in a way that's more inclusive and more diversity driven.”Retention is still an issue, particularly for early-career talent. Anna Robinson, CEO and founder of Ceresa, an inclusive leadership platform, said that companies previously had focused on solving the diversity gap at the top or attracting talent while neglecting everyone else in the middle.“How do we keep those people engaged?” asked Robinson. “How do we help them build their careers over time? There’s so much data that underrepresented talent, particularly women, lower their aspirations toward senior leadership roles within five years of being in the workforce. If we're not able to support people when they’re new in the workforce—that track to first-time manager—we're never going to solve the issue.”David Thigpen, the director of undergraduate journalism at UC Berkeley, moderating the discussion on inclusive leadership (Photo by David Coe for From Day One)Training and support are essential for setting a culture of inclusivity, especially for leadership. At PG&E, Adams and her team employ “listening guides” as a resource to help folks facilitate difficult or uncomfortable conversations.“It's training leadership in an intimate space where they can be vulnerable and share that they don't understand what this means or how to ask questions,” said Adams. “It starts with the leadership, but you have to give tools and resources when people aren't in the rooms, so they can walk it out on their own and grow that muscle.”“We want to create the ability to have the conversations in a productive way so that we can get to, ‘what's the solution?’” said St. Cyr. “Because we're all here, working together, so how do we address what might be getting in the way and move past it?”Abhishek Budhraja moved to the US from India four years ago. He is now the senior HR business partner, and global engineering and program manager at Uber. Budhraja acknowledged there was a learning curve when it came to understanding racism in this country. He appreciated VR-based training as a way to facilitate empathy. He also praised a workplace initiative to identify and minimize bias.“There’s a certain degree of sensitization that needs to happen across the board,” said Budhraja. “It needs to happen every year, and the company needs to have a good rhythm to it. And then [asking], what are other systems you can create to minimize the impact of these things in the workplace?”“We have to make sure that we’re holding people accountable to the standards we set,” said Robinson. “I totally agree that a lot of the culture is set top down, but the day-to-day experience of employees is primarily impacted by their supervisor. They're the people who are largely hiring them, onboarding them, managing their workflows, translating corporate values, strategic initiatives, changes required, doing their performance reviews.”In addition to training and accountability, awareness and access are vital to developing leaders inclusively.“We are focusing on attracting more talent,” said Dionne Adams, director of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging at Pacific Gas and Electric. “What I see is that there's a lack of awareness of available roles, of how to obtain education, how to pay for education. People don't have support within their family, can't afford it, or don't understand how to.”Lack of knowledge about scholarships and training programs is a big barrier, as is an absence of social capital. “Access to a network can support you as you're wanting to join a company, tell you about jobs and be with you along the way,” said Adams. “That's why the gap exists. You don't have diversity in colleges and trade schools, and that translates to the workforce because they don't have the educational qualification to get there.”“You see an exact parallel when people are already in the workforce getting into middle management where there's no skill gap, there's no capability gap,” said Robinson. “But so much of it is just their lack of access to the network. Not understanding what it takes to get to that next level, that most people who make it there had a sponsor, a mentor, they had people helping them—that it's not just a question of ‘if I put my head down and do a good job I'll get there.’”Other panelists agreed that inequitable access is persistent across industries.“People are not equally given the opportunities to have access to opportunities for professional development, [to] resources outside of the school or classroom,” said Ervin. “So when it comes time for a promotive opportunity, you may get to that first-line manager position, then there's that drop-off.”It's critical to not only make sure that employees are gaining the skills they need but also have mentorship and a community that will support them to progress as far as they want to go in their careers.Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, California.
To Find New Talent, ‘Change the Way You Go to Market’
BY Samantha Campos March 19, 2023If employers want to do a better job of hiring, especially when it comes to finding diverse talent, they need to change their approach. “If you think about it kind of like sales, your candidates are what you’re going to market for, and finding new channels for those candidates means that you’re taking a risk,” said Albrey Brown, VP of strategy at Joonko, a diversity recruiting service. “You’re not going back to the same schools or programs that you typically would go to if you’re diversifying.”Business leaders now need to look for labor in wider pools and consider reskilling or investing in education for their employees. Brown spoke on a panel of experts discussing ways to boost recruitment in a panel entitled, “Improving the Talent Pipeline, From End to End,” which took place at From Day One’s recent Silicon Valley conference. The panel was moderated by Megan Cassidy, a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle.Flexibility and learning are not only important to the current workforce but are also vital for hiring teams. Staying nimble and aware of employee needs allows companies to flex with the demands of a changing labor market. In talking about the shifting tides of recruitment, the speakers cited the “Blue Ocean Strategy,” a marketing concept originated by INSEAD professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.“This ‘blue ocean’ concept is about finding untapped markets for candidates,” said Kristin Major, the chief talent officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, “finding places where you're not competing against all the other big fish in the sea, trying to recruit. ‘Red ocean’ is where there are lots of different companies competing for the same group.”“You have to change the way that you go to market,” said Pamela Rodas, global senior director of talent acquisition at the tech company TELUS International. “As recruiters, it’s not only focusing on the skills and competencies you need to recruit for and convince the candidate, but the strategy has to be different every year.”Albrey Brown of Joonko, left, and Pamela Rodas of TELUS International, who said, “Never stop thinking on how we’re going to differentiate” Rodas advised giving prospective employees the “right message” to ensure that they know why they should be working for your company. To that end, she created a “global innovation center,” which involves a series of project managers with differing expertise who focus on how they’re going to attract talent in a variety of ways.“Never stop thinking on how we’re going to differentiate,” said Rodas. “Not just compete on overpaying, spending three months looking for that talent, when you can recruit within three weeks if you build the right strategy with the hiring manager and explain the added value of the type of candidates that you’re offering.”“The things that we’ve been doing are probably not what we need going forward if we’re going to find this sort of ‘blue ocean’ of new talent,” said HPE’s Major. “We’re going to get a better candidate, we’re going to have a more inclusive company, we’re going to achieve our goals around what we want in terms of a diverse workforce. It requires a fair amount of courage to do that.”Joonko’s Brown suggested adopting a “build, measure, learn” mindset to overcome fears and obstacles to pioneering collaborations. “These new channels that you’re starting to invest in [will never] produce the same type of talent at the same volume [or] quality as the ones you’ve been investing in for 10, 20 years,” said Brown. “You have to incubate these new channels in a way that allows you to grow these partnerships over time so that they can mature.”Recruiters will likely need to make other adjustments to open up the hiring process. “Taking away the bachelor’s-degree requirement is a way to allow folks who may not have had the chance to get a degree but have the skills, mindset, and character to apply for your roles,” Brown said.“We invest a lot on long-term strategies [for] developing our talent from the beginning,” said Rodas. TELUS International operates an onsite continuing-education program where team members are taught sales skills, customer service, coding, AI, and data science, “even if they’ve only been a business analyst.”Hiring teams can partner with training teams in the organization so that companies have a solid strategy–short-term and long-term–to develop talent. “As a recruiter, you need to ensure you’re providing data all the time to the business on why that's important,” Rodas said. “Do they want to overpay for talent that’s going to leave in two years, because they’re already overqualified for the position?”Rodas said hiring managers often want to recruit candidates with higher qualifications than the ones they need, which she feels is a mistake. Instead, her team gathers data and assessments based on competencies and skills. They then constantly assess the profiles of their hires on who performed best after the first 90 days, six months, and a year.“More often than not, it was the ones that didn’t have experience,” Rodas said. “It takes time and persistence. But as recruiters, we are salespeople, so there’s nothing better we can do than continue insisting that [talent development] is the way to go.”Rather than trying to find the prospective employee who fulfills all requirements of a position, developing an existing workforce may be more cost-effective and encourages retention in the long term. Rodas calls the potential candidates who want to build a career with the company “priceless.”“Skills leveling-up is not expensive,” Rodas said. “We can look for startups that want that opportunity and partner with companies to enhance skills fast. And that way, we focus on building pipelines externally from candidates that have the willingness to learn. We can assess that through specialized assessments, vs. just looking for that ‘unicorn’ candidate.”Megan Cassidy, a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle moderated the panelMegan Cassidy, a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, moderated the panel“The social-impact program is where we really think about how we engage communities,” said Leslie Lai, director of social impact for Roku, “especially high-school students from underrepresented backgrounds or other resource communities at an early age—and provide them access to resources and exposure to our industry.”Roku’s Change Makers program involves partnering with a nonprofit to mentor about 250 students across the US, teaching them how to make short documentaries over six weeks. Students are told to highlight someone in their community who’s making positive change.“It’s a great way, not just for students to get access to a very traditionally opaque industry,” said Lai, “but just see the work come alive in a real place and get credit for it.”Similarly, Joonko matches underrepresented candidates with roles at companies that are similar to where they recently interviewed. The process uses AI, which Brown cautions can be biased when it comes to recruiting. Hiring leaders must consider where these technologies are being used in the process to make sure they’re being used ethically. “As much as it is about how you build the algorithm,” said Brown, “it’s about where you place the algorithm. So we use natural language processing only when it comes to skills matching, understanding what keywords someone uses to describe the role they’re going for, what keywords they use to describe their accomplishments at a company.” Those keywords are then matched with keywords that other companies might use.“Typically, companies hire about one out of eight of the candidates that we refer,” said Brown, “which is a very good application-to-hire.”At TELUS, Rodas utilized technology by building the whole recruiting experience in a virtual environment. The project started as a way to overcome screen-centric boredom during the pandemic lockdown and engage her team. “What I didn't realize is we made it a more inclusive experience,” said Rodas. “When they build their avatar, they show us who they really are. All types of generations–Centennials, Millennials, Generation X–were having fun, you could see they were laughing, and it relaxed them. It was fun. And it actually showed why they wanted to apply, what’s in it for them.” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in California and Hawaii, with forays into medical cannabis and food-justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif.
The Great Return: Reimagining the Office for Working Parents
BY Samantha Campos October 24, 2022“Parents are emerging from the hardest years of their lives at this moment,” said Gina Nebesar, co-founder and chief product officer at Ovia Health, a family-health benefits platform. “Many of them are really taking this opportunity this year to reassess what matters most to them.” Nebesar could relate. She returned to work after having her third child during the pandemic, at a time of fear, school closures, and women leaving the workforce in droves. Through her role at Ovia, she witnessed what other families were going through and what they really needed from their employers. In a company survey of thousands of people, “90% of them said they’d leave their jobs for the same exact job if it offered better family benefits, like flexibility,” said Nebesar. “And 77% said they considered family-friendly culture their No. 1 priority in choosing where to work. How do we reimagine our support for parents and think of them as parents, not employees, first?” Subsequently, employers are evaluating if their pre-pandemic policies are holding up. In a From Day One webinar, “Return to Work: Best Practices to Retain and Support Working Parents,” moderated by Boston Globe reporter Katie Johnston, the panel of business leaders, all of whom are working moms, discussed how employers are adjusting their protocols for returning to work while retaining and supporting working parents. “It’s been a period of self-reflection for a lot of people about making their needs met: What do I want in the workplace?” said Jennifer Chiang, head of people strategy in the U.S. for MilliporeSigma, a biotech company. “And it’s forced us to really change our policies and think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, taking a look at each tier and making sure that we’re satisfying it.” While feedback surveys are popular, employers are utilizing an array of methods to determine worker needs and accommodate returning employees. Pilot programs, which rely on “early adopters” or volunteers, offer different models of operation to gauge workers’ experience returning to in-office work. Other leaders recommended incorporating more flexible work options like paid parental leave, providing parenting groups, lactation rooms, and increased manager training to support working parents. “So much of that return-to-work experience depends on the manager,” said Nebesar. “And the managers really need dedicated or very specialized training for parents to help them with those different paths through parenting.” Speaking about supporting working parents, top row from left: Jennifer Chiang of MilliporeSigma and Diana Geofroy of Colgate Palmolive. Middle row: Gina Nebesar of Ovia Health, Shannon Flynn of Fortive, and Judith Almendra of TTEC. Bottom: moderator Katie Johnston of the Boston Globe (Image by From Day One) Mental health is a big concern for all workers, especially new parents. Maternal mental health issues are the No. 1 complication in pregnancy and childbirth. More leaders today are encouraging staff to open up about burnout and challenges at home. Some employers are getting creative with stress-alleviating activities at work, like offering on-site art-therapy counselors or fun community events for families. “Our company offered a virtual camp for children at home,” said Chiang. “One of our employee-resource group (ERG) leaders conducted this really well-planned camp where students could learn about STEM activities all week long.” As with any work-related change, communication is paramount, with one company giving two months’ notice for employees to return to the office. Other panelists said their companies took a phased approach, allowing staff members to ease back one or two days a week, then gradually increasing their in-office workdays. In some cases, customers wanting employees to come back to the office were at odds with employees’ reluctance to return on-site, and expectations needed to be managed. “We launched a completely new function within the organization that does advanced analytics about employee sentiment, employee behavior, or trends in the market, to make sure we’re keeping a proactive education with our [employees],” said Judith Almendra, VP of global human capital and talent acquisition at TTEC, a customer-experience tech company. And yet, many workers remained resistant to returning on-site. At TTEC, 30% to 40% of employees said they’d resign if asked to come back to the office, according to Almendra. So the company encouraged their employees to visit the office for a day to interact. “What we found is people forgot what it is to be in the office,” she said, “and some of the pros [of being] with each other.” The positive reminder served to change people’s minds; 50% of those who had initially threatened to leave changed their minds. The company also offered flexibility to those with major concerns about returning. “A lot of kind of communication and engagement needs to happen through that process,” said Almendra. Many panelists advocated greater intentionality when asking employees to return, focusing on the benefits of in-person work. They’re considering what activities warrant returning to the office, and adjusting schedules for occasions when team members need to collaborate, problem-solve, brainstorm, or welcome a new hire. “People really value going back and seeing everybody,” said Diana Geofroy, VP of HR for Colgate-Palmolive. “They want to be in the office when there is a purpose and not to go in the office just to send emails, which is something they can do at home. People value working in teams and working in collaboration.” While employers are experimenting with return plans, they’re also reworking office layouts. Cubicles are being replaced with couches and more open spaces to encourage interaction. Companies are testing creative ways to entice employees to return, like offering transportation allowances and complimentary EV charging. When in doubt, free food always seems to do the trick. “We're going to bring back weekly team lunches, just as a perk,” said Shannon Flynn, VP of corporate HR at Fortive, an industrial tech company. “It’s amazing how much that does incentivize people to come in.” She’s already seeing a shift in momentum. “At the beginning of the year, only a handful of us were coming in and nobody really saw the value in it,” said Flynn. “As more and more people are coming in, they’re getting excited about coming in on a more regular basis. I think we’re going to see the pendulum swing back to the middle.” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who has written for regional publications in California and Hawaii, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif.
Four Ways to Get Employees to Engage in Your HR Programs
BY Samantha Campos October 08, 2022Today’s workforce is struggling to pay attention. Remote and hybrid work has led to increased communication and decreased connection. Burnout is rampant. Meanwhile, HR departments are juggling multiple priorities: streamlining recruitment and onboarding processes, keeping up with hiring demands, making hybrid-work workable for employees, training managers to be great people leaders, and increasing the impact of organizational initiatives. Phew! How can employers cut through all this to create a more engaged workforce? During a thought-leadership spotlight titled, “Four Ways to Get Employees to Engage and Participate in Your HR Programs in 2022,” at From Day One’s San Francisco conference in September, speakers Matt Frank and Matt Dardenne–a/k/a “the Matts”–presented timely data and practical solutions to increase engagement and connection. Both work for Enboarder, an onboarding platform, which surveyed 2,000 full-time employees globally in a People Insights Report from 2021. “Collaboration has become harder during the pandemic,” said Dardenne, Enboarder’s senior enterprise relationship manager, “especially for hybrid workers–73% agree that genuine collaboration takes more effort than it did in March of 2020.” According to the report, 67% of hybrid workers said they felt burned out and overwhelmed. And they’re not alone: 61% of managers receive 21 or more notifications in a day, which can also lead to feeling overwhelmed. “Leaders are feeling this in a major way,” said Dardenne. “Across Slack and all the other nifty tools we have, I receive 20 notifications before I even wake up oftentimes.” Burnout is an obvious de-motivator. Nearly two-thirds of employees say they haven’t changed their behavior at work because of an HR initiative in the last 12 months. At the same time, 70% say their manager doesn’t frequently encourage them to engage in HR initiatives, and 36% say they haven’t made the most of the learning-and-development programs available at their organization. Consequently, HR programs are not as impactful as they could be due to poorly timed communication, a lack of connection (especially among hybrid and remote employees), poor engagement across the board, and too much friction to act quickly. To resolve this, the Matts explained the “four pillars of a people-centric journey,” starting with engagement. No. 1: “How do we get engagement and participation up?” asked Frank, Enboarder’s enterprise customer success manager, who recommended making communication more personable and customized to the specific employee. “Like you’re basically talking to a friend. Maybe including some funny memes. And then don’t be afraid to have some fun with the content that you’re providing your employees.” Matt Frank of Enboarder joined his colleague Dardenne for the presentation The second pillar: nudges. “Having bite-sized pieces of information throughout the course of a workflow seems to be more impactful and digestible,” said Frank. Nudges are particularly helpful during onboarding. A few days before an employee’s start date, leaders can send a reminder to the hiring manager to send the new hire a text message, to congratulate and thank them for joining the team. Managers can send a form to a new hire to get to know them a bit more, perhaps asking what their favorite afternoon snack is. “So, on their first day, you could have Pringles or whatever their go-to snack is on their desk waiting for them.” Ease, or making communications and programs easy to interpret, is a third pillar of the people-activation model. “A lot of employees give up on a learning and development initiative because they don’t understand the ‘why’ behind it,” said Frank. “They just think they’re being forced to do something.” Leaders need to clearly explain the purpose behind the program or initiative. With myriad communication platforms available, having employees choose their preferred method of contact makes it easier for them to ingest content. Reducing the number of system logins by incorporating a single sign-in authentication also makes the process more streamlined. “A lot of folks will give up on a simple task simply because they can’t log in through the system that you’re trying to have them access,” said Frank. Connection is the final pillar. “Through our research and study, 82% of employees say they’re more motivated to work on a project or program when they feel closer to the team,” said Frank. “And 84% of employees find it easier to do their best work when they feel close to the team they’re working with.” So how can employers make connections more effectively? “Take an audit of your current initiatives,” said Frank. Rethink generic content. Consider revising the way HR initiatives are communicated. “A mentor or buddy program also has a great effect on building that connection across departments or within the same team.” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight, Enboarder.
How Corporate Spending Can Benefit the Community–and the Planet
BY Samantha Campos October 08, 2022When companies consider how to maximize their spending to do the most good, they take into account business and social value. Kaiser Permanente is one of the largest health care providers in the U.S. “That means we're big,” said Ije-Enu Udeze Nwosu, Kaiser’s VP of market operations, performance, and impact. “We’re spending big. So how do we make sure that we’re leveraging that spend?” One way to positively impact communities is by purchasing goods and services from diverse suppliers–the majority of which are small, local businesses. In 2014 Kaiser became the first health care provider to reach the Billion Dollar Roundtable with its diverse supplier program, joining 18 other U.S.-based corporations that spend $1 billion or more annually with certified minority- and women-owned businesses. Nwosu and her team wanted to go deeper. She addressed how in a fireside chat titled, “How Corporate Spending Can Have an Impact for Good,” with moderator Ken Howe, managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner, at From Day One’s recent San Francisco conference. “Health is really 10% about how you’re feeling today,” she said. “But that’s only part of your health story. Think about your environment. Think about access to healthy food, jobs, and health care. We’re trying to tackle those upstream so that our communities are the healthiest ones that exist.” Based in Oakland, Calif., Kaiser serves 12.6 million members and has nearly 220,000 employees. It makes sense for a managed care consortium like Kaiser to address social and environmental determinants of health, which often reveal significant racial disparities. “When you think about the climate crisis that we’re facing, that’s a health crisis as well,” said Nwosu. “Because the same communities that are disenfranchised when you think about total health, are the same communities that are disenfranchised when you talk about the climate.” Kaiser has declared that by 2025, the organization will increase its purchase of products and materials meeting environmental standards to 50%. It also reached carbon neutrality as an organization several years ago, according to Nwosu. And Kaiser made a pledge that by 2030, it will have reduced its greenhouse-gas emissions by 50%. “The uptick of asthma in communities of color is astronomical, it’s all tied to climate change. If we don’t proactively target those areas, we’re creating a greater health crisis,” she said. Ken Howe, managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner, moderated the conversation In addition to supply-chain diversity and carbon footprint, Kaiser needed to factor in the economics of the community in order to maximize its impact spending. “We are still in the midst of Covid right now,” Nwosu said, “and businesses were hit really hard; 50% of African American businesses didn’t make it. How do we stand up businesses so that they make it through Covid? How do you build up and restore, not just the financial health of the business, but also the mental health of the business leaders, which was just as important?” As a benefit to its health plan, Kaiser began offering its members a mindfulness app for free. It developed a Resilience and Restoration Toolkit for its suppliers. Kaiser also made a commitment to spend and provide direct services for Black- and brown-owned businesses, assisting upwards of 2,000 of them, Nwosu said. None of its community programs were cut during the pandemic. One such program, called Inner City Capital Connections, combining executive education, webinars, coaching, and access to capital, was created to help small businesses led by underrepresented groups survive the economic impact of the pandemic. In order to assess community needs, Nwosu emphasized the importance of leaving the corporate four walls to actually go talk to people, business owners, and agencies. She stressed the value of being able to pivot on the spot and stay nimble. “We have to also reset the way that we worked and the way that we thought about things.” And to make the greatest impact with spending, what’s most needed is courage. “You have to be bold with your voice,” said Nwosu. “What is happening is bigger than you, but you taking that step is going to make it better. We can all do good and do well at the same time.” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif.
Helping Workers Find Strengths to Take on New Roles
BY Samantha Campos October 06, 2022“It’s a fascinating moment to be talking about work with so much disruption, so many fast-changing cultural conversations about race and gender equity,” said Esther Kaplan, deputy editor of investigations at Insider. “A tight labor market, rise in unionization, a shift to remote and hybrid work, a major rebalancing of work and life. So, within all that, how do we make the workplace a meaningful site for investment, learning, and growth?” Kaplan moderated a panel titled, “How Employers Can Help Workers Find Strengths to Take on New Roles” at From Day One’s San Francisco conference in September. Her question sparked a discussion on how and why companies need to continue developing their workforce in order to keep it. “Despite the tumult of the past few years, employee growth–development, learning opportunities–remains one of the most stable drivers of engagement and retention,” said Molly Delaney, head of people analytics at X, the Moonshot Factory, an innovation lab that’s a division of Google. “This is true regardless of markets, industries, different employee types.” The top reason employees leave their jobs is lack of career development and advancement, according to recent McKinsey research. “If you want to compete for and retain your best talent, then you absolutely need to invest in learning and development,” said Tom Griffiths, CEO and co-founder of Hone, a leadership-training platform. “Not just for the first-order benefit of people getting better at their jobs, but for the second-order effects of people wanting to stay longer.” A generational shift is influencing workplace culture as well. It’s no longer the norm to stay at one job on a linear track for 30 years. Millennials and Gen Z new hires want to be cared for and developed. At the same time, business is changing rapidly when it comes to speed, agility, and adaptability. “We need to make sure that our employees are not just comfortable where they’re working, but also are getting ready to manage those changes,” said Shveta Miglani, PhD, head of global learning and development at Micron Technology, a semiconductor manufacturer. “How do we help them to navigate through and make sure they’re building that muscle continuously to learn?” Miglani advocated for upskilling or reskilling, which encourages talent mobility where people can move within and even across different functions. “We really need to invest in giving people time,” said Evan Graner, VP of employee experience at Edelman, a global communications firm. “We are time-starved, and we continue to be time-starved.” “We really need to invest in giving people time,” said Graner. “We are time-starved, and we continue to be time-starved.” “We like to use busyness as an excuse,” said Tyana Owings, head of people at Cloverleaf, an automated coaching platform. “If you want to know what somebody’s priority is, look at their checkbook and planner. Make time for the things that are important. Where are your obstacles and how can I help you overcome those obstacles to make time for your own development?” “Not every training and development opportunity is created equal,” said Delaney. “The best learning and development programs are not programs at all. They are highly intentional efforts to match the types of skills and abilities that an employee wants to learn, with the types of skills and abilities that a team needs within the organization to meet their strategic goals.” That approach avoids many of the common pitfalls of training by allowing an employee already in a role to continue doing the work and learning skills as they go. It’s highly feedback-driven and an effective use of the employee’s time, which is in high demand and low supply these days. “It’s a supply-chain problem,” said Graner, who cited an Edelman report with Microsoft from earlier this year. “Not only do you have 152% more meetings on your calendar, you spend 252% more time in meetings. You receive one-third more instant messages than you used to, and you respond to half of those in less than five minutes. So not only is the workday 13% longer [by] 46 minutes, it’s more intense.” “We’re trying to shove new business into the way we did old schedules,” said Owings. “So, we always did this on Wednesdays, we’ve done it at noon for the past five years. Maybe that’s not the best thing anymore. Sometimes we have to step back and think more strategically. Is the way that we’re organizing our work week accommodating 2022 business needs or are we still accommodating 2017 business needs?” Organizations must create the infrastructure to allocate growth and development opportunities. For example, employers can encourage “no meetings Fridays,” so that employees can catch up on email, attend workshops, or do brown bag sessions with teams. “We started that at the organizational level,” said Miglani, “and it’s really helping us because now people are looking forward to it and they are making time for it.” Esther Kaplan moderated the conversation “Where we’ve seen companies really succeed in driving a learning culture is when it comes from the top down,” said Griffiths. Leaders must communicate early on and very experientially how much they value learning and development. “We need to think about the modalities in which we’re training,” said Delaney. “Democratizing learning and development, which should become easier to some degree now that we’re remote or virtual, and making those opportunities available through multiple modalities. We need to not only refresh how we’re doing training but specifically what we’re training on and how we’re equipping our workforce for a continually hybrid or remote environment.” “I have a 13 year old who keeps arguing with us, ‘Why do I need to learn math every single day?’” said Miglani, who’d give her son tasks to spend $10 at the store. “The application of what you are learning is the most important thing.” Moderator Kaplan summarized the insightful discussion: “Don’t get stuck in current job descriptions or current ways of structuring the work week. Try to align learning with work assignments. Create psychological safety in which people can say what they want and need to learn, and don’'t approach it as a checkbox thing.” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, California.
Making Your Company a Magnet for a Diverse Workforce
BY Samantha Campos October 03, 2022Diversity strategies have transformed from lofty concepts to more focused and effective policies, carried out with attention to metrics. Leaders are reporting increased transparency and accountability when it comes to tracking the impact of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, as well as attracting the future workforce. “There’s been a real push to quantify and report on how you’re doing as a company,” said Caitlyn Metteer, director of recruiting at Lever, a recruitment software company, “which is definitely pushing things in the right direction.” “I would not join an employer that didn’t have some kind of outward-facing information about their DEI efforts,” said Komal Chokshi, chief DEI officer and principal counsel for UC Legal at the University of California. “What are they hiding if they’re not able to be accountable and tell the public what they’re doing?” As more companies incorporate DEI initiatives, workplace culture is evolving. Diversity is more integrated and at the forefront, but differentiation is key to making an impact with inclusion efforts. During From Day One’s conference in San Francisco last month, a panel of experts discussed a shift from visible diversity to diversity of thought in “Making Your Company a Magnet for a Diverse Workforce,” led by moderator Spencer Whitney, digital editor at KQED, a public broadcasting company for Northern California. “There are a lot of dimensions of diversity,” said Antoinette Hamilton, global head of inclusion and diversity at Lam Research, a supplier to the semiconductor industry. “There are dimensions of diversity that matter as it relates to innovation, as it relates to productivity. But some dimensions don’t matter. We have to ensure that we’re looking at our organizations and understanding those differences that matter to the work that we do.” Other panelists agreed. “Previously a lot of the focus was how many diverse candidates applied for the job, how many interviews for the job,” said Chokshi. “It’s much more nuanced than that now.” For example, search committees or recruiting teams at the University of California receive anti-bias training. They then work with the institution’s equity advisor program, which includes people who are not part of the search committee, to review resumes and conduct interviews to ensure implicit bias doesn’t sneak in. Said Chokshi: “I always think about who’s counting on me. In the legal industry, I think about the types of people who are languishing, people who are not getting promoted” Issues of diversity are integral to other areas of work, as well. “We have become the people who are crisis communicators,” said Miriam Warren, chief diversity officer at Yelp, the crowd-sourced review platform. “We help to determine when a company is going to speak out on a particular issue. We have become strategic advisors to our executives in order to help them understand how employees are feeling and what their sentiment is.” A corporation may know the demographics of its workforce, but demographics are a lagging indicator. Panelists advise going a level deeper, beyond just visible differences. How are people moving throughout the organization? What are promotion rates? How is attendance for employee resource groups (ERGs)? Don’t measure just to measure. “You measure these things so that you understand where you need to focus on your policies and practices within your organization to enhance those things so that your culture really does become inclusive,” said Hamilton, “and you’re giving folks benefits that matter to them.” Look for consistent results of engagement surveys as one measurement of an inclusive culture. Surveys also provide good opportunities to investigate where people are engaged, and where they are not engaged. There’s not one singular metric or workstream around DEI; engagement surveys, promotion rates, retention rates, and recruiting rates all present a picture of workplace diversity. “In order for it to feel authentic and holistic, [diversity] has to be a lens that you take to every aspect of your company,” said Metteer. “Otherwise, if it’s just an initiative it can feel really flat and not very engaging.” Diversity initiatives require intentionality and a holistic strategy, influencing recruitment efforts with things like removing biased language from job descriptions and performing equity reviews for salaries. “The best way to attract people from underrepresented groups is to be a company where people from underrepresented groups want to work,” said Metteer. “You want to make the immediate impact, but you have to realize that at its core, inclusion and diversity is a change-management initiative,” said Hamilton. “And we all know change is really hard. So, stay focused.” Key in on one or two things where you want to have big change, where you feel like it’s going to have the biggest impact in the organization and do that work.” Spencer Whitney, digital editor at KQED, moderated the conversation A more integrated diversity strategy helps companies recruit and retain a diverse workforce. But how and where the company invests its dollars also matters. Workers want to know where companies stand on social issues. So how do companies decide when to speak out? “We’ve broken it down into three areas that we look at when we think about whether or not we should speak out on an issue,” said Warren. “Are our values consistent with this issue? We’re looking at our various community constituencies. And can our platform actually help to push this issue forward?” “I always think about who’s counting on me,” said Chokshi. “In the legal industry, I think about the types of people who are languishing, people who are not getting promoted, people who are not making partner at law firms. And that’s something that really keeps me motivated because there’s just so much need out there. It emboldens me to speak up in my role.” Companies need to be prepared to take action beyond mere platitudes. Leaders can utilize ERGs to ensure they’re getting a diverse set of perspectives, and to get buy-in from everyone in the company, not just DEI officers. Panelists advise being consistent and realistic with diversity efforts. And to stay focused, since it’s a long game. “You really have to understand your organization,” said Hamilton. “We have to move from best practices to right practices for our individual organizations. One size does not fit all with inclusion and diversity. We have to be really crisp and clear on where you want to affect and impact change.” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who has written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food-justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif.
Why Increasing Empathy Makes Good Business Sense
BY Samantha Campos September 07, 2022It’s a trait that’s often misunderstood. We might think empathy is about feeling others’ pain, that you either have empathy or you don’t. We might not see a need for it at work. But employers may underestimate its power to improve performance. So says Adam Bouse, a performance coach from 15Five, a comprehensive performance- management platform. Utilizing years of academic research and practice, Bouse made his case for increasing workplace empathy in the thought-leadership spotlight, “Empathy: The Missing Leadership Skill You Need for Collaboration and Decision-Making,” at From Day One’s August virtual conference on hybrid workforce strategies. “Empathy isn’t just something that's nice to have,” said Bouse. “It’s going to contribute to productivity, to creativity, to retention. Those things are going to impact business results and the bottom line. So this isn't about being nice or being kind to people–though, let’s do that, too. Let’s be better humans.” Empathy is a critical tool for truly effective and transformational leadership. The better that we can empathize as leaders, the more effectively we can collaborate, make decisions, and reach goals. It’s a trainable skill that leads to higher levels of trust, more effective communication, and drives more empowered decision-making, asserted Bouse. The Business Case for Empathy Employees with empathetic leaders are more engaged at work (76% versus 32%, as reported in a 2020 study by Catalyst). Deeper engagement impacts productivity, inclusion, and the capacity to handle challenges and opportunities. Having empathetic leaders also increases employees’ ability to be innovative (61% vs. 13%, according to the same study). Beyond creating new products or ideas, innovation is about embracing constraints and problem-solving. “Being understood is going to enable people to feel more comfortable taking risks,” said Bouse, “and trying things that haven’t been tried before.” Adam Bouse, a performance coach from 15Five (Company photo) Increased empathy leads to higher retention rates for female employees, and more so with women of color. When they felt respected and valued, 62% of women of color and 57% of white women (vs. 30% and 14%, respectively, among those who didn’t) said they were unlikely to leave their companies. If people leave managers not companies, as the thinking goes, then coaching leaders to express understanding will result in lower turnover. “This is really about building connection within your teams and your organizations so that you can lead thriving people and execute high-performing objectives,” said Bouse. Defining Empathy So what is empathy? How does it work? And how does it impact our ability to make effective decisions? Nursing scholar Theresa Wiseman defined empathy as having four attributes: Understanding what someone thinks. Understanding what someone feels. Communicating your understanding back to the other person. Withholding judgment. It’s not merely an emotional experience or feeling what someone else feels. Nor is it a fixed trait. “Empathy is just one part of the process of relating to, connecting, and working with other people,” said Bouse. “[It’s] an ongoing, dynamic experience. There are elements of it that are neurological, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral. It’s one tool in the toolkit. I’s not the whole process, but it's a starting point.” As with any tool, knowing when and where to use it is key. “When do I need to sit down and listen?” asks Bouse. “And when are we ready for action?” Leaders need to be able to be more empathetic, but not as a substitute for accountability. “My shorthand definition of empathy is simply understanding without judgment,” said Bouse. “It’s a trainable skill that every leader needs to be leveraging, in every conversation, in every relationship, and every aspect of the work.” Emotions and Decision-making Empathy is not the opposite of being logical or rational. Thoughts and feelings are connected; you can’t selectively have one without the other. Empathy goes beyond relying on your instincts–which is generally only helpful when you have a predictable circumstance with limited variables that you’re evaluating repeatedly. But people are complicated. Trusting your gut may mean you’re relying on assumptions. But bringing emotion into decision-making improves performance, as researched by scholars Lisa Feldman Barrett and Myeong Gu-Seo: “Contrary to the popular belief that feelings are generally bad for decision-making, we found that individuals who experienced more intense feelings achieved higher decision-making performance.” We all experience biases, which show up as emotional impulses that drive our behavior. People who are more aware of their emotions can better regulate them and put them into context. This integration of thoughts and emotions helps us to make the most effective choice based on a holistic picture. “So we actually need to bring more emotion into decision making,” Bouse said, “but not make decisions purely based on emotional means.” Women tend to score higher on empathy assessments. But competency does not equal capacity. “There are a lot of cultural factors built into how we've been socialized, across the gender spectrum, about what's appropriate to express,” said Bouse. “Those things tend to shape the way that we understand or justify what we are or aren't feeling. But that doesn't mean you can't grow and develop.” How to Level Up Your Empathy The No. 1 reason leaders don’t practice empathy is they haven’t done their own work in terms of looking within themselves, according to Bouse. Having empathy and a non-judgmental understanding of others requires us to understand ourselves first. “I want to become my best self so that I can be reflective, which enables me to then commit to relational mastery, focusing on the relationships and how I influence and impact other people, which allows us to create a really powerful shared context.” In remote and hybrid work, we can’t see what people are doing or how they spend their time, and may not understand the frustrations that show up in their day. But what was implicit must become explicit. Leaders and colleagues must ask questions to seek understanding, check for accuracy, withhold judgment, stay curious and offer support so that better decisions are made. “We can collaborate better, especially across time and distance, asynchronous communication, Slack messages, text messages, video messages,” said Bouse. “A lot can get lost in a remote environment. And so we have to be really intentional.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this thought-leadership spotlight, 15Five. Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who has written for regional publications in California and Hawaii, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif.
Burnout-proof Your Culture to Better Performance
BY Samantha Campos July 09, 2022Sarah Sheehan has dealt with a lot in the last few weeks. She underwent a failed IVF treatment, her seventh this year. She unexpectedly lost her niece. She had a change of responsibilities at her organization. She had to leave her toddler behind on a cross-country business trip. She and her entire family got Covid. It’s all impacted how she’s shown up at work. “There are things that we can control within organizations: how someone’s onboarding experience goes. If there’s a reorg, how you communicate about that, performance reviews, promotions,” said Sheehan, co-founder and president of Bravely. “But then there are all of these other layers to individuals–and things that are happening to them–that we have no control over as leaders. Caring for a sick relative. Conflict. Massacre.” At From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference, Sheehan spoke in a Thought Leadership Spotlight about meeting the challenge of increased employee burnout and attrition in a time of constant external change. She referred to these as “moments that matter” in the employee experience. “In those moments where we meet people,” she said, “that impacts all of these things: their sense of belonging, their psychological safety, their connection to the organization, their sense of purpose, whether or not they feel like getting up every day and coming to do the work. Resilience just doesn’t happen, it’s built because someone feels motivated to do it for you and your organization because of the care that you showed.” Sarah Sheehan, co-founder and president of Bravely, at the conference in Mountain View, Calif. (Photo by David Coe for From Day One) Currently, only 24% of people feel that their organizations care about their well-being, according to a 2022 Gallup Poll. It’s a dramatic decrease in perception since the start of the pandemic, the impact of which has led to worsened work-life balance and burnout, all of which have contributed to the Great Resignation. Burnout is estimated to cost the U.S. economy more than $500 billion dollars annually, as reported in a Harvard Business Review article titled, “Burnout Is About Your Workplace, Not Your People.” An estimated 550 million workdays are lost due to stress. And burned-out employees are 2.6 times as likely to look for another job. But when employees strongly agree their company supports their well-being, they are 69% less likely to leave. So how can companies do things differently? Cultivate a Culture of Compassion For too long, the workplace has been an environment where people couldn’t talk about their lives and how they were negatively impacting them. But it now has to be part of any employer’s strategy for building culture. “The first step is to create a culture where people are able to actually share,” said Sheehan, who admitted that in past jobs she was unable to divulge vulnerable aspects of her life. “I would just have to put on my jacket every day and go to work and act like I was okay. Leading with empathy, showing your teams that you’re going to give and extend what is needed in these moments–we can’t go back to the old way of work.” Each of us has a set of personal circumstances that impact how we show up at work. “We’ve designed workplaces for white men who have a stay-at-home partner, so they work for nobody,” Reshma Saujani, author of Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It’s Different Than You Think), said recently. “When you design and build for the most vulnerable, you design for everybody.” Consider the identities and backgrounds of your people. Use Trust as an Indicator Companies should regularly ask their people for feedback through surveys and one-on-ones, in order to gauge if the workplace culture is healthy or not. “Do they feel like they can trust the manager?” asked Sheehan. “Do they feel like they trust the leaders of their organization to steer them in the right direction? Is support normalized and encouraged? If the answer to that is ‘no,’ through whatever survey mechanisms you use, you know that you’ve got to start over.” Prioritize Employee Development and Purpose Everybody wants to be invested in, and everybody wants development opportunities. Rather than solely focusing on managers and high performers, employers should provide equitable access at every level across the organization. Ensure that resources are readily available and that people are empowered to engage with them in a self-directed way. And because every individual has their own set of needs, definitions of success, preferred working styles, and conditions under which they thrive, it’s imperative that organizations offer tailored support. “Coaching or training supports inclusion and belonging,” said Sheehan. “It’s really critical that we start to look at every resource that we offer and ask ourselves, ‘Does this contribute or not to people having a greater sense of belonging, or are we only including a certain group of people in this level of investment?’ But when we invest in people, that’s only going to drive more revenue.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Bravely, who sponsored this Thought Leadership Spotlight. Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s worked for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif..
How a Tech Giant Charts Its Progress on Diversity
BY Samantha Campos July 07, 2022Every year Google publishes a diversity report as a way to measure and incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into its workplace and beyond. The annual report is one of the largest sets of diversity data in the tech field. In a fireside chat titled, “Telling Your Story of Positive Purpose,” at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference in June, Google’s Maria Medrano told journalist Adam Lashinsky how nine years of the report’s data helps the tech giant shape its narrative and drive constructive change. “We’re very committed to being learners and we’re committed to sharing those learnings with people,” said Medrano, Google’s senior director for diversity partnerships and external engagement. “It’s about sharing our experiences, what we’ve learned through the conversations we’ve had. And the work that we’re doing–not just inside of the company, but also what we’re doing in our community, and what we’re doing with the products that we build.” The annual report enables Google to track its progress with diversity measures, creating greater transparency and accountability, and informing its policies. Medrano, who joined Google in early 2021 after serving as chief diversity officer for Visa, reflected on the impact of the commitments made by the company over the last two years. Like most of Silicon Valley, Google has lagged other industries when it comes to DEI, but the company is determined to catch up. “From my perspective, it was having an understanding of it being much broader and bigger than the usual conversation around people,” she said. “Representation, retention, attrition–it’s really around society, and how we’re building a bridge community. We’ve seen great impact on our highest numbers of representation for our Black community, for our Latino community, and also for our women, which means that we’ve put the right parties in place.” Medrano was interviewed by journalist Adam Lashinsky, a contributor to Insider and the Washington Post, and former executive editor of Fortune Medrano reported that last year was Google’s best year ever in hiring. “We’ve especially taken in women globally: 37.5% of our hires were women.” The company also hired more Black and Latino employees in the U.S. “We’re growing. It’s going to take time, it’s not going to happen overnight, but we’re going in the right direction.” The key, she said, is focusing on hiring for cultural “add” instead of cultural “fit.” “We want to add a little of everyone into the company,” said Medrano. “That’s the beauty about diversity and inclusion being collaborative. The cultural adaptation of that component of ‘adding a little bit more’–think about a recipe, add a little bit more things and there are outcomes of that. I think that’s what gives us the opportunity to think about this holistically.” Part of Google’s push for constructive change involves cultivating relationships with community partners, including research and academic institutions. That community outreach helps the company recruit and retain talent, and cultivates meaningful collaborations. “Communities want to support organizations, but if we don’t stay close to them, then how are they going to understand how they can support us and vice versa?” Medrano said. “The world is bringing us a lot closer, but how do we do it in a way that’s not destructive? External organizations that are really committed, they’re mission-aligned to us around what we’re doing to retain our talent, develop our talent, to extend those moments—especially for underrepresented Googlers. I spend a lot of time getting to know lots of partners in the valley that help become an extension of who we are.” One of Google’s biggest challenges is sustaining its products even in the midst of personnel changes, so it becomes even more vital to ensure that the organization has an inclusive culture to retain talent. The pandemic brought its own set of challenges, including enacting flexible policies related to hybrid and remote work. Medrano shared her own experience of working remotely from a multigenerational household in Sacramento. “Most Googlers globally have started a hybrid work-week model,” Medrano said. “It’s a very real conversation on ‘This is what I need, these are the days, this is what the team needs.’ We’re all grownups here. And for folks that have been remote, helping them with their anxiety. It’s having conversations, sharing our experiences, and saying this is possible. Helping people, that’s all we can do.” For one of the world’s largest and most influential companies, its purpose is powered by its people, Medrano said. It’s about creating an environment where everyone feels like they belong. “‘Belonging’ for us is about understanding people’s perspectives,” said Medrano. “We welcome all viewpoints, but we also balance it with respect and dignity, and ensure that no one feels that they’re being talked over or whatnot. We’re all human and we have to understand this conversation is important, and it impacts each and every one of us very personally. We want to ensure that everyone feels respected and valued.” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s worked for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, California.
How to Make Inclusion Work From the Bottom Up
BY Samantha Campos July 06, 2022While the conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has evolved at a swift pace in the last two years, it helps to have the perspective of age. Charles Moses, DBA, remembered having similar discussions about workplace culture 40 years ago. “Things were simpler then,” said the veteran journalist and current dean of Eberhardt School of Business at the University of the Pacific. Moderating a panel entitled, “Is Your Company Developing an Inclusive Culture?” at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference in June, Moses said he had good news and bad news to offer. “The good news is that we have better language to understand what people are experiencing when they interact with corporations and other entities,” he said. And then the bad news: “I’m not sure we're doing a better job.” A survey at Stanford University last year underscored that observation, with faculty and students reporting the harmful behaviors of discrimination and the negative effects of experiencing exclusion. The effects of the lack of inclusion, the respondents said, ranged from difficulty concentrating, eating, or sleeping, to ultimately leaving school. Informed by its findings, the institution is incorporating focus groups and other discussions to determine the next steps, said panelist Rosalind Conerly, EdD, associate dean and director of Stanford’s Centers for Equity, Community and Leadership. “A lot of organizations need to examine what they’re doing wrong and really be brave and transparent about that,” Conerly said. “To me [inclusion] means it’s action-oriented. I think about what we’re doing in our organizations to really create these opportunities for equitable access to resources for folks that may feel marginalized or ‘othered.’ This could mean reforming or creating new policies or practices.” As the conversation progressed, Moses encouraged speakers to focus on the behaviors that elicit inclusivity in the workplace. Among their insights: Putting Feedback Into Action Transparency encourages inclusiveness, several speakers asserted. As noted by Chris Young, head of sales at HiBob, the HR platform, openness at all levels requires trust and constant feedback. Often, the feedback can lead to greater buy-in and can help formulate new policies. “Our hybrid-remote plan [was] essentially written by all of our employees—which, across 16 countries, took a little bit of feedback to get done. But once we got that feedback, we were able to put it in place and set our expectations around it.” The conference took place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View A key component of receiving feedback is not just listening, but also taking action. “Your leadership needs to show that they are open to hearing and listening and responding to you in some way,” said Kara Silverstein, director of integrity and senior director of people operations at Google. “Because otherwise your employee just feels lost and they feel that their voice isn’t valued, their perspective isn’t important. And then you really are going to erode this inclusive cultural path.” Incorporating employee resource groups (ERGs) is another way of utilizing feedback and employee engagement. “It’s really focused on empowering and retention,” said Stanford’s Conerly. “We’re seeing ours as a formal and informal mentoring tool as well. Folks are able to connect across industries, across projects that they’re working on, but it’s also an opportunity for our employees to really tap into their zone of genius.” Employees can use ERGs to engage with something they’re interested in that may not be a part of their specific roles or job duties. There are benefits for the organization as well. Before Stanford launched its campus-wide DEI survey, it asked Conerly’s group to comment on the questions. “So thinking about your DEI strategy and your roadmaps, a lot of folks are starting to use these ERG groups for implementation of their DEI initiative. That isa big way that you can continue to utilize your groups.” Engaging Emotional Intelligence To foster an inclusive environment, organizations must activate emotional intelligence (EQ). It’s vital that leaders show empathy, while “respecting and valuing our differences,” said Prasun Maharatna, VP of HR at Zensar Technologies, a digital-transformation company, who added the importance of “widening the listening capabilities of the organization.” Doug Dennerline, CEO and executive chairman of Betterworks, a performance-management platform, agreed. “Empathy’s the key thing, and it starts at the top.” His company goes as far as regularly asking its staff, “Are we being empathetic enough?” “It goes beyond just making people feel like they belong,” said Dennerline. “Seventy-eight percent of people in an organization of greater than a thousand people don’t really understand how their work helps the company achieve the goals that it’s trying to achieve. It’s inclusive when you know that what you’re doing every day is actually helping somebody feel good about helping achieve something. I also think without inclusion, you don’t really get to diversity. One follows the other.” Moderator Moses led the group into an exploration of constructive solutions to stubborn problems Many panelists mentioned the necessity of increased training for leaders, and rethinking top-down hierarchical structures to a bottom-up strategy. “We’ve had a lot of great ideas and innovation come doing that flip,” said HiBob’s Young. “Whether it’s creating culture committees that the teams have been asking for, whether it’s switching our KPIs to KBAs (Keep Being Awesome), whether it’s our high-growth performance management—where we used to think about the number and the rating and now it’s coming from the people up—and it’s the skills they think they need help with and how we can help get them there.” Playground Rules Inclusivity is “not the work of a few,” said Silverstein, “but it’s the work of all.” And everyone must see themselves in the solution. When events outside of the workplace have a negative impact, people can feel like their identities are being challenged or that they’re unsafe in some way in their communities. “You need to acknowledge what folks are going through,” said Silverstein. “What we found is that it’s really important to set boundaries. Silverstein wrote Google’s Community Guidelines, which were adopted a few years ago. “When people are interacting online, there’s a thin line between a work conversation and a Reddit thread. We’re not barring any particular conversations, but we’re setting guidelines on the way you have those conversations,” she said. “It's not that there are taboo topics per se, but it’s about how you treat one another with respect,” Silverstein continued. “You are each responsible for creating a community of inclusion here. You are each responsible for making sure that your coworkers feel like they belong. And so you need to consider the words you are saying, and whether you are doing that. Some of the rules I refer to feel like they were ones that were introduced to my kids in kindergarten—‘Treat others how you would want to be treated,’ and things like that. But it works with adults as well. If you do not show where the lines are, then you can't expect people to follow them.” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s worked for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif.