Help Wanted: Tools for Solving the Hourly-worker Shortage
BY Sheila Flynn August 18, 2021From highway billboards advertising jobs at McDonald’s to regional ads on movie theater screens trying to attract workers to Shutterfly, the push to recruit hourly employees has reached something of a zenith across the U.S. And there’s good reason for that. As Covid vaccination rates increase and the U.S. economy recovers, fewer and fewer people are looking to start back up at their old jobs. Both surveys and anecdotal evidence indicate that many workers, including those paid hourly, are no longer satisfied to return to industries that proved particularly vulnerable during a pandemic, including the hospitality industry. Some workers have learned new skills, decided to switch careers, or simply searched for better and different opportunities. That’s left a hole for many employers looking to fill hourly-wage positions, with employers facing a level of competition that hasn’t been seen for decades–or possibly ever. “I’ve been doing this for close to 40 years. I have never seen this type of market during last Q4 in my lifetime. We were able to meet the hiring demands, but we struggled with that,” said Peggy Anderson, head of talent acquisition at Shutterfly, during a recent From Day One webinar titled “Solving the Hourly-Worker Shortage Using Recruiting Tech and Data.” Employers have responded with a range of tools, including the use of AI to place job ads and virtual job interviews on Zoom, but they also still rely on techniques that are “a little old-fashioned,” as Anderson put it. While the tech tools facilitate the search and vetting process, some managers remain loathe to onboard frontline or hourly employees without first getting to meet them in person. “I really want to emphasize that speed is not everything,” said Kerry Royer, head of global talent acquisition for Verizon, adding that “it’s making sure you keep a human in the process, too, because there’s a lot of things you can do in your process to hire people in a week–let technology do it right for you all the way through–but we believe at Verizon that there should be a human in the process.” Speaking on the hourly-worker shortage, top row from left: Kyle Leigh of Appcast and Peggy Anderson of Shutterfly. Bottow row, from left, Kerry Royer of Verizon, moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company and Marshela McDaniel of McDonald's (Image by From Day One) At the same time, however, the current demand for hourly workers everywhere from fast-food chains to Amazon means that, to some extent, now it’s the employers who need to compete with each other, rather than the candidates. So even if employers aren’t making snap decisions about prospective hires, they need to be responsive. “Just responding to the applicant the same day is huge,” said Kyle Leigh of Appcast, which makes software for programmatic job advertising. “If you’re Applebees and you get a candidate for a line cook, that line cook needs a job yesterday, right? That person is not going to wait two to three days to hear back from you.” The candidate will go elsewhere, like Amazon. The immediacy is the “biggest challenge that our clients get,” Leigh added. “It’s a competitive market,” confirmed Marshela McDaniel, a field people officer for McDonald’s. “If people are looking to apply, they’re not just looking at one location, they’re looking at multiple locations and trying to understand, Who’s going to get back to me? Which is going to give me the best opportunity to fit my needs as an employee?” “We’ve been able to really reduce that time-to-hire process,” she added. “Right now, we’re roughly at about eight days. And we’re continuing to see improvements in those numbers. And so our goal is going to be to continue to create that experience where not only does the employee feel engaged in the process, but we’re really able to really set that great first impression in that hiring process.” On top of finding candidates in the first place, many companies have added sweeteners to seal the deal: better pay, signing bonus incentives, more flexible hours, additional benefits, and a more curated overall image of their corporate culture. “A lot of our operators have joined into the sign-on bonus idea to try to help attract and bring in people quickly,” McDaniel said. “Many of our operators are looking at flexibility in regards to scheduling, understanding that we do serve a population that many people either go to school or they have a second job or maybe they’re supporting and serving their family.” She added: “Many of our operators have looked at various additional benefits, such as maybe free or discounted meals, free or discounted uniforms. Really, they’re trying to appeal to the community in which they serve.” That involves casting an even more thoughtful eye on forums for advertising, wording of job postings, and general demographics when it comes to prospective workers, participants said. “When you look at restaurant and retail workers, about half of the population, historically, have been women,” Appcast’s Leigh said. “And that is exactly the population that left the workforce to take care of children, take care of elderly parents.” “That said, there are keywords in job descriptions that you should be cognizant of, gender-coded keywords, male-coded keywords like ‘superior,’ like ‘decision,’ ‘confident,’ vs. female-coded words like ‘interpersonal,’ ‘cooperative,’ ‘warm,’” he said, pointing out that such phrases can dissuade and “turn off certain folks who’ve read those descriptions.” Another consideration is focusing on a company’s employee-focused initiatives, which can make an employer more attractive. At Verizon, for example, the company’s hiring rate fell to essentially zero when the pandemic hit, but the telecom giant focused on redeploying retail and other workers to more immediate jobs within the corporation, rather than laying off or furloughing staff, Royer said. She continued: “We really doubled down on how we showed up during Covid. We had Covid sick leave where we paid them 100% of pay for up to eight weeks and 60% of pay for 16 weeks, really just showing how, in unstable times, we showed up.” Now that hiring has picked up, Verizon’s Royer said, the company’s track record can help attract more quality candidates. Frontline workers, she said, are “often really interested in, what is my opportunity for moving up in the company? What are you going to do to develop me?” she said. “And so we really focus, in our messaging, on the importance of, ‘There is a career path here for you.’” Sheila Flynn is a Denver-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, the Sunday Independent, and the Irish Daily Mail. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
Making Employee Recognition a Priority in Your Hybrid Workplace
BY Sheila Flynn August 11, 2021Morgan Chaney has been taking pottery classes as part of her “quarantine gift” during the coronavirus pandemic, indulging in the type of activity that helps employees to “get away from our screens and into the world to spend time with the ones we love–to help escape those pressures from life and the workplace overall,” said Chaney, the senior director of marketing and employer branding at Blueboard, an employee rewards and recognition platform. She remarked upon her personal experience in a thought-leadership spotlight at From Day One’s June virtual conference, “The New Benefits that Employees Need and Want Today.” The aforementioned life and work pressures have never been greater than during the Covid-fueled turmoil of the past 17 months, making it even more important for employers to focus on employee satisfaction and retention as increasing numbers of employees return to brick-and-mortar offices for at least part of their work schedules, she said. The pottery classes were part of an employee-rewards system implemented by Blueboard, and Chaney emphasized that corporations can benefit from such recognition programs for workers across the board, regardless of industry or location. “Employee appreciation shouldn’t be one day; it should be all year round,” particularly as both managers and employees attempt to navigate the rapidly evolving hybrid workforce, said Chaney. Morgan Chaney, senior director of marketing and employer branding at Blueboard (Photo courtesy of Blueboard) “We found that over 70% of HR leaders are wanting to make the shift to hybrid work this year,” she said, adding that workers “should all be good at self-regulating” and “taking care of our own mental and physical health,” she said. “The pandemic has totally thrown us off from that,” she said. “Productivity is at an all-time high, but so is employee burnout. So as an employer, it’s really important for you to intentionally encourage employees to self-regulate.” It’s also imperative to offer resources and follow a strategic, well-thought-out plan that looks at several components: “Fostering wellbeing, fostering inclusion, and offering power,” she said. “Retention is becoming more and more top of mind for all of us,” Chaney said. “You’ve probably heard the term ‘the Great Resignation’ floating around. It’s upon us. Recent data for Microsoft is showing that over 40% of employees are planning to leave their jobs this year, which is up from 15% pre-pandemic–nearly triple growth in just one year’s time.” “So if you don’t take care of your employees, your competitors will,” Chaney said. “And we’d love to help prevent that through meaningful recognition programs, programs that let your employees feel like they’ve made an impact and show them that they’re seen and valued.” And that doesn’t necessarily have to mean pottery classes, she said. There has to be a general attitude change, commitment to recognition, and personalization of what works best for different employees. “Ultimately, we’re all juggling our personal responsibilities, we have unique passions and interests, and a one-size-fits-all approach will not work anymore, especially in a hybrid environment,” she said. “So it’s really important, as an employer, to consider offering a wide range, or more types [of rewards and recognition] that meet employees where they are today.” How to achieve that at scale? “Ultimately, at Blueboard, we understand and support that all employees want to do different things. They don’t all drink coffee, so that Starbucks card might fall flat–or they might not want to go skydiving. That might make them totally scared to death. So ultimately, we have a recognition platform that lets employees choose the reward that’s most meaningful to them, not to everybody else, and choose what matters to them today–not tomorrow.” Recognition programs can include apps through which employees can earn points and select rewards, or a regular forum for peers and bosses to publicly acknowledge good work. Employer awareness, flexibility, and communication are key to ensuring the success of any recognition and reward program, Chaney said. “This is where you can encourage managers to host conversations one-on-one with their direct report,” she said. “Or if you want to make it into a more systematic process, you can add questions around recognition preferences into your onboarding surveys to help create a kind of a repository of employee preferences that managers can access on their own.” A sampler of some of the experiences Blueboard offers for employee recognition (Graphic courtesy of Blueboard) Among the things to consider, she said: “Does your employee like public shoutouts? Or would they prefer one-on-one, more intimate thank you’s from their manager? Do they want you to celebrate their birthday or work anniversary, or would having that be announced at a company all-hands make them totally cringe? And these are important things to understand, because beyond learning about your employees’ motivators, you also want to really dial into their languages of appreciation.” By paying attention to those languages and individualized needs of employees, “recognition can foster inclusivity,” she said. “A lot has changed with the pandemic. And it might be that for certain employees, or even teams overall, the performance bar needs to be reassessed. Maybe there’s new behaviors to evaluate, maybe there’s new benchmarks that really point to that team being successful.” The task, then, is to “work with your team leaders to best evaluate individual KPIs and ultimately determine what does signal great work [and] what has changed in the pandemic–and what do we want to adopt into our performance cycles.” Chaney added a note about fairness and equity: “As you’re setting new performance bars, you also want to make sure that you’re resetting our own personal standards for how we’re grading what great work looks like–and this is where we talk about things like unconscious bias. As we migrate to a hybrid work model, it’s really natural for the managers who might have employees in office with them, versus working from home, to prefer the employees that you work side-by-side with. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that these relationships are naturally deeper when you get to have more one-on-one water cooler, lunch, happy-hour time with these employees. But in a hybrid workplace, we need to work with our leaders to make sure they avoid unconscious bias and ensure that all of their teams or accomplishments are reviewed on the same playing field.” Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this thought-leadership spotlight, Blueboard. Sheila Flynn is a Denver-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, the Sunday Independent, and the Irish Daily Mail. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
How Employee Coaching Is Boosting Inclusion
BY Sheila Flynn August 01, 2021Growing up as the child of immigrants and a person of color, Neela Pal always felt there was “a strong pull towards integration/assimilation”–a pull that carried forward as she entered the workforce and began her career. Once she had the opportunity to work with a professional coach, however, she began to think differently, she said during a panel discussion on coaching and inclusion, part of From Day One’s July virtual conference, “Diversity’s Many Roles: How Mentors, Sponsors and Allies Each Play a Part in Inclusion.” “The part with coaching that was actually very transformative for me was to actually think of the difference as a differentiator,” she said, viewing her upbringing and culture as “a competitive advantage rather than something I needed to hide or step back from.” Now the head of external engagement strategy for diversity and inclusion at Goldman Sachs, Pal said she wants to see coaching affect others the same way–growing and diversifying “at the intersection of coaching and DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging).” The democratization of coaching was the major focus of the panel, which looked at how the tool for managers and employees is becoming more broadly available, more sought-after, and embraced by employers as a means to more diversity and belonging in their work forces. Pal was not the only panelist who’d seen the benefits of coaching in their own career. “Coaching personally changed my life,” said Dion Bullock, the strategy lead for DEIB at Bravely, a coaching platform. “Being able to work with a coach helped me to challenge some of the stories I had about work and success and what it meant to be a black professional. And from that experience, I wanted to be able to share that with the world and be able to support others to understand what their needs are and really have that sense of reflection about what their work experience is like.” Speaking on coaching and inclusion, top row from left: moderator Emily Nordquist of Loyola University Chicago, Curtis Brooks of DXC Technology, and Dion Bullock of Bravely. Bottow row, from left, Neela Pal of Goldman Sachs and Nichelle Grant of Siemens (Image by From Day One) Key to achieving those goals, panelists agreed, is to increase awareness about what coaching actually entails and how it can benefit everyone. The concept and practices have changed significantly in the past 10 to 15 years. Whereas coaching used to be viewed as something tailored for high-level executives, particularly those who had made missteps or needed significant help, it’s now becoming more and more proactive and applicable to workers at all levels. “Coaching is unique compared to those other aspects of sponsoring, mentorship and allyship, because typically it’s focused on a goal or an issue or a project and you’re working through something,” said Nichelle Grant, head of DEI for Siemens in the U.S. “You’re making some decisions, you’re getting guidance, while the others are really more long-term goals, long-term plans. Coaching is more immediate–you know, ‘I have something I want to talk about; walk me through this.’ Maybe it’s a one-time thing, maybe it’s recurring. And so, while the others are ongoing and more frequent, I think we’ve seen [coaching] manifest itself at the individual level.” Curtis Brooks, who is responsible for talent, employee experience and culture at DXC Technology, explained that “coaching is different than being a mentor, being a teacher, or being a therapist–and it doesn’t mean that we don’t do some of those things in coaching where it makes sense and when it’s appropriate, but it’s definitely distinct,” Brooks said. “I usually tell my clients that, from a coaching standpoint, I will assume that you’re coming to our relationship as a whole person, and you have the answers that you need. And my role is to walk with you, not in front of you, not behind you, but side-by-side with you to shine a light, if you will, on your path–to help you find those answers that you already have in yourself.” Building a System To do that through coaching, the speakers said, employees at all levels must not only be convinced of the benefits of coaching but also be given opportunities to take advantage of it. Coaching offers a unique avenue aside from “other modalities of support, where there may be a hierarchical relationship or a power differential,” Pal said. Coaching needs to be confidential as well, with employees of all grades having confidence that a coach will offer personal guidance and not report back to managers or HR, Bullock pointed out. Employers should assess the structural obstacles that might get in the way of providing coaching to all communities within an organization–and then find ways to remove those barriers, for example by offering coaching in different languages or ensuring time-zone flexibility, Bullock said. Siemens, for example, has created a program “which has 100-plus certified coaches across the globe–and we have a tool where, if you want coaching, you put your name in and they pair you up with a coach,” Grant said. Who Does the Coaching? Employers need to have a combination of external coaches, internal coaches, and peer-to-peer coaching to ensure success and accessibility, Brooks said. “If I put that into a framework, what that will look like is probably the top 2% to 3% of the house, if you will, we would technically be working with an external coach,” he said, continuing: “Then you will look probably at your next 30% to 40%, so your mid-level leaders within the organization, either we’re using internal coaches that are ICF (International Coaching Federation) certified or working toward their ICF certification.” For the bottom tier in the hierarchy, Brooks said, “your entry-level employee, maybe your first-time supervisor, we’re probably looking at more peer-to-peer or managers–a coaching program where we’re teaching our managers how to coach their employees, whether it’s coaching on a career issue or in an area of career, or whether it’s around business, some type of business problem, or a business initiative.” Removing Self-limiting Obstacles Coaching can play an integral role in inclusion by simply working as a catalyst for people to think differently about their strengths and find answers within themselves. At Siemens, Grant said, the company has fostered the creation of “a coaching network for the racial-justice conversation we’ve been having–and so coaching shows up in multiple parts of the organization.” Panel moderator Emily Nordquist, senior program manager for the Baumhart Center for Social Enterprise and Responsibility at Loyola University Chicago, pointed out, “Something that’s really effective in helping leaders of color get into management positions and rise is actually coaching and mentorship–and so, if we only focus on providing coaching to those who are at the top of an organization, who have those kinds of levers that they can pull, we are really missing an opportunity to create a pipeline for more leaders of color to be in management.” While coaching has come on by leaps and bounds, Pal said, its evolution has not ended by any means. “There’s some reframing work for us to do [to help] destigmatize coaching,” she said. “It’s not just a luxury good–like, ‘I deserve it, too.’” Nor should coaching be considered a consequence of performance issues. The message should be, “You’re doing great, and we want you to do even better–and so it’s really building on your capabilities,” Pal said. “And so there’s some work that we have ahead of us to really universalize coaching.” Sheila Flynn is a Denver-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, the Sunday Independent, and the Irish Daily Mail. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
Helping Military Veterans Make the Leap to Civilian Careers
BY Sheila Flynn July 21, 2021Employers across the U.S. have made tremendous strides in recent years when it comes to launching programs to attract veterans. They’re casting a wider net and honing their hiring and training practices. But the transition from military life to the civilian workforce often remains difficult. Much of the challenge of easing that process lies with recruiters and HR managers, who need to be educated about the skills and life experience of transitioning veterans, said participants in From Day One’s recent webinar, “Matching Military Veterans With Your Need For Skilled Talent.” “There’s a big difference between military-friendly and military-ready,” said Dave Harrison, executive director of national apprenticeships for Fastport, a software-development company that builds products to help military-community members find meaningful employment. Harrison himself is an Army veteran who served with the 82ndAirborne. One of the biggest issues for military veterans transitioning to a business environment is adapting to a completely new organizational culture. “The danger point for everyone, and I can’t stress this enough, [is] in transitions, in the first six months,” said Harrison. “The higher-ranking they are, the more danger that is, because the more disenfranchised they’re going to be in that first transition. They’re used to being able to manage things at a whim; that they will not be able to do. So you need to create a culture that helps them assimilate to your culture.” “Once they understand the landscape,” he continued, “you will be amazed at what those folks will do for you and how they will create a culture of problem-solving that you may not have had in certain areas–and how other people will follow them to you if you give them that kind of platform.” Getting Managers up to Speed That’s where training for hiring managers comes in, said Jacqueline Jarl, also a veteran and a military recruiting program manager at Stryker, a medical-technologies corporation. “In 2019, we decided that it was necessary for us to build what we call a military-talent familiarization curriculum” for recruiters, she said. “Given my Army background, I started building what we call Military 101,” which she describes as a “foundational” course for “somebody who has never really heard of anything in the military other than what they see on TV and movies.” “It’s just the basics, the rank structure, the different services, the different components, what’s the difference between active and reserve and guard. So we started building these curriculums that are housed in our online-learning management system, so anybody has access to them.” That includes “your recruiters, your HR, business partners, your hiring managers, anybody who sits in an interview.” She added: “Every single new recruiter that comes into Stryker, it’s mandatory for them to go through that training.” Employers must also come to understand the time frame associated with military transition, participants said, reaching out and keeping contact with candidates long before they leave the service. “Folks are going to start looking as many as 24 months in advance of their transition date,” said Greg Rivera, the military recruiting lead at Booz Allen Hamilton, the management consulting firm. “And they’re going to be doing various different things, whether they’re upskilling, getting a resume together, fine-tuning their interviewing skills, learning about business and how they can fit in and where they can fit in.” “As we are engaging with those individuals,” Rivera said, “we’re making sure that we’re keeping them fully engaged on what’s going on within the firm, giving them that pulse check.” Speaking on hiring military veterans, top row from left: Jacqueline Jarl of Stryker and Chris Cortez of Microsoft. Middle row: Dave Harrison of Fastport, moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, and Chuck Kluball of The Home Depot. Bottom: Greg Rivera of Booz Allen Hamilton (Image by From Day One) The Need for a Sustained Focus Harrison agreed with the need for prospective employers to take a long-term approach. “Anyone in the business of hiring, or trying to sell a military-ready program, you have to get the hierarchy to understand that this is not [the case that] the fish are going to jump in the boat in the next 10 minutes. You’re not going to get 7,000 hires tomorrow, especially developing a program. If you are talking to people who are 20, up to 24 months out from the transition, this is a long play,” he said. Training and timeframe education for HR managers must also reinforce the fact that the military transition is far different from regular job switches, said Chuck Kluball, senior manager of military relations at The Home Depot. “It is a strong culture shock,” said Kluball, also a veteran. “For many of the veterans getting out, this would be the first time they do job interviews. It would be the first time they will write a resume. It’ll be the first time they sit through an actual onboarding with a company where they don’t show up and have their entire day or their entire onboarding process planned out for them.” “This will be the first time that they have to deal with different type of work environments,” Kluball said. “It’s a lot–and it’s also one of the only times in your life where you’ll go through a job change, potentially a relocation, health care change, education changes, potentially your family’s getting uprooted. It’s an entire life change versus just a job change. So companies that are prepared to provide support for that life-changing event, not just a job-changing event, we’re going to see higher retention. And then, because of the high retention, they’re going to see higher performance out of the veterans they are bringing in.” Practical Approaches to the Transition To capitalize on the potential of veterans, companies such as Microsoft have been particularly proactive. In 2013, the software giant began the Microsoft Software and Systems Academy (MSSA). “Think of it as a 17-week technology boot camp, where you come either through a transition, or you come through our program while you’re participating in the SkillBridge program, which allows you to go through these kinds of programs when you’re within the last six months of your service,” said Chris Cortez, Microsoft’s vice president of military affairs and a retired Marine Corps major general. He added that “it doesn’t matter what your military specialty was, you could be a truck driver, you could be a cook, a medic–we take them all. And at the end of this 17 weeks, you have the blocking and tackling that it takes to go to work–no kidding–in a technology company. As a matter of fact, we have over 750 companies that have hired from this program.” The importance of networking and word of mouth cannot be overestimated when it comes to awareness about such veteran programs, participants said. “People that go through the program have friends,” Cortez said of MSSA. “So we get a lot of interest through referrals. The graduates from the program have their own social network, and they also talk about the program. And like all the companies here, we work with Hiring Our Heroes, the service academies, career conferences and others that reach out and touch our military–and we all talk about our programs.” Opportunities for Military Families The impact of such outreach and networking extends to military spouses and veterans’ families as well, an effort that has actually been aided by the increase in remote working during the pandemic. “There’s an amazing opportunity that’s come out of the Covid transition and remote-working scenarios,” Harrison said. “There are a few companies that, very early on, figured out that there’s a whole population of talent out there that was untapped: active-duty military spouses. If you can find a way to have them work remotely, you will have a dedicated workforce that will stay with you for the long term. And there are companies that are now engaging military spouses stationed in Germany and Italy and Okinawa, etcetera.” Other companies such as Home Depot work diligently to relocate military spouse employees to accommodate deployments and base transfers, said Kluball. But while many organizations have made great strides in attracting, training, and easing veterans’ transitions, work still needs to be done and more overarching outreach must be offered to the individuals who served the country. “I believe we’re going to do better, because we’ve made some really radical changes,” said Cortez. “Our goal, always from the very beginning, was to get 100% [of trainees hired]. We’re not quite there. We’re at about 98%. But we want 100% of those that go to this program, to get them employed, get them a good job, get them a career in the technology industry.” Sheila Flynn is a Denver-based freelance journalist who has written for the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Daily Mail, and Irish Times. She is the daughter of Vietnam veteran and Bronze Star recipient John Flynn, who served with the 101st Airborne Division. Upon his return to the U.S., he spent decades installing phone systems for AT&T and Lucent in New York City before starting his own telecom business.
Emotional Well-being for Workers: Why We Need New Approaches
BY Sheila Flynn July 14, 2021During the pandemic, the stressors in life haven’t come one at a time–they’ve piled on. Employees and managers have struggled with burnout. They’ve juggled working from home and child care. They’ve felt a sense of anxiety and fear across the social landscape. And now America’s workforce is faced with a lessening of restrictions and an equally stressful return to some semblance of normal life. The result is a lot of psychological wear and tear. “There is a mental health crisis in this country,” said Karsten Vagner, senior VP of people for Maven, a virtual care platform for women’s and family health. Vagner cited data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that “half of employees today say they experienced high to extreme stress over the past year.” The scope of the crisis, as well as new approaches for employee emotional well-being, were the focus of a conversation between Vagner and Cassidy Stevens, a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) at Massachusetts General Hospital, who also provides care through Maven’s platform. Speaking at From Day One’s June virtual conference, “The New Benefits that Employees Need and Want Today,” Vagner and Stevens discussed historic shifts in the workforce and ways to increase support for worker health and wellness–particularly among underserved populations. Maven partnered with Great Place to Work to conduct the largest-ever survey of working parents in the U.S. “We wanted to dig a little bit deeper–and here’s some of the insights that we found: 2.65 million women have left the workforce since February of 2020. We know that working mothers are experiencing burnout more than they ever have,” said Vagner. “Black mothers, in particular, are experiencing burnout. We know that 40% of parents are changing their job situation to balance work and child care. We haven’t been juggling one crisis this year, we’ve been juggling several crises all at once.” Karsten Vagner, Maven's SVP of people (Photo courtesy of Maven) "Eighty percent of employees say they would consider quitting their current position for a job that focused more on employee mental health,” said Vagner, adding: “The irony is that we all have these people, especially from diverse groups, leaving their jobs at a time when more companies than ever before are looking to hire and retain diverse employees–and more job candidates are scrutinizing companies’ diversity strategies, too.” As a mental health care provider, Stevens has seen firsthand the impact of burnout and other pandemic-related stressors. “Our systems are just overloaded right now,” she said, continuing: “With the medical complexity of the pandemic also came an increase in psychosocial complexity–so that includes mental health concerns, family dynamics, substance use concerns.” “The patterns that I’m hearing are actually quite similar to what we see in the hospital environment,” she said. “Any underlying stressors that someone might have been experiencing before the pandemic, or before a hospitalization, they tend to be exacerbated and all bubble up to the surface when they come to the hospital. So the pandemic has actually been quite similar. Anything underlying, such as workplace burnout, mental health concerns–all of that bubbled up to the surface and actually worsened in the setting of the pandemic.” Studies since the onset of the shift to work-from-home have repeatedly shown that productivity on the whole has increased, but that comes with an emotional cost. Stevens cited “the sense of pressure that you might have felt to demonstrate your performance accurately from home and especially in an environment where work layoffs were happening. That led to many employees developing unsustainable work habits, which is what I work with patients on, and then, especially, that unclear boundary between work and life.” According to Stevens, establishing routine and structure is key to addressing these pressures and blurred lines.. “Most of the recommendations I provide are related to, one, creating structure, and two, setting boundaries. Distinguishing clear boundaries in the workplace can help optimize mental well-being and also, [from an] HR perspective, increased motivation from home. So that can include having a designated space to work that’s obviously not in your living, sleeping spaces. Or doing anything you can to maintain that routine and sense of normalcy, like mimicking a morning commute, doing anything that creates that sense of structure,” Stevens said. “From a mental health side, lack of structure, routine and social connectedness really creates an environment that is opportune for depressive symptoms.” Cassidy Stevens, a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) at Massachusetts General Hospital On top of adjusting to remote work itself, many parents are attempting to demonstrate remarkable productivity to their managers while simultaneously taking on new roles as teachers to young children. A large percentage of them “felt like they were failing at both of their jobs,” Stevens said. The experience is often worse for underserved groups, including many Black mothers. “Just the chronic safety concerns and distress that Black mothers face on a daily basis have a significant impact on health,” Stevens said. “Stress hormones in the body like cortisol increase the number of health risks and hormonal dysregulation. Secondly, the person feeling persistently anxious, unsafe, worried, the whole gamut–that’s a lot of stress for the body and mind and soul.” Employers need to be vigilant in recognizing such challenges, work on their cultural sensitivity, and, most importantly, implement meaningful support systems. “Rethinking work schedules, rethinking flexible, remote opportunities and benefit packages, really helps modify the environment to be more supportive for everyone,” Stevens said, adding that perhaps a silver lining of the pandemic will be the increased conversation about employee mental health and well-being. “What’s great to me is that there’s a whole conference right now talking about this–really talking about mental health at work and stating that mental health matters,” she said. “But what’s important is going beyond that and creating those systems and structures that can really demonstrate to employees that their mental health matters–and particularly for underrepresented populations who are at greater risk of facing distress.” Such longer-term, solid plans–fortified by increased employer awareness and openness–will be crucial in maintaining productivity and easing workplace transitions as post-pandemic life gradually evolves. But employers must be vigilant when it comes to mental health, Vagner said, and committed to implementing long-term support strategies. “We can’t be short-sighted,” he said. “When the pandemic is done (whenever that is) and we resume normal life (whenever that is), these issues aren’t going to just disappear.” Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this thought-leadership spotlight, Maven. Sheila Flynn is a Denver-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, the Sunday Independent, and the Irish Daily Mail. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
How Coaching Got to Be Such a Positive Thing
BY Sheila Flynn June 10, 2021Years ago, the hiring of a “coach” in a workplace evoked certain sentiments–and few of them were good. Coaches were typically reserved for high-level executives and managers, not regular employees. On top of that, they were often brought in because of a problem with a manager who needed behavioral instruction and correction. Fast-forward to 2021, and the tables have turned dramatically. Coaching has acquired a far more positive reputation–and in practice typically means something almost entirely different. Ambitious employees are clamoring to be coached. Companies are adopting the practice at record rates. Coaching’s goals, availability, and even fundamental perception across the workforce have undergone a revolution. It’s now seen as a highly desirable benefit to career growth. This was happening even before the Covid pandemic, but the shift to remote work has accelerated the process, highlighting the impact of technological advances in delivering the service. At the same time, experts across the field say they’ve noticed other distinct trends, including a move toward democratization, a broader array of topic areas, and a proliferation of new vendors. All told, coaching has grown as a profession, with increasing numbers of certified coaches and courses to train them. From Day One talked with HR executives and coaches to see how the field has evolved–and how it’s influencing workplace culture. What Is Coaching Now? The rise of coaching is part of a greater emphasis in Corporate America on continuous learning, which has myriad benefits, including the development of future leaders, the teaching of new skills, and greater diversity and inclusion. Yet the diversification of coaching has created blurred lines, changing buzzwords, and debate about precise definitions. Coaching, mentoring, training, and consulting are all separate practices, but they can also be combined to some extent. The traditional definition of coaching, said Alec Levenson, a senior research scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations at USC’s Marshall School of Business, had a “very specific connotation” and almost always meant “executive coaching, the idea being that, by the time somebody gets to be in an executive role, a managerial role, they’re two or three rungs up the hierarchy.” Coaching was sometimes done by other high-level executives who could empathize with a leader’s situation and advise them on corporate decisions and very specific situations. Coaching now, however, tends to involve targeted, one-to-one conversations that are goal-oriented and designed to help participants follow their own paths and come to their own conclusions. The scope of topics is more holistic than in the past, including coping mechanisms, goal determination, and a plethora of other subjects that can be applied not only to an employee’s current position but further career development. According to Bravely, a coaching platform, the topics most often discussed by the firm’s users break down along these lines: performance and role (25%), general stress (21%), manager conflict (17%), promotion guidance (15%), and company culture and environment (10%). In a corporate setting, coaching is almost always done by professional, accredited coaches, HR leaders said. “I think when you talk about certified coaches, [organizations like the] International Coaching Federation (ICF), they’re pretty much aligned in what coaching is,” said Jackie Bassett, director of people strategy at University of Chicago Medicine. However, she added, “When you talk with leaders throughout organizations, you get definitions that are all over the map.” In practicing their craft, coaching professionals typically take “a developmental approach, based on asking versus telling,” observed Bassett, adding that such coaches do not focus on “telling them what to do, not even giving advice, but really asking the right questions to help them come up with the answers themselves. The coach doesn’t have to be a subject-matter expert; in fact, it’s often harder if they are.” The process, she added, “enables self-discovery [that] can be applied to any future situation. I passionately believe that it can be the most powerful and most under-utilized tool there is.” Coaching is quite different from traditional management-training sessions, observed Fidelma Butler, VP of talent and organization development at ZenDesk, which makes customer-service software. “A generic training course, where people all gather from different experiences and different backgrounds to study a particular topic for a couple of days, or even to view an online course together, that’s standard content,” Butler said. “That’s the same, no matter who the individual is to do the training, whereas coaching is hyper-personalized. It’s much more about meeting the people where they are at a certain point in time. It’s much more customizable. The individual gets to drive the agenda of their development and coaching, rather than the organization or the person who developed the course content.” Democratization: Coaching Becomes More Accessible Realizing just how beneficial it can be, employers have embraced coaching for a wider range of employees who show potential, not just for the elite or those who fall short of expectations. “Coaching used to be done only for people who were in trouble and was done for remedial reasons,” said Jeanne Schad, global talent solutions and strategy practice leader at Randstad RiseSmart, a talent-mobility consultancy. No longer. “It’s an interesting thing that rarely happens in business–that the same word has grown to have the opposite meaning,” said Schad, who is also the founder of a professional-coaching network. Now, “you get coaching and it’s a reward. More and more people are seeing the benefit of having a sounding board to access outside of themselves and outside of their traditional management structure,” she said. As a result, “many organizations are united around the idea that they want to democratize coaching, they want to make it available to everybody.” Besides the practical impact of enhancing employee skills, the broader application of coaching sends a message inside and outside a company that it’s a good place to work because it cares about the growth of its employees, said Stefanie K. Johnson, associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business and author of Inclusify: the Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams. Companies are saying, “We see you as being a high-potential employee; there’s obviously a strength we want you to invest in,” Johnson said. “I feel like people are stoked about it.” Younger Workers Welcome the Advice While older workers may still see coaching’s negative connotations–Did I do something wrong?–younger workers in particular take a pro-active approach to it. “People want coaching,” Johnson said. “It’s seen as an opportunity to improve skills, especially among millennials, who are very focused on getting better, improving.” Bassett agreed, connecting the trend to generational culture. “A lot of the younger generation are more used to these ongoing, real-time feedback conversations.” The individual and institutional results, seen firsthand with more and more regularity, just drives the popularity of coaching, experts said. “When you experience it, it’s hard to describe with any other word than transformational,” said Schad. “It can really make a difference in how you see your situation when it is reflected by somebody on the outside, and that is unique to coaching.” Coaching as a Blossoming Career As coaching has grown in popularity, so has the population of coaches themselves, a phenomenon which brings with it both pros and cons, according to insiders. “During the last recession, the number of coaching training schools jumped dramatically. When I did training in 2005-06, I think there were 40-something ICF-certified programs I could do,” Schad said. “By 2010 or 2011, there were over 2,000. The industry of coach training sprang out of nowhere. I think it was indicative of the attraction and appeal as a career option,” particularly for experienced people who may embrace the profession as a “third career or early retirement,” she said. Not all of those individuals should necessarily be coaching, though, according to some experts, who complain about a too-broad definition of coaching and a lack of oversight when it comes to credentials. “I actually think that there might be too many coaching-accreditation bodies,” ZenDesk’s Butler said. “If you’re an individual looking for a coach, it’s very hard to start at a blank page and look for that. There are very low barriers to entry for people who want to become coaches and the quality of coaching can vary massively.” That said, however, the proliferation of coaching choices can mean that “there is a coach out there for everyone,” Butler said. Technology Brings Access–and Affordability As the availability of coaches increases, so does the price range, while apps and other innovations have made it easier for employers to find good coaching fits and also provid access to them. In pre-pandemic times, there were “a lot of coaches flying around the country to meet with these folks,” Johnson observed. Since then, “coaches are doing more virtual meetings. It’s just a smaller footprint and cost,” she said. Thanks to new coaching platforms, “You’ve got coaching now that can be done on demand,” said Schad. “You’ve got coaching that can be done in the moment; you’ve got coaching that can be done through text messaging rather than live.” Organizations are particularly keen when it comes to harnessing technology for “coaching at scale,” said ZenDesk’s Butler. “How do you, as an organization, provide coaching at scale when it is [usually] for one person, at one moment in time, over five or six sessions? How do you, at scale, provide a solution for people? I think that can be really challenging.” Butler continued: “The tech platforms are how we scale. That’s the important piece. We really need the tech platforms, because for a company of our size–more than 4,000 employees–we can’t provide coaching without a solid tech platform behind it.” Bassett, of UChicago Medicine, said that technology was undeniably “helping in a lot of ways. I don’t see any downsides versus being in a room,” she said. “I think you can still get that engagement connection. There are plenty of upsides, because it’s much more accessible.” And competition brewing within the coaching-startup world, she said, is helping to make the practice available and attractive at a “broader scale and price.” Coaching as a Boost to Diversity and Inclusion While coaching is defined as a category separate from training, consultation and mentoring, those practices can still be combined to more comprehensively address personal and corporate issues, said Sharon Hart, an executive coach at the firm Talking Talent, who has more than a decade of experience as a certified coach. Reflecting the widespread expectations for Corporate America to improve its record on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Hart’s firm has seen an increase in demand for comprehensive programs to address company culture and DEI. Talking Talent has responded by offering a combination of webinars, group discussions, and one-on-one coaching. It’s all focused on client-driven conversations leading to reflection and self-realization, she said. “We’re helping to break down the barriers and helping to get people to feel safe to share,” said Hart, adding that, among her clients, many were “afraid to talk about” diversity and equality. “There’s a stigma about, ‘I’m afraid I might say the wrong thing,’” she said. “When we approach it with our coaching hats on, we’re offering more of an invitation to reflect, now that the defenses are down, and we can say, ‘We give you permission to have the experiences you have had. What do you want to do with that?’” Coaching Diversifies Even Further Just as Talking Talent offers a range of services from group coaching to one-on-one sessions, the coaching world in general has seen an uptick in variations of how the practice is delivered. One trend gathering steam is peer-to-peer coaching. “The key definition of peer coaching is that it’s about two individuals within the company. They reflect on current practices, what’s happening, and what the challenges are,” said Madhukar Govindaraju, founder and CEO of the coaching platform Numly. “They refine and share ideas. And eventually they’re solving problems. You develop a trusted connection between the two. That’s the first step. And it’s a private conversation.” That safe space can potentially improve the performance of employees and the wider organization, further broadening the conversation about diversity and democratization. “Right now, companies are pivoting from the concept of diversity, equity and inclusion, to one of inclusion and belonging,” Govindaraju said. “You need to create a sense of belonging in the employee experience. And we’re not just connecting them, we’re helping them with developing the skills they need. We empower employees to help each other.” Sheila Flynn is a Denver-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Times. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
Speaking Their Language: How to Talk About Employee Engagement With the C-Suite
BY Sheila Flynn June 08, 2021It’s a dilemma that’s been faced by HR professionals since the evolution of their role: As literal conduits and arbiters between the C-suite and employees, how do they get both levels to consider the advice of HR itself–and actually act upon it? Tools and tips for how to navigate this tricky balancing act were offered during a From Day One webinar, “Speaking Their Language: How to Talk Employee Engagement and Belonging With the C-Suite,” featuring Natalie Baumgartner, PhD, chief workforce scientist at Achievers, the employee recognition and engagement platform, and Lidia Zekorn, director of talent and culture at FCT, the leading Canadian service provider in real-estate technology and title insurance. The two experts asserted that HR leaders often try to be proactive and identify problems, only to be ignored, and then are suddenly thrust into the spotlight when things go wrong. “Senior leaders are unexpectedly or understandably busy with competing priorities,” Zekorn said. “So when there’s a negative outcome, whether it be attrition in a certain department or in a certain area of the organization–or even if a high performer unexpectedly leaves the company–that’s when the questions start to come. So you can be proactive all you want, but it’s when that happens, when [C-Suite] see some sort of outcome, that’s when the questions happen.” Key to avoiding this situation, Baumgartner and Zekorn said, is gathering up-to-date, specific data to present to C-level executives, going in armed with targeted issues and solutions supported by facts that prove how those actions will help not only company culture but also its financial and productivity goals. Natalie Baumgartner, chief workforce scientist at Achievers (Photo courtesy of Achievers) “There are a lot of HR metrics out there that demonstrate how different initiatives can impact the bottom line, all the way from attrition to productivity,” Zekorn said. “You want to rely on this research to be your proof of concept so you can get the buy-in from the C-suite with what you need. And by buy-in, what I mean is you want the commitment. You want the understanding, the support and the engagement at the C-suite level. HR initiatives about employees–whether it’s about attrition, productivity or engagement–should not solely rest on HR shoulders. These are corporate initiatives.” When You Have Their Attention… Once senior executives realize a strategy, a policy, or even a tool can be good for the company, it’s much easier for widespread implementation. And following the initial buy-in, HR must carefully monitor and showcase the concrete outcomes. “That internal data, the results that you were able to drive, is important to maintain support and built your credibility with the C-suite,” Zekorn said. “The story doesn’t end with your business case. You will continue to measure after the initiative is launched. For example, when you’re looking at measuring those turnover rates, you want to measure before and after whatever initiative you put in place. You can keep an eye on online reviews and track changing ratings, and hopefully they’ve become positive. And you can utilize surveys and feedback tools to see where employee sentiment has changed.” The Importance of Employee Sentiment Similar strategies should also be implemented to get C-suite interested in employee sentiment in the first place, the experts said. HR leaders need to persuade C-level executives to embrace the concepts of “belonging” and “engagement”–and to appreciate why they genuinely matter for success. “Why even measure? What is the business case for understanding and managing engagement?,” Baumgartner asked. “Well, over the past couple of decades, the research [has shown] numerous data points indicating the high degree of correlation between engagement and just about every positive business outcome. “First of all, highly engaged employees are significantly less likely to leave an organization. Companies with engaged employees boast higher levels of employee commitment, and so they experienced lower attrition and greater retention,” Baumgartner said. “Research also shows that engaged employees are more productive. So by increasing engagement inside your organization, you’re also actually enhancing business results. Engaged employees are more likely to stay focused and to put in discretionary effort. They go above and beyond to achieve goals, which means that your company is more likely to be successful. “And finally, engaged employees have higher job satisfaction,” she said. “You can be confident that a more engaged population will drive better reviews on sites like Glassdoor, with more employees feeling satisfied and therefore willing to share their sentiments online.” Once those realities have been impressed upon senior executives, more concerted efforts can be made to gauge and bolster employee engagement. A Boost for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging At FCT, Zekorn said, “when we were presenting our business case for diversity, inclusion, and belonging strategy, it was very important for us to present it as a business imperative and illustrate how it aligns with our corporate priorities. We have heard that it is the right thing to do for employees, which I absolutely 100% agree. However, what cannot be lost is how it is the right thing to do for the organization as well.” Lidia Zekorn, director of talent and culture at FCT (Photo courtesy of FCT) In pursuing FCT’s inclusion strategy, “we held our own community circles, which are sessions that provide employees a safe space to share personal stories and to put a human face to the very real experiences that affect them inside and outside of the workplace,” Zekorn said. “It also provides direct feedback to our C-suite about how FCT can continue to drive an inclusive organization where employees feel that they belong and then finally illustrating why all of it matters: the return on investment, which is reducing turnover, improving employee satisfaction and well-being, and increasing productivity. When you have this, everyone succeeds, from the employees to the organization as a whole.” Central to employee engagement and belonging is for leaders to listen and offer opportunities for feedback, whether it be the aforementioned “circles,” or tools such as surveys, or even just coffee chats. Employees must feel they’re properly heard and see subsequent actions demonstrating that their concerns and ideas are indeed being implemented, the experts said. Be Careful Not to Overreach A major pitfall, though, can be attempts to execute too many actions, they said. Instead, they advise making micro improvements with visible results. “Trying to do too much at once is a setup for failure in the world of engagement,” Baumgartner said. “So be sure to focus on just one or two areas for improvement per quarter. I know it can be overwhelming for leaders and HR professionals to look at all the feedback and the desired action from one’s organization or one’s direct team. But when you narrow down your focus to identify the single metric that you want to impact and select just one or two micro actions that will move that metric over the next couple of months, the process is simplified and you’ll be better able to prioritize actions to solve problems.” While a sharp focus gets results, it’s important to keep an eye on the big picture too. All members of the organization, from the top down, should be provided with communication channels, values-based recognition, and a deep understanding of corporate vision and priorities. “We recommend having four to six core values that you then align everything in your culture around so that they become part of how you and your employees live and breathe at work,” Baumgartner said. “It’s simple, but it’s elegant.” Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this webinar, Achievers. You can watch a video of the conversation here. Please visit our conference page to register for more upcoming events. Sheila Flynn is a Denver-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Times. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
How to Succeed in the Remote Work Revolution
BY Sheila Flynn April 25, 2021Two and a half years before Covid-19 changed the world, Harvard professor Tsedal Neeley couldn’t have seen a global pandemic coming down the road. An expert in virtual and remote work, however, she did envision a massive shift to a non-office-based workforce. By the time coronavirus upended the global economy last year, she had already amassed 300 pages of material about the future trend for her book Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere, which was published last month. Despite her research and expertise, though, even Neeley–who is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School–did not expect some of the major and subtle effects of such a sudden switch to remote work across the globe. That shift, coupled with both its positive and negative ramifications, formed the basis of a conversation between Neeley and Adi Ignatius, editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review, at From Day One’s virtual conference last week on “Digital Tools for Building an Engaged, Productive Team.” Along with most corporate leaders, particularly in the tech industry, Neeley and Ignatius expressed doubts that workers will ever return to previous norms, with a hybrid workplace much more likely. But HR teams and executives from CEO level down must be prepared to shepherd that long-term transition with strong leadership, frequent reassessment, and open-mindedness, Neeley said. “I am 100% convinced that, if we do this hybrid right and with courage, and we set our policies based on need and not fear, we’re preparing for the digital revolution that’s right around the corner,” Neeley said. That means identifying and addressing even minor personal and professional changes that have been highlighted by the massive shift in corporate culture over the past year–both good and bad, she added. “Commute times have disappeared, and people’s quality of life has gotten better [through] the democratization of interactions,” Neeley said. Among other equalizers, she pointed out that on video platforms like Zoom, everyone is the same height, using herself and her husband as examples (she’s 5-foot-4; he’s a foot taller). Author Tsedal Neeley of Harvard Business School, left, in conversation with Adi Ignatius of Harvard Business Review. You can watch the video here. “There is this democratization that takes place ... provided we have great leaders that give everyone an opportunity to speak. Operational costs have gone down; bloated travel budgets no longer seem necessary; hiring and retaining employees without asking them to move is actually a special thing that we’ve been seeing in Boston when it comes to identifying and attracting diverse candidates,” she said. “So it’s been great to see this untapped labor pool for many companies. Astronomical real estate no longer seems important ... The numbers are staggering when we look at how many people want to retain some form of remote work in their professional arrangements.” Those are the upsides, yet there are unintended consequences too. Ignatius asked what kinds of obstacles exist when it comes to fostering a diverse, inclusive and collaborative environment when coworkers are so physically far apart–a question many employers are grappling with. “I consider this to be the diversity and digital era,” Neeley said. “And we need to work hard to create inclusive environments so you are working together. It’s a mindset shift; you may not think you’re working together, but you are–it’s just using digital tools.” Employers need to be intentional about the impact of these tools on all the processes of bringing people together as a team, she said. “How we onboard people, how we integrate people, how we help them build social capital ... we had heard about the weak vs. strong ties. There’s a whole set of best practices when it comes to virtual onboarding. And we have to work hard to integrate people through the systems.” She added: “We need to pair people with others so they feel like, ‘Ah, I actually can belong here.’ Experience the place through pairing, hiring, not just one Black person or Latinx member being lonely by themselves–imagine if we brought in two people instead.” In confronting these issues, corporate leaders need to ask themselves if there are deeper-seated organizational issues contributing to isolation that have nothing to do with remoteness. “There are all sorts of strategies–effective strategies–that companies are using in order to ensure that people don’t experience professional isolation,” Neeley said. “It’s not the distribution ... it’s your existing culture and the lack of diversity. You know, diversity begets diversity.” Neeley's new book, published last month While remote work becomes more established, the inclusivity efforts must also take into account employees’ diverse living situations, mental health, and personal circumstances, she said. While a vast majority of employees prefer working from home, an estimated 15% hate it, she pointed out. On top of that, even workers who had been remote for long periods of time before the pandemic had to readjust, thrown off their rhythm when the rest of their colleagues essentially joined them in a virtual daily existence. Further complicating matters is research showing that, at least before the pandemic, remote workers were often passed over for promotion in favor of on-site colleagues. And then there’s the huge existential workplace question, posed by Ignatius: “What is the point of an office at this point?” Managers have a key role in navigating all these crosscurrents, Neeley emphasized. “We have to think differently on how to bring the group together to gel now,” she said, emphasizing the importance of feedback. “People want predictability ... and predictability around the big picture overall,” she said. “So we have to connect people to the big picture because they feel a little bit lost. They don’t know what’s happening at the mothership, so connecting people to the big picture as much as you can on a regular basis. And finally, performance feedback. Remote workers crave performance feedback. They have more questions about, ‘Am I doing okay? Are things okay?’ So we have to be so disciplined about this piece and developing people, as well.” Both managers and employees face other pitfalls, including tech exhaustion and overwork, with Neeley and Ignatius citing previous studies showing remote workers have demonstrated higher productivity but also longer working hours. “Untrained and unchecked, remote work can go wrong,” Neeley said. “I use the term hyper-productivity when I describe productivity gone wrong. This is where our work and non-work lives get blurred to the point where we don’t know where we start and where things end because we’re literally commuting for five minutes,” she said. “The other thing is, we’ve replaced some of our commute times with work. And on average, we’re seeing that people are working 6.8 hours more per week. If you think about seven hours, that’s like a whole day, so it’s so much more work. And leaders need to really put those guardrails up, because people are getting stressed and burned out,” Neeley said. She added: “It’s time to recreate and revise culture–and take the best that remote work and virtuality offers, while at the same time overcoming some of the challenges. One of the most important things that I see, and the failure points that I’m worried about, is around this entire mindset shift that needs to take place. Leaders of organizations are still stuck with the idea that we’re going back to something.” A key practice that will have to move forward is assessing and measuring performance. “How do you do that when you don’t see people?,” Neeley asked. To refocus those parameters, she said, “we need to completely rethink how we measure performance predicated on outcomes and not process. We need to trust people and help people trust people. We need to bring the logic of global organizations, even if we’re not global–which means how we think about time, how we think about space, how we think about connection, how we think about dispersion, how we think about compensation.” Sheila Flynn is an Austin-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Times. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
If Your Employees Are Thinking of Leaving, This May Be Why
BY Sheila Flynn April 09, 2021During the past year of massive economic and social upheaval, it would perhaps seem reasonable to assume that workers who had retained employment–in the midst of a worldwide pandemic–would remain committed to keeping those jobs, bolstered by a sense of security and, in many cases, good fortune. Yet a new study from the Workforce Institute, the research and insights arm of HR engagement platform Achievers, yielded some startling results. The institute’s 2021 Engagement and Retention Report, the fourth annual study, surveyed 2,000 respondents throughout the US and Canada across an array of sectors and tenure. “One of the first findings that was a little surprising was the uptick in the percentage of employees who claimed they’d be putting their ear to the ground for a job hunt in 2021, compared to 2020,” said Brie Harvey, Achievers’ Employee Engagement Evangelist, speaking in a recent From Day One webinar. “According to the survey, more than half of employees will be hitting up the job boards for opportunities to potentially jump ship, which is an increase of more than 40% from the previous year,” Harvey said. Natalie Baumgartner, Chief Workforce Scientist for Achievers, explained how, “after compensation and benefits, work-life balance was the second-highest motivator that employees cited, with one in four employees naming that as the main reason that they would jump on in 2021. Now, that’s a pretty high number, especially when you consider the fact that many of us might have assumed that working from home would improve work-life balance.” Natalie Baumgartner, Chief Workforce Scientist (Photo courtesy of Achievers) “However, with schools still closed in many regions, on top of other stressors related to the pandemic,” Baumgartner said. “It’s really become clear over the past several months that many employees are struggling significantly with work-life balance.” “So let’s look at what’s keeping people at their current companies. Get this: Work-life balance was cited as the No. 1 factor motivating people to stay in their current role ... We just spoke about how it’s a motivator to leave. But when it’s working, it’s also a major factor driving retention,” Baumgartner said. She added: “Employers really need to keep a laser focus on work-life balance as both a recruitment and retention strategy.” To do that, she said, employers must realize that the workplace has fundamentally changed and will never return to previous norms. Many more factors must be taken into account given the realities moving forward to increase engagement and retention, foster company culture, and adapt to new conditions on every level. Three quarters of respondents reported working from home during the pandemic, and the issue of ‘remote or hybrid workforce?’–it’s not going away,” Baumgartner said. “Forty-two percent of the respondents in our study said that their company culture has diminished since the onset of the pandemic,” Baumgartner said. “Now, you may be saying: That’s not surprising, we’re in a pandemic. But we wanted to learn specifically what was driving that feeling. And the data told us most employees place blame on a lack of impactful communication, and also on a lack of effort to make remote employees feel connected.” Fostering that connection involves several key elements: investing in proper technology to unite remote workers, improving communication between managers and employees, proper recognition, and soliciting and acting on feedback from workers. “HR has to own up to the fact that taking time to gather stakeholders and ensure your survey’s asking the right questions, and administering surveys and analyzing the results–it’s all a colossal waste of time if feedback isn’t consistently being acted on,” said Harvey. “So there’s really just no better way to show your employees that you don’t care about them or their opinion by asking them to take time out of their day and give you the benefit of their observations–and then doing nothing with it.” “So when I hear HR leaders talk about the risk of survey fatigue, it honestly drives me crazy, because there is no such thing as survey fatigue. It doesn’t exist. What employees suffer from–and the real thing HR should be concerned about–is inaction fatigue.” She added: “When we look at what changed from 2020 to 2021 is that more companies are prioritizing and putting energy towards acting on feedback ... We jumped from 9% to 16% of employees claiming their employer is awesome at acting on feedback. And although that’s actually really wonderful, it also tells the story that an overwhelming majority of organizations have more work to do to bridge the gap.” Brie Harvey, Employee Engagement Evangelist (Photo courtesy of Achievers) That bridge should involve employers looking at the emergence of new challenges and demands faced by employees–as well as their expectations from management. Much of that centers on re-imagining workspaces, incorporating hybrid working conditions, and figuring out how to strike that elusive balance between personal and professional. “Balance is crucial,” Baumgartner reiterated at the end of the webinar. “For both recruitment and retention, employees want to know that they’ll be able to meet their personal obligations like child care, elder care, as well as just having downtime to rest and recover. So start by asking employees, either in one-to-one meetings or through a quarterly pulse survey, whether they feel they’re able to balance their work and their personal commitments.” “If they’re not,” she advised, “ask them how they could be better supported. And remember–that balance starts at the top. So make sure that your leaders and your managers, they’re taking vacation and shutting off in the evenings and on the weekends to model that for others.” Lack of balance and inability to monitor dissatisfaction from the top down, Baumgartner said, will surely lead to a lack of engagement, which leads to a lack of retention and has a snowball effect. “Particularly during these precarious times, deep disengagement can truly be catastrophic,” she said. “And to that point, our studies show that 70% of those not likely to job search are engaged, or very engaged. So a big call to action for leaders is to acknowledge that there’s never been a more critical time to put energy into reimagining your engagement strategy. And success begins with setting the expectation with leaders, that they’re accountable for the engagement of their team. We have to ensure that leaders understand how engagement influences every aspect of their success and, thus, the success of your business ... Engagement is exceptionally fluid, and it changes throughout the course of a single day, let alone over weeks or months or years.” Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this webinar, Achievers. You can watch a video of the conversation here. Please visit our conference page to register for more upcoming events. Sheila Flynn is a Chicago-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Times. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame
Companies Ask: What Does Our Community Need?
BY Sheila Flynn March 02, 2021There are almost countless phrases that have become popularized–and arguably overused–since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic: “We are all in this together.” “In these uncertain times.” “The new normal.” “Now more than ever.” But when employees at the financial-tech company Fiserv refer to their Covid-19 response as well as their overall sense of corporate social responsibility (CSR), they rely on a classic phrase often attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Do well by doing good,” says Meg Hendricks, Fiserv’s senior director of corporate citizenship and head of military and veteran affairs. At From Day One’s recent conference on corporate purpose, Hendricks spoke on a panel seeking to answer the question: “Why Should a Company’s Purpose Extend to the Community Around It?” The commitment to “doing well by doing good,” Hendricks said, means not only outlining an effective CSR strategy but committing to ongoing assessment and diversification. Pillars and purpose statements cannot just be ethereal; they must be practical and implemented. When it comes to engaging communities, companies need to remain vigilant. “We made a point to make sure that when we were evaluating how we were going to engage with [community partners], there needed to be a specific plan, we were assigning a relationship manager, we were making sure that we were both amplifying what they need while also being able to expand our network and touch more folks.” In Fiserv’s case, one of the company’s goals has been to help small businesses, which have been hit particularly hard during the pandemic. To reach them, Fiserv decentralized its efforts. “We really did partner with our community groups across the country, small-business aggregators, chamber of commerce incubators, and local resource providers. We went from about 50 community partners to over 100,” Hendricks said. All that outreach will be good for Fiserv as well. “By expanding our network, we’re enhancing entrepreneur ecosystems and creating an environment where we can grow and flourish together as a community, continuously auditing and looking at what we’re doing.” That same commitment to re-evaluation and follow-through has also been informing the efforts of cloud-computing provider Blackbaud, said Melissa Britton, manager of philanthropy and volunteer engagement at the company. She referred to a recent study from the Blackbaud Institute on the state of corporate social impact in 2020, which includes a four-point summary about things corporate leaders should keep in mind when they’re rethinking their sense of purpose and CSR strategy. First and foremost, Britton said, was: “Listen to your people, involve your people at all levels and in all departments in the conversation around developing CSR strategy. No. 2 would be to do an audit of all the social good efforts that you currently have. Are they strategic? Maybe it’s time to rethink some of those,” Britton said. Speaking on community impact, top row from left: moderator Steve Koepp of From Day One, Potoula Stavropoulos of Regeneron, and Melissa Britton of Blackbaud. Bottow row from left: Meg Hendricks of Fiserv and Hillary Bochniak of Acccenture (Image by From Day One) “And the third is, don’t be afraid to change and evolve. That may mean stepping away from some long-standing traditions–and that’s okay. This is the fourth component: Have a very honest conversation about corporate values. What are the values? Do we need to change those, do those need to evolve?” Following those steps, she said, “really ensures that a company’s CSR strategy will be something that’s owned by everyone within the company, not just the HR department or the marketing department, wherever that CSR effort might be housed.” That’s where the word “community” in itself becomes multi-faceted. It needs to involve communities outside of the company as well as within. And multi-level involvement and engagement can be key to bolstering efforts and fostering a collaborative, altruistic culture. Hillary Bochniak, a managing director of HR at Accenture, said the global professional-services firm, which employs more than half a million people worldwide, had “always been an organization that’s been very community-oriented and has provided a lot of support for our employees to pursue their passions in terms of philanthropy and volunteerism.” Last October, she said, Accenture “launched a new purpose, strategy and brand for ourselves. Our purpose is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity. Our strategy is pretty simple: It’s to help companies do that in a post-Covid environment. Our purpose is amplified then by our brand, which is ‘Let there be change.’ And that’s the mentality that we take into all of our interactions,” Bochniak said. A recent Accenture study “found that roughly 70% of workers expect that companies will start to behave more responsibly and have a strengthened need for greater responsibility for driving social outcomes.” “On a corporate level, I think that we’re seeing this heightened overall. And what’s really interesting is that it’s also deeply personal,” Bochniak continued. “One in two workers in our survey agree that ethical, sustainable and moral values being demonstrated by employers is going to become even more important to them after the pandemic passes. So the idea of extending purpose to the community, it’s existential, really, and it’s something that is a mandate.” Demonstrating a positive impact on the community pays another dividend, she said: an increased ability to attract the best talent. Community engagement can also involve nurturing future generations, said Potoula Stavropoulos, director of social impact at the biotech company Regeneron, which focuses its CSR programs on STEM education, emerging-talent searches and science fairs. “We were founded about 30 years ago, and still led by our co-founders, who are physician-scientists,” Stavropoulos said. “They founded our company with the vision to use science to improve human life. And that really is the foundation for our corporate purpose: To use science to improve the world, which is where our focus on supporting science and scientific talent stems from.” To do that, she said, Regeneron incorporates all of the aforementioned strategies: re-evaluating, adapting, and involving employees on a personal, hands-on level. “We thought really hard about, how do we apply an equity lens to our work to even deepen the impact of our investments? And we also acted on our commitment to empower our employees to give to our local communities,” she said. This involves “giving them the tools and the resources and the voice to act in the ways that they felt would be most meaningful to them,” Stavropoulos said. With the onset of the pandemic, “we all have had to pivot in the last year and find innovative ways to support our employees,” as well as Regeneron’s nonprofit partners and the STEM students it reaches through its programs. The pandemic, which has affected Black and brown communities disproportionately, prompted the company to deepen its commitment to addressing “those disparities that have long contributed to inequities in their education, systematically and structurally. We believe that the best and brightest minds should be going into science, because it’s through science that we will find the solutions to our world’s most intractable problems,” Stavropoulos said. “We believe scientists are the heroes, and we want to translate that notion in society, where we can elevate and inspire students.” Sheila Flynn is a Chicago-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Times. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
America's Military Veterans: Tapping a Rich Talent Pool
BY Sheila Flynn February 25, 2021The qualities that make great soldiers are the same ones prized by hiring managers across all industries: Punctuality. Reliability. Respect. Versatility. Dedication. Military veterans comprise a rich talent pool for civilian employers, but the path from military service to jobs with civilian employers often has bumps and misconceptions. Employers don’t necessarily know where to find potential recruits, how to attract and retain them, or how to equate their military experience with civilian job demands. Veterans, for their part, sometimes don’t know where to look for opportunities, how to promote themselves, or how to explain the ways in which their skills can translate. Those gaps were addressed in From Day One’s recent webinar, “American Military Veterans: Tapping a Rich Talent Pool,” with veterans themselves and other experts offering insights into how to train, recruit, encourage and develop workers from the armed forces. Key for companies is to recognize that the worker shortages in many industries today aren’t because potential hires lack credentials or education, said Dave Harrison, executive director of national apprenticeships for Fastport, a software company that build products to help job seekers, particularly military-community members, find meaningful employment and apprenticeship training. The challenge for many employers today, he said, is in “finding people–to be rather direct–who can show up on time, pass a drug screen, can work in a changing environment and stay focused, can work as part of a team, and can overcome obstacles. That’s the hardest thing to find in today’s modern era. Those soft skills [are] what every industry is wrestling over right now.” Delaney Rea, driver services manager for Melton Truck Lines, whose apprenticeship program and recruitment has a particular focus on veterans, said that members of the military “fit very well into our culture,” especially because of “the pride they take in their work.” “They have this culture of representing us well and being part of a larger team,” Rea said, adding: “We can find people with Class A [truck-driving] licenses. But if they don’t take that pride in their work, they’re actually being more than just not representing us well. They’re also being unsafe.” Veterans, in contrast, “are just the most outstanding employees that we’ve been able to have–and [they have] that understanding of hierarchy, as well." Julie De La Mora, a regional recruiting director for Allied Universal, a security-services company with more than 250,000 employees, made similar observations, colored by her own military experience and firsthand perspective. “We thrive on being proud and doing what we do best,” she said of veterans, adding: “We have the values that were instilled in us when we first joined the military, and also the sense of belonging and urgency and not leaving anyone else behind.” Speaking on military veterans, top row from left: Nick Curry of Amazon Web Services and Lydia Dishman of Fast Company. Center row from left: Delaney Rea of Melton Truck Lines, Dave Harrison of Fastport, and Katie Adams of Apprenticeship Services Group. Bottom row: Julie De La Mora of Allied Universal (Image by From Day One) All of those qualities resonate with businesses and other employers, participants said. “I would say every employer that I’ve worked with, they’ll of course cite veterans’ core values of discipline and accountability, understanding chain of command,” said Katie Adams, CEO of Apprenticeship Services Group. But the less straightforward aspect is getting veterans in the door in the first place. “What we’re seeing now is that employers are really having to break away from traditional methods of recruiting, hiring, evaluating talent,” Adams said. “And so they’re really having to look more broadly at, what are the skills, credentials, certifications? What [do] those credentials and certifications mean? The employers that are going to succeed are the ones that do their homework to figure out what those military ratings equate to. If someone was in artillery in the army, don’t write them off. There’s a lot of logistical, technical work that they’ve done. And they have the capacity to turn around pretty quickly and do that in a different environment.” Much of the onus lies on hiring managers to identify and gauge veterans’ capabilities as well as transferable skills, said Nick Curry, a veteran who heads military recruiting and apprenticeships at Amazon Web Services. “Veterans have a certain determination and grit that we all look for in Corporate America,” Curry said. “But to drill down a little bit deeper, I think what separates veterans is that the core values that most of the veterans are exposed to, in their branches of services, really closely align to Amazon’s 14 leadership principles, so much so that we actually prefer to hire people that are cultural fits almost more than we need their technical skills, because working at Amazon and the culture of Amazon is so important to us. That’s why it’s so easy for us to hire from the military community.” “But you know, to specifically call out something,” continued Curry, “it’s because veterans have the ability to learn a lot of new skills very quickly, which is important in our technical, fast-paced world. And they don’t give up when the going gets tough. And that’s something we see a lot from other types of hires. But the military community really can persevere." Translating Military Skills Into Civilian Many veterans come to the job market with relevant technical skills for specialized jobs, as Adams mentioned, but the transferability of those skills to the civilian workplace needs to be highlighted. “There may be someone that comes out of the army that had worked in cryptography [and] they have the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in computer science–you just don’t know it,” Curry said. “And so it’s up to the hiring manager. Again, the traditional methods of recruiting, evaluating and hiring talent aren’t working. And so these folks have to get innovative and be able to speak the veterans’ language.” An integral part of doing that means engaging veterans already employed by other organizations, whether it’s through recruitment or mentorship, participants said. “The best advertising any employer can have is to take care of someone in transition [from the military], because that word of mouth to the next people that they served with will mean much more than a million-dollars’ worth of advertising,” Fastport’s Harrison said. Once those veteran employees are trained and supported, their contributions are invaluable and they, too, can help others make the transition. Webinar moderator Lydia Dishman, contributing editor for Fast Company, referred to a LinkedIn study finding that “veterans are 39% more likely to be promoted earlier than non-veterans.” “The critical time for a veteran in transition is in the first six months,” Harrison said. “If you get them past the first six months, you’ve got a good chance of keeping them a long time. And they will thrive after that first, six-month period.” That’s where mentorship comes into play, he said. “If you want to engage the situation in that first six-month window, where you avoid miscommunication, try to pair someone with another veteran who’s been in your culture,” he said. “They can communicate with that person much more effectively. A mentor doesn’t have to be 24/7, just somebody to talk to, to resolve any confusion they have. You would be amazed at how big a difference that makes in both retention and just overall productivity.” Providing Resources to Help With the Transition Veteran-focused employee resource groups (ERGs) are another helpful buttress, especially when companies and organizations get a more comprehensive sense of the veteran experience, said Curry. “Understanding the community better is really up to us as the employers, and we need to be doing more to help educate the service members on how to prepare for biases and make adjustments,” he said. If employers “don’t have a business resource group or an affinity group for your employees to participate in, you’re going to make them feel isolated when they come into a new environment,” he said. Other resources to help veterans with transition include tech tools to hone resumes by translating military attributes into civilian speak. Networking and support are also absolutely vital, whether it’s through government agencies, nonprofits, or social media for veterans and their families. “We belong to a lot of social-media platforms where we connect with a lot of the groups for military spouses, so I’ve made sure that each one of my military recruiters, as well as our regional recruiters, join all of those groups,” De La Mora said, later adding: “We are looking at transitioning our veterans who not only have their spouses, but also their kids that are of age to start working. We’ve got entry-level positions for them and we connect with the state resources,” which in many cases offer funding to train young people in the 18-to-24 age bracket. Veterans and their families tend to have a shared sense of purpose and service, Rea said she learned from experience. Tapping into that spirit helps attract and keep them as employees. “You’re trying to recruit a workforce of people who have raised their hand to serve our country,” she said. “They clearly have a passion beyond themselves and [for] what they can do to continue to serve–and that’s one of the things that we’ve highlighted a lot in trucking. I mean, who impacts our country more than our truck drivers, who touch every single industry and keep the rest of us going? That’s been a huge part of how we’ve attracted talent,” Rea said. "So yes, we do have some other attractions for them to come here–benefits and stuff. But sometimes that’s the sole reason someone picks it–because they want to do something impactful to continue serving their country.” Sheila Flynn is an Austin-based freelance journalist who has written for the Associated Press, Daily Mail, Irish Times and Sunday Independent (Ireland). She is the proud daughter of Vietnam veteran and Bronze Star recipient John Flynn, who served with the 101st Airborne Division in the A Shau Valley in 1968-69. Upon his return to the U.S., he spent decades installing phone systems for AT&T and Lucent in New York City before starting his own telecom business.
Why America Needs a 'Marshall Plan for Moms'
BY Sheila Flynn February 05, 2021From a widely publicized op-ed in The Hill to last week’s celebrity-laden ad in the New York Times, the proposed Marshall Plan for Moms has been making headlines and simultaneously highlighting some alarming statistics. The numbers reflecting the impact of the pandemic on working women and mothers are staggering: An estimated 5.4 million have lost their jobs since last February. As of September, there were three working mothers unemployed for every father who’d lost a job. The percentage of American women in the workforce is currently the lowest it has been in 32 years. But those figures come as little surprise to any working mother who’s been weathering the pandemic while juggling the seemingly insurmountable demands of home and coronavirus working conditions. Reshma Saujani, the plan’s architect and founder of Girls Who Code, knows all too well the challenges being faced by mothers in the American workforce. Their situation was stressful enough even before the pandemic, she said, speaking on a Zoom call from her son’s bedroom in a From Day One webinar with fellow mother and Maven Clinic founder Kate Ryder, also a signatory to the New York Times ad. But now the demands on working mothers in American society are exponentially worse, and failure to address them will result in devastating setbacks, undoing decades of female progress in the workforce. “I think the thing that’s so scary is how quickly we lost so many gains,” said Saujani, the mother of two children ages six and one, pointing out that labor participation among women in the U.S. has declined to levels not seen since the 1980s. “That happened in nine months," she said. "That should frighten all of us." Saujani was speaking from a particularly well-versed place; she started Girls Who Code a decade ago to fix the “pipeline problem” that had contributed to a low percentage of women in tech jobs. “Ten years later, almost, we have taught over 300,000 girls to code,” she said. “We have 10,000 Girls Who Code clubs across the country. When we started Girls Who Code, almost 18% of computer science graduates were women–and now, in some schools, it’s almost as high as 50%. So it’s no longer a pipeline problem.” “The work that we’re really focused on is rooting out bias, sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, to make sure that tech companies actually hire these amazing women,” Saujani said. Yet now, thanks to the pandemic, the challenge is retaining these women in the workforce. “If we’re ever going to solve climate, if we’re going to solve Covid, if we’re going to solve cancer, we need women sitting around the table,” Saujani said. “Women are leaving the workforce now not because we don’t want to work, but because of child care–and because our companies that we work at, oftentimes, don’t respond with the flexibility that we need.” “And so I, out of anger and frustration and desperation, wrote an op-ed, and it resonated with millions of women who said: I feel seen. And so now we’re going to get it done. Because that’s what we do as moms, right? You know, the fabric of our society is based upon motherhood. As we build America back better, we have an opportunity to build motherhood back better. And I think we should take full advantage of that.” The conversation on women and work: clockwise from upper right, moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company, Kate Ryder of Maven, and Reshma Saujani of Girls Who Code (Image by From Day One) Her proposal for a Marshall Plan for Moms, a reference to the 1948 U.S. government program that spent billions of dollars to help rebuild Europe after World War II, calls on President Biden to implement, in his first 100 days, significant protections for working mothers. But Saujani remains a realist about the blowback and the challenges–as does Ryder, whose company provides health care for women and families. “At the end of the day, your moms are going to pick their children over their jobs,” said Ryder, “and so how do you support the moms who will always make that choice, which I think almost all moms will make?” She continued: “For moms that have left the workforce but then want to come back, how do you create returnships in a really profound and pronounced way?” To do that, Ryder said, employers must be “super thoughtful about what flexibility means for their organization and how to really make a leadership-level and board-level imperative to maintain gender equity in the workforce.” If a company has lost a lot of women, she added, it needs strategies to bring them back. That’s a tall order, she and Saujani agreed–particularly when women were “already facing a motherhood penalty and a fatherhood premium in the workplace,” the Girls Who Code founder said. “I think the penalty is going to be even greater when we go back, unless we do something about this case and we’re very intentional about rooting out the deepened bias that we have towards motherhood that has also, I think, been exacerbated by this pandemic–because now you really see our roles, doing all the unpaid work.” In her own life, Saujani said, she’s become–on any given day, at any given moment–nanny, tech support, cleaner, cook and mental-health counselor. “As you’re thinking about a reopening plan, and you’re figuring out the cost of keeping teachers safe, I want you to calculate the cost of lost labor–factor that in,” she said. “Until you really start putting a value on our unseen, unpaid labor, nothing changes.” “The second thing is, we need to pass policies like affordable day care and paid leave,” Saujani said. “There are some good ideas that are in Biden’s plan right now in terms of bailing out the day-care industry and making sure that low-income mothers, in particular, get a tax credit to pay for child care. But it can’t just be a one-year stopgap. We need real structural change.” “The third thing is, look, schools have to be open five days a week, period. If we don’t open up schools five days a week, safely, then we’re going to be in the 1960s” in terms of gender equity, she said. “So we should be working on, again: What do we need to do in terms of batch testing, keeping teachers safe, social distancing in the schools? “And lastly, what are we doing to bring women back?,” Saujani asked, picking up on Ryder’s earlier point. “The vast majority of those working in retail and health care and education are women and women of color. And a lot of those jobs are not coming back. So how do we retrain women for the jobs of tomorrow–and then for women who have left and want to come back?” To support and retain moms on their workforces, companies need to expand their concepts of job flexibility, said Ryder. Some “leading companies” are doing a commendable job, she said, “telling people that they could keep full benefits, which are really expensive, [and] they could work part-time, so they could work on a reduced schedule.” At many companies, Ryder said, “if you go down to 25, 30 hours a week, and you work with your managers on that, then there’s no penalty.” Employers should be “really, really clear about what those rules are,” she added. “You really have to get in at a manager level and train them for how to work with their teams and assign some kind of support on how to pick up some of that work if somebody goes part-time.” Oftentimes, she said, there are a lot a good intentions on setting these flexibility policies, but then in some cases employees are “at the whim of the manager–and how was the manager adapting to that? What tools did they have?” Integral to solving the growing problem, Saujani said, is gathering the knowledge and data to know its true extent. There is a need, she said, “to be specific about who is suffering–what are they struggling with, how do we help mothers at our workplace? What are the things that they need?” “I think the first way that you actually solve the problem is by being specific and by being intentional, so really getting the data. How many mothers have left? Why have they left? What are the needs that they have? You know, is it about child care? Is it about an aging parent? What would it take for them to actually come back to work?” She continued: “This point about the motherhood penalty is going to be huge. We already know that so many women are asked, ‘Hey, are you planning on having another kid? How young are your kids? What’s your child-care situation at home?’ [Employers are] already trying to assume that, because we have kids, we’re suddenly not as interested in our careers,” Saujani said. In the aftermath of the pandemic, “that is simply going to be exacerbated. So in the same way that we’ve been doing a ton of unconscious-bias training, and really trying to root out some of the inherent bias that we have, we’re going to have to do the same when it comes to the motherhood penalty, because we are going to pay a bigger tax for this, post-Covid,” Saujani said. “And if we’re not careful, we’re really quickly going to get back to where we were in the 1960s. Before we know it.” Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this webinar, Maven Clinic. You can watch a video of the conversation From Day One webinar. Please visit our conference page to register for more upcoming events. Sheila Flynn is a Chicago-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Times. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
What It Takes to Build a Truly Transparent Workplace
BY Sheila Flynn January 08, 2021One employee posted a photo of her young son at her desk, explaining why the demands of homeschooling were prompting her to temporarily switch to part-time work. Another very bluntly shared that she’d be late for a meeting–after staying out too long the night before and oversleeping. The disarmingly honest and personal posts by Kintone employees appeared on a widely viewable company portal. Such candor on the forum is appreciated and encouraged, a key element when it comes to building workplace transparency and a healthy corporate culture, said Dave Landa, CEO of Kintone, a tech company that provides an all-in-one workplace platform for teams. Transparency is “the necessary foundation for accountability and inclusion,” Landa said in a presentation about building a transparent workplace, speaking at From Day One’s December conference on inclusive leadership. “Culture is like the wind–so it was written in a Harvard Business Review article on leadership recently. It is invisible, yet its effect can be seen and felt,” Landa said. “When it’s with you, the sailing is smooth. When it’s against you, everything is a lot more difficult. And just like the wind, culture–company culture–can be elusive to grasp. Leaders cannot mandate culture; you can’t just say it and it is so,” Landa said. Then how do leaders create and manage it? “You have to be very intentional about it,” he said. “First off, you need to define that culture explicitly. You then have to establish policies, the right policies, that will help support it and guide it along toward that clearly defined culture.” As follow-up, “The next thing you need to do is create and give examples and activities to encourage that culture. And finally, you really need to provide tools and methods to continuously maintain and develop that culture,” Landa said. Dave Landa, CEO of Kintone (Photo courtesy of Kintone) Four elements are held above all else at Kintone to achieve the desired teamwork culture: Sharing a common vision; being oneself and taking responsibility; embracing individuality; and finally, transparency, Landa said. That’s why the company supports the public portal as a place for employees to share everything from the aforementioned employee explanations and admissions to information about what days and times they’ll be unavailable to work, to what they’re doing to make their work-from-home setups more convenient. Key to the ethos and practical implementation, Landa added, is complete honesty, whether it’s about lateness or expenses or other issues. “We have a few maxims that we always share to try to capture some of our beliefs and policies,” Landa said. “So first one, of course: It’s okay to mess up. But just don’t try to cover it up. And then, correct actions. Don’t blame people.” He emphasized the concept of “public first, private second,” explaining: “That’s really just a mindset. Anything that you’re going to be saying or doing should be public first by default. And that is really something that drives a lot of what we do.” Kintone additionally fuels that drive, Landa said, by “pursuing these elements intentionally to help build the empathy and the trust necessary for developing great culture and effective teamwork.” ‘It’s certainly not always easy,” he acknowledged. “And oftentimes, there are conflicts between these different elements. And it’s really important to work on balancing the different values that they represent. But for us, it gives us our true north that we’re always working toward.” Whether it’s at Kintone or other companies, transparency tends to increase worker happiness, which in turn increases productivity, Landa said. “So happiness, trust and productivity–they’re kind of like the antioxidants for organizations.” The ethos is mandated from the top. At Kintone, Landa said, high-level weekly executive meetings are open for other team members who want to participate or listen in. Notes are then shared from that meeting, with employees given the opportunity to question or comment online. Even expense procedures have been made more transparent in order to achieve company and cultural goals, he said. “We switched from a traditional, hierarchical, sort of opaque system–where managers approve expenses and then it moves on to finance for their review and approval–to a system where all company-card expenses are shared publicly together in a workbook at the end of each month within our central expenses space, which is on our publicly accessible portal,” he said. A slide from Landa's presentation (Graphic by Kintone) “Individuals essentially utilize those workbooks to then create their expense-report records,” he added. “Although there’s still pre-approvals for larger expenses, we have been able to eliminate a lot of the approval process and a lot of the onerous, time-consuming manager approval process by making this expense report transparent.” Kintone brings that transparency to its issue-resolution process, called the “aspiration engine.” Said Landa: “Basically, it encourages team members to identify places where we can do better. It brings team members together to very transparently identify causes for this issue–without affixing any blame, just looking for the actions or the causes that might have brought us to where we are, and then landing on and assigning the action, steps, to help bring this issue toward a very clearly stated, better vision.” “We do this on a regular basis,” he said. “And we really try to make it so that nothing is off the table. Any issues that folks see where we can do better, let’s start working on it.” While portals, threads, apps and other technological tools are key to realizing cultural and teamwork goals, the themes of commitment and communication need to inform every aspect of corporate efforts, Landa said. “The more you can centralize communications, the better off you are in creating a holistic transparency environment.” Returning to the comparison between culture and the wind, Landa said: “If you want transparency to be a key part of that culture, then you need to really fill up those sails with the policies to support it, the examples to encourage it, and those tools and methods.” Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this thought-leadership spotlight: Kintone. Thank you as well to everyone who attended this conference live. Please visit our conference page to register for more upcoming events. Sheila Flynn is a Chicago-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Times. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
Employee Experience: How Tech Is Changing Work and Life
BY Sheila Flynn January 03, 2021Juggling home-schooling with back-to-back Zoom calls. Combating video fatigue while missing face-to-face contact with coworkers. Struggling to keep up with the demands of real-time communication. Aargh! The pandemic has pushed the workforce onto a steep learning curve since the beginning–and technology has been at the center of everything. How has it changed employee experience? While progress and adjustments have been made, how could it be further improved? That was the topic at the heart of a From Day One webinar in December moderated by Fast Company contributing editor Lydia Dishman. Some of the panelists spoke from years of experience working remotely, while others hailed from more traditional industries like construction and hardware. But all agreed that the swift and seismic shift in working conditions pointed out the need for immediate adaptations across the board, with technology proving at times to be both a help and a hindrance, prompting a search for balance that continues to be negotiated. Dishman, at the beginning of the webinar, highlighted Salesforce research showing that employees working from home as a result of the pandemic had only a 1% reduction in productivity, while Microsoft research found that people were working more in the evenings and on weekends. In light of these adjustments, the webinar speakers stressed that they’re highly conscious of avoiding employee burnout, maintaining a strong corporate culture, and helping their workforce adapt to new conditions and best practices–without further disrupting their personal lives. Jamie Hillegass, director of talent, development and learning at the construction-supply company White Cap, described the particular challenges faced by her “very traditional industry” with many locations across the U.S. This included reinventing meetings for which people would fly into headquarters from all over the country to discuss important topics like succession planning. “These are things that we traditionally felt like you had to be in person to see each other,” Hillegass said. The transition to digital meetings involved “teaching the organization and the leaders who are becoming more familiar with Zoom and some other technologies how to do it,” she said. “To that point, in a three-hour session, how do you keep it motivating, and people engaged, without getting distracted or going off camera? Setting some of those rules and expectations for being on camera was a new thing for our organization.” Our speakers, top row from left: Micha Mros of HUB International and moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company. Middle row: Christine Doucet of Ace Hardware, Jamie Hillegass of White Cap, and Joey Levi of LumApps. Bottow row: Laura Sewell of Avanade (Image by From Day One) Familiarizing executives from the top down with new technology has been uncharted territory for many organizations, participants agreed, noting that the comfort level with different digital tools varied among generations. Christine Doucet, Ace Hardware’s director of employee engagement and head of the company’s charitable foundation, said: “We do a lot of communication with our store owners, and they’re not used to this technology. Not every audience is sitting in front of a computer all day.” Doucet said she started preparing them ahead of time, for example asking everyone to be on video. “I learned pretty quickly that with some audiences, like our hardware-store owners, many of which are baby boomers, I needed to spell it out, like, ‘This is the expectation, if you can. This is how it’s going to work.’” Over-reliance on video calls, however, has been an equal challenge. Joey Levi, director of pre-sales for North America at LumApps, an employee communication and collaboration platform, has been working remotely for more than 20 years, but saw things change when more colleagues connected virtually in 2020. “I did a lot of personal Zoom meetings early on,” he said. “And then they all stopped because everyone got really exhausted by them.” He later added: “On the sales side, it’s very difficult for both the prospects and customers and for salespeople, because you’re shifting into a new paradigm of trying to engage somebody. But you’re now boxed into a meeting in a video. You can’t go to dinner, you can’t do the normal things you would do, and it does definitely bring a challenge.” One of them is a lack of feedback. “When you’re dealing with people in sales, a lot of times they will go off camera,” at which point “you have no idea–are they paying attention to what you’re talking about? Do they get it?” One solution he suggested: “Getting people to start to be more conversational in their approach to presentation.” Micha Mros, HR technology leader at insurance brokerage HUB International, echoed his sentiments. Like Levi, she and her team had historically worked together remotely, but “prior to COVID, we were on site with our clients,” she said. “So we got to meet them, see them, create that bond with them. And although we did use–and still do use–a variety of different software to communicate, we never really pushed people to turn their cameras on, you know, to engage in this way. And now we ask all of our consultants to make sure that their cameras are on.” Technology has not yet provided a substitute for deeper, in-person discussions, Mros said. “We do things like discovery sessions with our clients, which typically would be on site for three or four days,” she said. “We found that it has been a difficult transition to get people to stay focused for four days on camera. So there have been some struggles.” Fostering engagement with in-house employees has also emerged as a priority too, participants said. That means getting feedback from workers about their well-being, adjustments they’re making, and what works (and what doesn’t) in the new remote, more tech-heavy environment. Laura Sewell, EVP of human resources in North America for Avanade, a digital-transformation consultancy formed by Microsoft and Accenture, said she’d seen more “reliance on video and recorded-video messages to really build that connection” because workers are seeking those ties in the absence of being together in person. “And I think the other shift that I have seen is leveraging technology to conduct what I call pulse checks with our employees in real time,” she said. “We’re aggregating results to HR quickly, enabling us to respond and adapt in real time to employee sentiment. That wasn’t something we were quite leveraging as much prior to the pandemic that we’re now doing weekly.” Listening to employees and adapting accordingly has brought a decrease in formality and previously rigid schedules and structures. “We have introduced and launched what we call alternative ways of working, which enable people to work four 10-hour days [and] have a day off or afternoon,” said Sewell, the goal being to “create these flexible working schedules with some parameters around them.” Participating employees have agreed to anonymous surveys to gauge productivity, “so that we can get a better sense of whether this is working–or creating added pressures in your life, where you find that you’re working five 10-hour days instead of having that extra day off.” The speakers agreed that the new reliance on technology and flexible working conditions are here to stay. “We have all learned that we can work remotely–that we can still engage with folks without being in the same room with them,” Mros said. “Personally, I’ve learned that maybe I don’t have to travel as much to visit with clients to get my work done, which would save them money and make me more productive. And I think that the way that we do business, because of this, will be forever changed,” she said. “I wonder how many of my clients will never return to brick and mortar. How many folks will end up being permanently remote? And from talking to my clients, a lot of them with offices in large metropolitan areas really don’t have any plans on going back,” Mros said. “If this had happened ten years ago,” added Levi, “this would be really difficult to work from home, because we wouldn’t have the ability to do this video stuff, et cetera. I also think that the trend for a lot of people before Covid was already that technology was driving them to work longer hours because it’s immediate. It’s in your phone. It’s in your hand. It’s constantly there. And so I think the benefit of knowing how that affects everybody in the organization means that the things we talked about are more about your life-work balance and making sure you understand if your employees are actually well and mentally well.” He added: “People were getting used to working on the weekends and working at night and working in the morning and working during lunch. So I think the benefit for the employee is going to be more sensitivity.” Sheila Flynn is a Chicago-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Times. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
Diversity Hiring: Innovative Ways to Meet Your Goals
BY Sheila Flynn December 08, 2020Over the course of this year, the trajectory of corporate diversity-and-inclusion efforts has been particularly under a spotlight. Protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing prompted many organizations to commit publicly to more equity-conscious efforts, while the remote-working conditions brought on by the pandemic made more starkly evident the economic and social disparity among different communities. So how can employers, amid these conditions and grappling with an ever-changing work environment, successfully recruit diverse candidates–and keep them? Executives from across multiple sectors convened recently to talk about these issues in a From Day One webinar, moderated by Fast Company contributing editor Lydia Dishman, titled “Diversity Hiring: Innovative Ways for Companies to Meet Their Goals.” Chief among the key factors for success, the panelists agreed, are out-of-the-box thinking, transparency, follow-through and, in actuality, listening to diverse voices in the first place. “After a lot of the social unrest and really just emotional exhaustion from a lot of the employees here, we began to get together and really have candid conversations about, What are pillars? What do we really want?,” said Brittany King-Offord, a lead talent-acquisition manager at AT&T. “What do we want people to buy into and, currently as a corporation, then how can we sit back and create the branding around it to where we can engage potential candidates [who] want to believe that AT&T is not just talking the talk, but we’re also walking the walk?,” said King-Offord. “So we actually enhanced one of our programs called AT&T Believes, where we are going back into the communities and really serving–not just with doing basic community service,” she said. “We’re also looking at, How do we engage with upskilling opportunities and also other education opportunities to engage potential candidates ... to create a pipeline that makes sense–so they can reap the benefits of the conversations that we’re having internally?” The value of a talent-development pipeline, particularly in letting candidates know what jobs exist and encouraging them to apply, was repeatedly touched upon throughout the webinar. “Things that we’ve seen a lot of organizations starting to adopt: One, to go beyond just the traditional diversity job boards,” said Leah Daniels, SVP of strategy at Appcast, a developer of programmatic job-advertising technology. “That’s an unfortunate box-checking exercise that we have seen,” she said, since “there are low volumes of people engaging on those sites.” She recommends looking for candidates on a much broader level. Her second recommendation was to reach out to many different kinds of colleges. “Just because they’re not a historically black college does not mean that they don’t have variety of great candidates and opportunities,” Daniels said. From Day One's panelists, clockwise from upper left: moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company, Yvonne Soto of the New York City Department of Education, Leah Daniels of Appcast, Chad Nico Hiu of the YMCA of the USA, Brittany King-Offord of AT&T, and Monique Carswell of the Walmart Foundation (Image by From Day One) Daniels offered a third piece of advice: “Taking a really hard look at your job descriptions and requirements and asking, Are you creating barriers to diversity unintentionally? Does this position really require a four-year degree or master’s degree? Are we just asking for that because we can?,” she said. “And so really making sure you’re reaching a diverse audience and you’re not asking them to opt out. One of the things we know is that women and people of color, particularly, are more likely to try to match all the requirements in your job description, where oftentimes white men will not. They will say, ‘close enough,’ and they’ll still apply for your job. So if you’ve created the bar too high, you’ve actually created an opportunity for candidates to take themselves out of contention–without even the need to do it. So really making sure that you are asking for things that are real, as opposed to a wish list.” Follow-through is just as important. Candidates need to see evidence of companies truly enacting their pledges and policies regarding diversity and inclusion, with potential employees wanting to “see performatively” that organizations are living up to their commitments, according to Chad Nico Hiu, senior director of diversity and inclusion at YMCA of the USA. Before reaching out to candidates, individual leaders should look inward. “We sometimes, as leaders in this area, or trying to be leaders in this area, jump to the organizational change before we do the individual work,” he said. “What is our own bias? What is our own learning, where are our own blind spots, how does that show up in the policies we proposed or the leadership we try to embody in the spaces we aim to create?” Organizations need to provide solid evidence that they've got what job candidates are looking for. Earlier in the year, Hiu said, “Everyone was looking for three words in somebody’s statement: Did you have Black Lives Matter? And if you didn’t, you got nailed. Very rarely did we see, initially, the words address systemic racism, foster anti-oppressive tactics, and ensure that all people feel safe and welcome. The tactics to the performative aspect of this work sometimes get glossed over.” Hiu quoted a favorite saying of a colleague: “How do we make this a movement, not a moment?" He continued: “That’s a part of what I think we all are trying to talk about in diversity. There’s a movement here that, if we don’t lose it, can change the makeup of every one of our sectors, every one of our companies, every one of our neighborhoods, if we hold onto it and systematize it while people are still paying attention.” He added: “There’s a need to ask the candidates that we keep, What has made you stay?, instead of assuming. There’s a need to make sure that employee resource groups or business resource groups are tapped into deciding how we talk about them.” Yvonne Soto, executive director of organizational development and effectiveness for the New York City Department of Education, said the department had already made concrete strides and demonstrably reached its diversity-and-inclusion goals, with over 50% of new teachers this year–for the first time–identifying as people of color. But she too stressed the necessity to be vigilant and continue showing evidence of the department’s follow-through to candidates, staff members, and the wider community. “One of the points that I want to make is not grandstanding or having platitudes around pledges, but how can we ensure that that’s embedded into the fabric of what we do through our priorities and core values–and really centering the voices of people of color within our organization to inform our decisions as we move forward?” Soto said. “So as we think about returning to work and what that looks like–and creating return-to-work guidance and resources, how can we lead with inclusivity and empathy? How can we acknowledge that there has been disproportionality to our black colleagues and Asian colleagues across the system?” she asked, emphasizing the need to ensure “that they play a role and reviewing our resources around structured interviewing, diversity, recruitment, toolkits, etc., to ensure that we are going beyond just the mission and vision, but also ensuring that employee voice is centered in the conversation.” And while proactivity, innovation and concrete achievement are imperative, so too is transparency, which is needed in order to maintain that drive, said Monique Carswell, head of associate and customer engagement at the Walmart Foundation. “When you make these announcements and commitments, you have to continue to let people know where you are on that journey. So here’s where we are; here’s how we’re getting there,” Carswell said, which should apply both internally and externally. At Walmart, “we’ve moved from an annual diversity report to mid-year. So how can we continue to make improvements and let people know where we are at the same time?,” she said, recommending “constant communication and feedback flow.” She added: “In terms of our current associates, and even the pipeline of folks who are looking to work for us, there’s this sense of urgency. So you want to act swiftly, you want to come out big, you want to come out strong, but at the same time, you have to have this steady momentum. So do you have the actual tools in place internally?” Maintaining consistent, effective procedures can be “a huge hurdle, depending on the size of your organization,” she said, especially given variations in “where everybody is coming from and where they’re at on that journey. So you do have to have a little bit of grace around that and continue to question yourselves and your actions.” Editor's note: You can watch a video of the webinar here. Please visit our conference page to register for more upcoming events. Sheila Flynn is a Chicago-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Times. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
Corporate Culture: Why It Can Pay to Put Employees First
BY Sheila Flynn January 21, 2020While almost everyone agrees that a company’s culture is the No. 1 key to its long-term success, the best expression of that culture is probably not platitudes but programs–real things a business does to show its workers and other stakeholders what it believes in. What does the fabric of culture look like? Imagine having a direct pipeline to your CEO when you’re in unexpected financial straits–a way to apply immediately for an emergency monetary grant. Or access to a dedicated whistleblower channel encouraging employees to report anything they consider unethical, immoral, improper, or unsafe. Or a “social good” program to support community work, a program so essential to a new company that it’s launched even before the company starts taking on paying customers? Those were some of features of corporate culture described by executives on a panel discussion at From Day One’s conference in Los Angeles. The panel, titled “Crafting a Corporate Culture That Means Something,” was moderated by Los Angeles Times writer Margot Roosevelt. Many of their examples focused on the well-being of employees. “There’s certainly a lot of research out there … that suggests that taking care of your employees, taking care of your own, does also benefit your shareholders,” said Sarah Townsend, assistant professor of business administration at the University of Southern California. “So one of the ways of maximizing revenues is also to make sure that … the communities you serve are doing well, and that your employees are feeling that they belong and can perform well because of that.” Ronald Reeves, head of diversity and inclusion at insurance giant AIG for the U.S. and surrounding regions, pointed out the importance of bolstering the passions of younger, motivated employees when it comes to giving back to the community, even taking into account the need to produce healthy profits for stockholders. “We want AIG’s shareholders to make money, but it’s also being driven a lot by our employee-resource groups (ERGs),” Reeves said, referring to the priorities of what he called the “I Generation,” as in: “I want technology, I want diversity, and I want to be able to give back to the community and do meaningful work.” The full panel: Roosevelt, Knobbe, Morrison, Meagan Dorsch of Visible, Sarah Townsend of USC, and Ronald Reeves of AIG He added: “A lot of the organizations that we supported in the past, they were some of the pet projects of our most senior executives. What we love about our employee resource groups [is that] we actually give them the funding to make an impact,” said Reeves, with company leaders asking questions like, “What are the trends that we are seeing that our employees are passionate about? And how do we make a bigger investment, whether that’s with resources or money?” Listening is key, he said–an imperative echoed by the other panelists. Live Nation, for example, has implemented programs suggested by employees, taking a grassroots approach. The company, while focused on acquisitions and the continued independence of subsidiaries, strives to achieve employee satisfaction across its range of business entities, said Elizabeth A. Morrison, Live Nation’s VP of diversity and belonging. The company’s initiative called Taking Care of Our Own, through which employees can email the CEO, often results in staff members in financial distress receiving “a grant from the company that is a gift,” Morrison said. “It’s not a loan. There is no interest. There’s no payback. There’s no penalty–and not only is it utilized, but there’s a halo effect from that, with employees literally seeing in real time that a company cares about them and is willing to invest in them.” She added: ‘We also go really above and beyond when it comes to our benefits, in terms of being inclusive … [the company is] expanding to six months paid maternity leave. We’re also really invested in growth and development programs,” Morrison said, pointing to mentorship and mental-health programs suggested by Live Nation employees. Bernie C. Knobbe, head of global benefits at the engineering giant AECOM, highlighted the importance of mental and physical health awareness within the company, citing research. “We did use the data that said shareholder value is increasingly focused on employees’ focus and well-being,” Knobbe said. “And we needed that substantiation to actually do what we wanted to do. We also looked at our claim information for three years and realized that people who participated in the wellness program had 18% lower health-care costs than employees who did not. Those are the data points that you need to even start.” Knobbe said that he was “realistic but optimistic” about the program, which keeps growing in scope. “We went from a Global Well-being Day to a Global Well-being Week and this year it was a Global Well-being Month–because we couldn’t get it all in.” Crafting the corporate culture, however, doesn’t have to focus just on employee and employer, said Meagan Dorsch, head of social good at the new wireless network Visible. “Getting a wireless subscription or service is very complicated,” says Dorsch, whose company is a subsidiary of Verison and focused on affordable service, with a particular focus on younger customers. “The field is very crowded, and the onus has been put on the consumers to figure out what’s best for them. So one of the goals in launching Visible was to make it easy, simple,” she said. “What we did is turn to our members–that’s what we call our customers–and said: ‘What do you want from a wireless provider?’ And we heard things like: ‘We want a WiFi hotspot, we want family plans that aren’t for families.’ So these are things we’ve rolled out in the last nine months to our consumers.” The company takes the same approach to its social-good programs, said Dorsch. “We ask our consumers again: ‘What change do you want to see? What do you want to be a part of?’” Roosevelt of the Times covers economic, labor and workplace issues Another important aspect of corporate culture is taking a broad approach to diversity and inclusion. “One of the other sort of unseen, subtle areas of inclusion that I’ve looked at is social-class diversity, outside the typical race, gender [categories] that we talk about. People that are the first in their families to go to college–they have a college degree but are from a working class, lower-income background,” she said. People from a blue-collar background, where individualism is highly valued, may have trouble fitting into a global corporation that puts an emphasis on collaboration among its global workforce. “And that’s very attractive to that population, but what we’re finding is, if you don’t back that up with having employees actually working together and collaborating, that this disconnect–what you say you’re valuing and what people are actually doing day-to-day–causes issues,” Townsend said. That kind of disconnect has a measurable downside, she said. “People who are in corporations where they say they value cooperation but are not actually working with others on a day-to-day basis show 13% greater turnover intentions.” In a keynote address that followed the panel, Rajeev Peshawaria, CEO of the Iclif Leadership and Governance Centre, gave a presentation based on his book Open Source Leadership: Reinventing Management When There’s No More Business as Usual. Sheila Flynn is a New York-based journalist who has written for DailyMail.com, the Irish Daily Mail, and the Associated Press. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame
How Can We Get Bias Out of Our Systems?
BY Sheila Flynn January 02, 2020As diversity-and-inclusion programs have become standard across most corporations, they’ve made strides toward better equity in pay, organizational culture, and advancement opportunities. But what remains stubborn is bias, not only individual but systemic. How do we root it out? That’s the question panelists tackled at From Day One’s Los Angeles conference during a conversation moderated by Los Angeles Times staff writer Carolina Miranda, who is also co-chair of the paper’s labor union. “So much of the conversation today is about bias training,” said Liji Thomas, head of diversity and inclusion at Southern California Edison. “What 50-plus years of diversity-and-inclusion work has taught us is that if your efforts are limited to training, you’re really missing the boat on this stuff. Mitigating bias in our intra systems, understanding the barriers faced by underrepresented talent–women, people of color–is absolutely critical to long-term diversity-and-inclusion sustainability.” At Southern California Edison, she said, the company has been “looking at the barriers. It’s understanding barriers across the age and life-cycle intersectionality and taking a data-driven approach. If you’re just looking at race and gender, it can really mask barriers that folks have been experiencing. So getting really smart about diversity is something that we are absolutely looking at.” Kristena Hatcher, HR executive for inclusion and diversity at CAA, said the company has even employed a writing-platform app which screens job ads and emails to “rid language that basically could eliminate or keep certain groups of individuals from applying … there are words that traditionally don’t resonate with women or underrepresented communities.” The overall panel included Carolina Miranda of the Los Angeles Times (moderator) and Ilit Raz of Joonko, as well as Thomas, Hatcher, Seiler and Brooks “It’s a very handy system that can help you be more thoughtful about unintentionally excluding people when you’re trying to bring these diverse individuals into your company,” she said. She acknowledged that “training is not the be-all-and-end-all,” however, particularly in the fast-paced and competitive industry of talent representation. “Something that I’m passionate about is education when it comes to an employee population that literally is focused on getting their clients jobs,” she said. “We focus so much externally; how do we educate employees internally to make sure that there is buy-in and that their efforts are sustainable?” Education and training at CAA “empowers them to understand it’s not just recruiting,” she said. “At the end of the day, our agents and executives are the hiring managers, so we want to make sure they’re being as thoughtful as possible as they’re making their hiring decision. We know we all have bias, but how do we attack that and understand? How do we flush that out of our systems when we’re going through interviews and someone many not look like us?” At Control Risks, a consulting firm where Alex Seiler is partner and head of human resources for the Americas, the hiring process has become focused on rooting out innate bias, he said. Many of the company’s hires come from male-dominated professions including global security and intelligence. “We are taking our leaders on a journey of self-discovery around, really, what their biases are–really being able to see them–but also being able to create talent processes that are equitable and fair and transparent,” he said. When joining Control Risks, partners must go through a process administered by the PAC, or partner appointment committee. The panel aims to ensure gender diversity, departmental diversity and other diversity-and-inclusion goals in a process that is “global in its approach.” “If somebody on the PAC is not happy with a particular candidate, they can very well block” the appointment, he said, noting that it “really does take out that sense of hierarchy.” “Our clients are international and diverse by nature,” he said, adding: “We’ve operated in a lot of countries where English is not the first language, so when we go through this process, we don’t use the word ‘cultural fit,’ we focus on language around behaviors and values to really kind of look at something that works across the globe.” Said Brooks: New hiring guidelines at his company mandate that “you have to have at least one woman and one woman of color in the final candidate pool, or you cannot move forward with the role” He added: “You have to be thoughtful. First of all, we’re picking from a market, first of all, which is largely male-dominated. And it’s very much niche in nature. So we can really try to go out of our way to make sure we’re looking at atypical, non-traditional types of channels to bring in people.” “The PAC, in particular … I think has really kept us honest.” But sometimes companies–and employees–need additional, slightly selfish motivations to keep them honest, said Marion Brooks, vice president and U.S. head of diversity and inclusion at Novartis, the pharmaceutical giant. “I think the whole diversity thing, the inclusion conversation, has to be shifted to ‘What’s in it for me?’ for the individual to really buy into it,” he said. “Research shows that there are clear benefits that organizations receive from having more diverse teams. No. 1: Higher revenues. No. 2: They’re more innovative. And No. 3: More responsive to customer needs. So I don’t care if it’s a Little League team or a major corporation, no organization does not want those three things,” Brooks said. “I start all of my conversations saying: ‘If we believe the research, and these are the three benefits, now how do we execute them? How do we make sure we have more diverse teams?’” Brooks cited research published by Harvard Business Review showing that, if only one person of color or woman is in a candidate pool, they have statistically zero chance of getting the job. Adding just one additional woman or person of color raises their chances to 50%. “By simply diversifying the candidate pools–and not just [people who] submit resumes, but get interviews–and holding a standard to that, you significantly increase the opportunity to diversify your work teams.” Now at Novartis, Brooks said, new hiring guidelines mandate that “you have to have at least one woman and one woman of color in the final candidate pool, or you cannot move forward with the role.” Southern California Edison’s Thomas pointed out another “gender-diversity fact: Men tend to be promoted on potential and women tend to be promoted on past performance.” “There are all these subtle ways in which bias creeps into your systems, and if you’re not smart about mitigating bias in your systems, again I’ll go back to the training: [It] does no good if you’re not introducing smart inclusion in places where it really matters for people.” Ilit Ratz is the founder and CEO of Joonko, which is focused on placing women, veterans, and underrepresented communities in companies around the world by matching up relevant candidates to an employer's open positions and encouraging them to apply, thus increasing qualified, diverse talent's exposure to a company's open positions. Miranda, the moderator, covers culture for the Times, often looking at how art intersects with politics, gender and race Joonko, she said, was encouraging companies to look at potential as well as experience, noting that women often underestimate themselves when assessing their suitability for a job. “Women apply if they’re 100% qualified for a job,’ she said. ‘Men apply if they’re 60% qualified. We’ve got to try to encourage those underrepresented candidates to apply, even if they’re not a 100% fit.” The goal, she says, is “to encourage people to apply for jobs that are 80% or 70%” a fit. Another issue, she said, is visibility. “I think a lot of employees … have zero to limited visibility” across a company, she said, adding: “We encourage companies … to give opportunities to employees across the company to do small activities that they relate to.” “I mean, something for women’s month or African-American month … anything that you budget and sponsor as a company for them to feel that they belong and are just included.” Sheila Flynn is a New York-based journalist who has written for DailyMail.com, the Irish Daily Mail, and the Associated Press. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame
If Your Corporate Culture Isn’t Intentional, It Could Become an Accidental One
BY Sheila Flynn November 25, 2019The importance of corporate culture in the workplace, particularly as millennials and younger generations take on increasingly influential roles, has never been more crucial than it is today. The polls show it. According to a recently released Glassdoor survey, which in June polled more than 5,000 workers from the U.S., U.K., France and Germany, 77% of respondents said they would consider a company’s culture before applying for a job. Another 89% of respondents told researchers for the Mission & Culture 2019 survey, conducted by the Harris Poll, that it was important for employers to have a clear mission and purpose. Sixty-five percent of American millennials in the Glassdoor survey responded that they were more likely to care about work culture than salary. The corresponding realities in the workplace have sparked changes and introspection among employers across the globe. A panel discussion at From Day One’s conference in Dallas, moderated by Brandon Call, managing editor of D CEO magazine, focused on the shifts in ideas about corporate culture and future trends–particularly about how to craft a corporate culture that truly means something. “The culture matters so much to so many people coming into the workplace,” said Ashley Oster, vice president of business development and marketing at E4E Relief. “It’s not really an option to be blasé.” She continued: “I think you have to connect it to what the work is that you do, why that matters and how you’re going to integrate that … it’s about space, it’s about attire, it’s about lingo. It’s much broader than people think. But I do think that it matters. It’s something you’re being thoughtful about, because the lack of intentionality is also a culture.” The absence of an “intentional” culture can easily lead to an “accidental” culture very different from what employers might prefer, said panelist Ollie Malone, Jr., vice president of human resources at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. He recalled when he worked with the Secret Service earlier in his career, lauding the organization for its utter commitment to “the mission.” Corporations should also be “mission-minded,” he said. “I think it’s a matter of finding common ground. Every organization has divisions that tend to take on a life of their own,” Malone said, later adding: “I think that’s what organizations need to find: the bedrock of the culture. What is our mission? What are we here to do?” He emphasized that the “fundamental piece has to be clear, and it has to be consistent.” E4E Relief’s Oster added: “The attunement of the leaders is really significant, whether you’re the leader of the whole organization or you are a manager of the whole particular group.” She recommended “being attuned to those who you can tell in your organization are influencers … seeing what ideas they have and noticing their influence and then drawing them in and taking in their ideas.” “We are all so much more interconnected than we used to be,” Oster said, adding: “You have your home life and you have your work life, and now everybody’s life is so much more interconnected. How do you honor a whole person coming into work?” The celebration of diversity and the simple of act of listening are two ways to embrace the “whole person” in a workplace. Catherine Olivieri, senior vice president of human resources at the Susan G. Komen organization, said she has been at the breast-cancer nonprofit for about four years and attitudes already were starting to change. “When I started, there were so many people that just looked up to leadership to say: What should I do? What do you want me to do?” she said, adding: “What we’re doing is really trying to shift that dynamic, because the reality is, the people who are doing the work–hands-on, kind of boots-on-the-ground–they know it better than we do. So how do we make sure we get that feedback?” Steps towards better feedback and communication include giving employees “the tools, the resources, the vernacular, to be able to use in a safe way, to give feedback, share feedback and make the organization stronger,” she said. Olivieri added: “Part of it is our engagement culture surveys we do [in order] to see: Are we moving the needle in the areas we want to move? Then to make sure we continue to get better.” But being honest, as always, plays a crucial part in creating and maintaining corporate culture, all panelists said. Malone pointed to the example of when Johnson & Johnson recalled Tylenol in 1982 after seven people died from ingesting poisoned products. (Today the company faces new challenges to its reputation.) A breakout session led by Bertina Ceccarelli of NPower, left, focused on reskilling and hiring military veterans as key players in a diverse and balanced technology team “The way they responded was very much in keeping with their culture. The question they were asking [was]: What does the credo suggest as our response?” said Malone, who was working with the company at the time. He added: “The usual tendency is: How do we protect our reputation? How do we forget that noise, and how do we focus on the thing that we say is most important to us?” Yvonne Freeman, vice president of global total rewards and HR operations at Sabre, the travel-tech giant, said: “Not everything goes according to plan and perfectly a lot of the time.” “I think how companies act when they misstep or they don’t get it right … to see how the company then acts or behaves after that, it’s really about the fix that really establishes trust.” She compared intentional corporate culture to “a compass and a true north in how you interact and the things you offer your team members.” That kind of culture helps ensure that, even when mistakes are made, employees can still be kept loyal and productive, and new hires will be attracted, because workers will feel included in the corporate effort to live up to the cultural aspirations. “It’s just easier to be honest about who you are,” Freeman said. “Just tell them about where you aspire to go–that’s why you should come here, so you can help us get there.” Sheila Flynn is a New York-based journalist who has written for DailyMail.com, the Irish Daily Mail, and the Associated Press. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame
A Sense of Belonging and Growth: What Really Matters in Employee Satisfaction
BY Sheila Flynn November 18, 2019It’s one thing to tell employees, particularly during the hiring process, that they’ll be valued. It’s another to actually deliver on that promise and ensure their continued satisfaction from the first day forward. Doing so, however, can lead to a win-win for all parties involved. Employee satisfaction increases engagement, motivation, loyalty, staff retention and, overall, productivity and the bottom line, according to panelists discussing the issue at the From Day One conference in Dallas. “If you think about engagement, there’s multiple different types of engagement,” said Suminder Sran, Boarding Pass venture lead at Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC). “There’s technical engagement and people engagement. Specifically around people engagement, one of the biggest findings for us was the criticality [of the] relationship between hiring manger and new hire.” If a hiring manager “forgets to pick up a new hire” on the first day after making sweeping promises, Sran said, “engagement starts to fall off” and the new employee begins thinking: “Maybe I shouldn’t be here.” Ensuring satisfaction, then, begins even before onboarding, which should also be seamless and welcoming, and should remain an ongoing effort from there, said the speakers on the panel, moderated by Rob Schneider, managing editor–events for the Dallas Business Journal. Managers should be thinking at all times about individual employee growth, which is tied directly to the company’s evolution as well. “In today’s economy, upskilling and reskilling are very important,” said Curtis Brooks, vice president of employee performance management at U.S. Bank. While Brooks operates in the financial sector, he pointed out that such advancement should be applied across all industries. “Employees really want to be heard; they want to be developed,” said Ruth Tilley, vice president and HR business partner at McKesson. “They want to have career opportunities and progression.” At McKesson, she said, an employee survey is conducted every year to help gauge and increase employee satisfaction. “What I love about it is, this year we had 92% participation, which is not abnormal for McKesson,” she said. “The reason we have 92% participation is that they feel as if we’re listening–and we actively ask them questions. We take their feedback, and we turn it into action, year after year." Imagining an employee’s motivation, Tilley said: “It’s worth 30 minutes of my time to tell you what you’re good at and what you’re not so good at and what I want.” Smart hiring, surveys and fitting tasks to the right employees are also key, said Sharla Jones, vice president, learning & development manager at Hilltop Holdings. “How many of you get to do what you do best every day?” she asked conference attendees, providing the “unfortunate” answer that only about 21% of people respond affirmatively to that question. Yet this is easily fixable, she said, and beneficial to employee and employer. Said Brooks: “In today’s economy, upskilling and reskilling are very important” “When employees are focused on their strengths, they look forward to going to work. They have more positive interactions with people,” Jones said. “They’re able to be more creative and innovative. They tell people they work for a great company. They even have the ability to produce, get results.” “Engagement, I think, is a choice,” Jones said. “We work because we have to; we engage because we choose to. There is an influence that managers have on that engagement, when people can focus on their strengths. That doesn’t happen overnight. It takes understanding, it takes ownership–and the ability to spend some time on that.” Building on the strengths employees already have can undeniably fuel a company’s success, panelists said, but linking the company’s mission or products to the lives of staff can also forge a bond and increase satisfaction. As an example, Nolan Godfrey, executive consultant and coach at Stewart Leadership, cited an automotive corporation that lets “their employees drive their automobiles. They give them a very generous program where they can do that,” he said. “Aligning some of the perks with the culture and with the company, that helps them feel appreciated and connected to the things they’re trying to sell or manufacture,” Godfrey said. “Being industry specific,” that’s one angle that can be really helpful, he said. It all comes down to involvement, communication, evolution and a shared mission, panelists said. “People want to be developed,” said Brooks. “Thinking about the employee and their whole selves–if companies will do that and do it well, everyone would want to work for a company that thinks about that whole person,” Tilley said. Godfrey reiterated that satisfaction would obviously have “ebbs and flows,” but “when you have a focus on an employee’s entire experience … you can really have a lot of leverage around satisfaction.” Sran added: “At the end of the day, when staff is coming to work for your companies, they want to feel like they’ll belong … They’ll want to feel like they made the right decision.” Sheila Flynn is a New York-based journalist who has written for DailyMail.com, the Irish Daily Mail, and the Associated Press. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame
When Business Supports the Arts, the Dividend Is Inspiration
BY Sheila Flynn November 14, 2019Artwork combined with aviation. Drawings dotted through department stores. Dry cleaners volunteering to help with theater costumes. These were just a few examples of how businesses can support the arts mentioned at From Day One’s conference in Dallas. Responding to the question, “Why should business support the arts?”, a panel of experts explored not only how companies can help artistic endeavors but also how creativity can enrich corporate culture and communication, enhance the experience of clients and customers, and give back to communities. “I think that the business support for the arts, in general, is strong, and the reason that we think it’s strong is because every five years, we do a study with Americans for the Arts, our national arts advocacy organization,” said Katherine Wagner, CEO of Business Council for the Arts in Dallas. She continued: “The most recent study showed that the economic impact of nonprofit arts and culture organizations had grown three-fold since 2010–so that’s $1.5 billion of economic impact a year. That would not happen without business support for the arts. Business is, really, our major patron. It’s not the Renaissance; we don’t have kings that are big patrons.” The value, panelists said, is undeniably multi-fold. “It allows folks from across work groups that wouldn’t necessarily get a chance to even meet each other, let alone work together, to come together for a common goal, a common program,” said Sean Gaven, senior vice president of lending, analytics, payments and digital strategy at American Airlines Federal Credit Union, whose parent company has made a strong commitment to the arts, notably on display in the company’s new headquarters in Fort Worth. He and other panelists discussed the benefits to employee morale of everything from sculptures and artwork in work spaces to employee art contests. When art is incorporated in some way at American–in a plane, an airport, a break room or a maintenance facility–it “has allowed our team members to be much more engaged in what they do. It elevates kind of the mind and body and spirit,” he said. “You can step away from your desk and go someplace, either outside or within the building, and relax in a very friendly, warm location to either focus on work or take a quite break from work,” Gaven said during the panel discussion, which was moderated by Philip Silvestri, president and publisher of Local Profile. Gaven added: “You walk into these areas, and immediately you’re drawn to look at the ceiling. You’re drawn to look at this amazing artwork, be it in an Admirals Club or in one of our workplace facilities. It makes employees happy; it makes a lot of our customers happy to see that type of art infused … into everything we do.” The arts panel: from left, Sean Gaven of American Airlines Credit Union, Katherine Wagner of the Business Council for the Arts, Mimi Crume Sterling of Neiman Marcus Group, and moderator Philip Silvestri of Local Profile (Photo by Steve Bither) That sentiment about customer appreciation was echoed by Mimi Crume Sterling, vice president of corporate culture and philanthropy for the Neiman Marcus Group. She explained that incorporation of art “stems from the DNA at Neiman Marcus, having been focused on fashion and art since Day One.” The department store, she said, has “a very robust art collection which has over 2,500 pieces of art spread across our offices and stores.” Sterling added: “The idea that [founder] Stanley Marcus had was that you need things to look at when you’re shopping. You can’t just shop, shop, shop … The art is a place for your eye to rest–so similar to restaurants in our stores, where you can rest and recuperate and re-energize yourself … If you have beautiful art to look at, that enhances the shopping experience.” But when it comes to collaborations between arts organizations and business, explained Wagner, sometimes both sides need to think smaller to have broader local impact. Huge corporations like American Airlines and Neiman Marcus have deep pockets and name recognition, but nonprofits can still seek out meaningful partnerships on a more local scale. “Nonprofit arts organizations, a lot of times what they look for, when they’re wanting funding … they think Toyota, they think big companies,” Wagner said. “They don’t think about mid [-size] and small businesses. But they are a really good place to get support and volunteers and services. Usually the owner is on premises, not in the headquarters in another city. Small and medium businesses tend to give what they have, what their actual industry is.” She cited Avon Dry Cleaners in Dallas, which she described as a “small mom-and-pop” operation which “loves” Dallas Children’s Theater and came up with a great way to help. “Dallas Children’s Theater, if you’re familiar with it, they make all of their own costumes,” she said. “And to have another stream of revenue, they wanted to lease out all their costumes–but you can’t lease out costumes without having them dry cleaned. “So Avon Cleaners stepped up and said: ‘We will take that on for you in perpetuity. We’ll make sure that those costumes you create are dry cleaned so that you can lease them out to other theater groups and ensure ongoing revenue.’” “So that’s a great example of what small businesses can do–or just donating services, donating knowledge,” said Wagner. Quoting a friend, she added: “There’s nothing that a business has that a non-profit arts organization can’t use.” Wagner added a pitch for even more business support for the arts: “I think it’s strong, but it could be so much stronger … What we found is that, a lot of times, there could be a lot of people in a company that engage in the arts, that love the arts, that want to support more as a company. But if the business leader doesn’t see the value in it, it’s really hard to make that happen.” Sheila Flynn is a New York-based journalist who has written for DailyMail.com, the Irish Daily Mail, and the Associated Press. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame