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People, Place, Purpose: An Employer’s Role in Employee Mental Health

For Nivati Founder and CEO Amelia Wilcox, the issue of mental health hits close to home. When she discovered that her sixteen-year-old was struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts, she became acquainted with the difficult realities of mental health. “She had to undergo a whole year of intensive treatment outside of our home,” Wilcox said. “This was one of the hardest and most gut wrenching experiences that I have ever had, and it actually triggered some of my own issues with anxiety.” According to the American Psychological Association, 81% of workers consider mental health support an essential factor when looking for a new job. Even college students are looking for colleges with strong mental health support programs. Wilcox approaches the subject of employee mental health with a level of passion and empathy that can only come from someone who knows just how important it is. She spoke about the important topic in a recent thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s January virtual conference.A Brief Timeline of Corporate Mental HealthWilcox started with a simplified timeline of corporate mental health: How it started and how we got to where we are today.  It all began in the 1930s with employee assistance programs (EAPs), which were a response to workplace alcoholism. Over time, EAPs became the industry standard for HR to have in place for employees, and they've seen little innovation or change in the last 90 years.Then, during the 2000s, EAPs were considered to be part of mental health support at work. That essentially checked the box for HR, and it was good enough for most companies. In the 2010s, in many offices, mental health benefits took the form of distractions like ping pong tables and video games. Things like onsite massage and nap rooms provided distractions from work to give the brain a break to refresh, and it worked for a while.Then came 2020, when the world was on fire. We learned that mental health is real; it affects everyone, and it needs some serious attention. But people still weren’t quite sure what to do about it.  In 2021 and 2022 trends like the great resignation and quiet quitting became prevalent to a workforce that felt failed by their companies. Employees became less connected, less engaged, less appreciated, and ultimately overworked.“I know it’s controversial to talk about it, but what I think is really cool about this phase is that workers really started to revolt against the hustle culture and set their own boundaries,” Wilcox said.The Present and FutureThen came 2023, during which eggs reached upwards of $6 a dozen in different parts across the U.S.. Inflation peaked at over 8%, and employees started adding financial stress to the growing list of mental health challenges they were experiencing. During this time, some forward-thinking companies started to get ahead of quiet quitting by proactively addressing boundaries and culture in the workplace. For the past 90 years, mental health support at work has stayed roughly the same. Before 2020, the focus was mainly on pre-existing and diagnosable conditions. But over the last four years, we’ve seen that focus start to evolve very rapidly. It includes all of us; it’s not just people who have diagnosed mental illnesses—it’s everyone. The Road to RecoverySo, how do we shift work from being a source of burnout and mental health challenges to becoming a source of mental health support? Dr. Thomas Insel, who wrote Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health, forwards some powerful methods to reverse the mental health crisis that we’re in the middle of.According to Dr. Insel, the road to recovery comprises three Ps: people, place, and purpose. With those three structures in place, people experiencing mental illness can experience the support and care they deserve. PeopleConnection and belonging are essential for everyone. In the workplace, that means employers have to find ways to foster this positive social interaction, and ensure the company culture is conducive to connection-building. For example, in “Blue Zones,” or areas where people consistently live to 100-years-old, one of the most common components is a strong sense of community connection and belonging. So, not only can this help with morale and employee mental health, but having that connection can help people live longer.PlacePlace is about the environment. It can be virtual or your physical environment in the office. It’s the space employees work, and has to be where they feel physically, emotionally, and psychologically safe. One of the best ways to build psychological safety is to promote vulnerability, leadership needs to be involved in this to have an impact. Leaders should be able to discuss their struggles and what helps them. That allows people to feel safe and start to open up. Purpose(photo from thought leadership spotlight session)All humans need to feel a sense of purpose. In the workplace, this translates to employees knowing what they do matters. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has also defined workplace well-being as one of his top six priorities as surgeon general. His ‘five essentials’  framework aptly illustrates the correlation between the various factors that impact workplace wellbeing.Both the three P’s and the ‘Five Essentials’ tell a very similar narrative: the ultimate goal is to bring the workers’ voice back into the workplace. The bottom line is that the whole organization requires a cultural shift to put this in place and genuinely have a safe and supportive culture for mental health at work, says Wilcox.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Nivati, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Keren's love for words saw her transition from a corporate employee into a freelance writer during the pandemic. After having made her mark as a Top Rated Writer with over 2000 positive reviews in the extremely competitive Upwork space, and having been featured on various magazines and publications, Keren has now moved on to bigger and better with her own digital marketing agency aptly named Epic Owl. When she is not at her desk whipping up compelling narratives and sipping on endless cups of coffee, you can find her curled up with a book, playing with her dog, or pottering about in the garden.

Keren Dinkin | January 24, 2024

How to Take a Strategic and Equitable Approach to Worker Well-Being

Dania Alarcon has always had an enthusiasm for wellness and helping others stay healthy. As a fitness instructor, cancer researcher, and leader in pharmaceutical advertising, she has always been focused on the health of her clients.Now as chief medical officer at Wunderman Thompson, Alarcon continues pushing for better health for the clients she works for, while also supporting a healthy workplace for the people she works with.At From Day One’s January virtual conference Alarcon met with Siobhan O’Connor, Atria Institute’s chief content officer, for a fireside chat about working toward a healthier world while balancing workers’ well-being.Health for EquityAt the height of Covid, Wunderman Thompson established the Health4Equity Center of Excellence to fight forms of health inequality rooted in cultural bias.“It happened at a very unique time in our history collectively,” Alarcon said. “2020 represented the height of both the racial injustices that were occurring across the U.S. and other parts of the world, a pandemic that was felt most acutely throughout historically marginalized communities and countries, and a number of other things that compounded the lack of access for health and wellness.”Siobhan O'Connor of the Atria Institute, right, interviewed Dania Alarcon of Wunderman Thompson, left, in a virtual fireside chat (photo by From Day One)Health4Equity focuses on increasing access to healthcare in those communities that historically have been left out by targeting three disease areas: prostate cancers in Black men, bladder cancers in Black women, and maternal health for Black mothers.“There’s no shortage of health inequalities,” Alarcon said. “Our biggest challenge was making the most of this and deciding what to prioritize. One of the things we focused on was not just going deep, but going broad.”A broad approach looks different for each group. Health4Equity campaigned for Black men to get screened for prostate cancer at 40 years old instead of 50 to catch cancer in the early stages. They also connect women with urologists for bladder treatment, providers who are not usually a part of women’s regular healthcare team.Black women in the U.S. are about 3 times more likely to die during pregnancy or delivery than women of other races, according to the CDC. Health4Equity addresses the Black maternal health crisis by connecting Black soon-to-be mothers with licensed doulas for personal care during their pregnancy. Doulas provide personalized support and advice during pregnancy and delivery and they can act as patient advocates to close the racial gap in maternal healthcare.Health4Equity takes direct approaches to support the well-being of their clients. “That’s exactly what the ‘4’ in Health4Equity stands for. It’s a four step strategic approach and process that’s very intentional to help identify those highest priority and need areas and match them with what might have the biggest impact,” Alarcon said.Commitment to Employee Well-beingEmployee well-being isn’t just a set of corporate goals and boundaries. It takes a daily direct commitment to respecting those boundaries, which can be especially difficult while working from home.“It was almost like you were always on 24/7 and don’t know where the separation stops between life, feeding a dog or a child and then going back into my online work to finish up the day,” Alarcon said. “I think that lack of boundaries really took a toll on people.”A direct approach to employee wellness also needs intentional moments of separation for employees to catch up on work and take care of themselves.“We have something called Focus Fridays, where the back half of our Friday afternoon is reserved for catching up on emails, doing actual work because when you’re in meeting after meeting there’s not much opportunity to get things done,” Alarcon said. “So I think just understanding those boundaries, creating those intentional moments of separation, and also being respectful of others’ calendars.”Purpose Plays a Role in WellnessThe adage “If you love what you do, you don’t work a day in your life” isn’t entirely true. Work can be tough and days can be hard, even when employees love what they do. But being passionate about the work and finding purpose in it helps keep motivation even when the work is difficult.“As much as that health inequity movement was really tough to acknowledge, it almost renewed the enthusiasm for showing up at work and doing something that I felt brought purpose and meaning to my life and to those who maybe have been ignored in the system for far too long,” Alarcon said. “That’s very motivating, just being in a space where you feel like what you’re doing matters.”When employees are passionate about their work and they receive support and respect for their boundaries, they feel more motivated and can thrive in the workplace.“Workplace well-being is where you feel engaged,” Alarcon said. “Where you feel motivated, where you don’t dread Monday morning on a Sunday night, because you know that there’s exciting things coming in the week ahead.”Toby Mohr is an editorial intern at From Day One and journalism and political science student at University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire.

Toby Mohr | January 23, 2024

Cultivating Well-Being Through Workplace Culture

“Being able to support our employees’ mental health in multiple ways is probably one of the most important things that we can do,” said Judith Harrison, chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer for Weber Shandwick. Nearly 75% of American workers are moderately or highly concerned about workplace well-being, according to a recent study.The report also found the same percentage of workers had a similar level of concern about their own emotional well-being or mental health. Harrison and a panel of other leaders spoke on this subject in a session titled “Cultivating Well-Being Through Workplace Culture,” during From Day One’s January virtual conference.Another panelist, Charman Hayes, executive vice president of people and capability technology at MasterCard, told moderator Lydia Dishman that it’s essential for companies to take a holistic approach to their employees’ well-being. She said this approach addresses the mind, body, financial security, and the social aspects of workers’ lives, which encompasses inclusion.“Those four pillars are really important to MasterCard in terms of how we want our employees to be their best selves,” Hayes said. “We listen. We are constantly doing employee pulse surveys to understand what’s on people’s minds.”Kimberly Ardo-Eisenbeis, vice president of HR and recruiting for Allied Universal Security, said that in a post-pandemic world, many workers are focused on their ability to bring their whole selves to work.“Some of that has been mental health-tied, but some of it is just being free from the burdens of financial stressors, environmental stressors, and the ability to find the things that are important to them,” she said.Allied is focused on creating an environment where employees feel comfortable taking advantage of resources offered by the company, whether it is mental health or financial assistance, says Ardo-Eisenbeis.“It really comes down to feeling that there’s a safe place, removing the shame of asking for help, removing the risk of being seen as less than in anybody’s eyes,” she said.Flexibility in the WorkplaceAlicia Mandel, chief human resources officer at Garten, said for her the most important thing for her personal well-being is flexibility.“During Covid everybody was very flexible. And then it seemed that flexibility went out the door suddenly. So, my personal thing is, how do we create a workplace that is still flexible enough to give people the peace of mind that they need and still perform?”Mandel said Garten is committed to maintaining a fully remote workforce even after the pandemic to give employees some flexibility. However, working from home can cause workers to feel isolated and lonely. Therefore, the company tries to bring people together once a quarter “to give them a chance to break bread together, to go play a game or do a thing.”Lydia Dishman of Fast Company moderated the panel among speakers Judith Harrison, Kimberly Eisenbeis, Charman Hayes, and Alicia Mandel (photo by From Day One)Hayes said as a mother of two school-age children, “what really thrills me is that I have flexibility through MasterCard. I’m able to come into our tech hubs around the world to work a few days a week and also work remotely where I need to.”This flexibility also allows Hayes to maintain a healthy lifestyle. For her, this includes having time to walk, go to the gym, prepare nutritious meals, and being centered mentally.“And then the last thing that’s extremely important to me has kept me through the past few years in my happy and healthy mantra is committing to the community,” Hayes said. “I’ve been able to do volunteer days with my family, bringing my children along to several nonprofit agencies in New York City to help and contribute to the community.”Providing Financial Security for WorkersTwo years ago, MasterCard conducted a study to see how employees felt about the rewards and benefits packages the company offered and did a listening tour to get feedback.“After that listening tour, we had a very good understanding of what our employees wanted, more of what they appreciated, what they valued,” Hayes said. “And that gave birth to our approach to financial wellness and financial fitness.”Workers not only want a competitive base and bonus pay, but also the ability to save for retirement and other goals, such as buying a house or sending their children to college, according to Hayes. She noted MasterCard offers a retirement plan with a 10% employer match and one-on-one financial consulting through an outside vendor.“What I appreciate most about the benefit investing is that it’s not bespoke to any one scenario,” Hayes said. “We recognize that colleagues have very different scenarios and are on very different journeys with different goals and objectives.”The Role of DEIThere’s been a recent pushback against DEI policies and initiatives in workplaces, but DEI is essential, says Harrison.“DEI covers the waterfront in terms of well-being, creating a connected community in which people are encouraged to bring their authentic selves to work, and encouraging others to understand who they are,” she said.The sponsorship program at Weber Shandwick, in which senior leadership mentors promising employees, “has been a game-changer for us,” Harrison said. “There’s nothing like giving underrepresented people the opportunity to connect with executives that they would never have met in any other way.”Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.

Mary Pieper | January 22, 2024

Failing Well: How Your Company Can Provide Room for Failures That Foster Success

Tennis legend Billie Jean King once said, “For me, losing a tennis match isn’t failure, it’s research.” Amy C. Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School, shares this quote in her latest book, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, which won the “Best Business Book of the Year Award” from the Financial Times. The book illustrates how we and our organizations can embrace our human fallibility, learn exactly when failure is our friend, and prevent most of it when it is not. It’s the key to pursuing smart risks and preventing avoidable harm.At From Day One’s January monthly conference, which focused on making a fresh commitment to a culture of well-being in the workplace, Edmondson shared specific strategies for how organizations can benefit from failure, a skill that is becoming more and more important in today’s business environment. “In turbulent times, failure is even more likely. And in more turbulent times, innovation and problem solving are more important than ever, and they bring the risk of failure.” While it’s easy enough to recognize this intellectually, Edmondson said, “being able to put into practice the truth of those behaviors is something else altogether.”Good vs. Bad Failure“A good failure is the undesired result of a thoughtful experiment,” Edmondson said. That experiment, to be considered a “good failure,” should meet four criteria:It’s in genuinely new territory–it really has never been tried before. It should be as small in scale as possible. It should be in pursuit of a specific goal, “not just playing around with resources,” Edmondson said.And thanks to some thoughtful research, you should already have a sense that the experiment may work.A “bad failure,” Edmondson posits, happens when you violate any one of those four criteria. For example, she shared, “You roll out an uncertain product in your entire market, rather than pilot testing it somewhere smaller. So even something that’s potentially good violates the size criterion, and then isn’t so good.”Simple failures can be forgetting to check a basic safety feature, but there are complex failures as well: “The multi-causal, ‘perfect storm’ kinds of failures that arise when a variety of things come together in just the wrong way, any one of which, on its own, wouldn’t have caused the failure.” The recent debacle with the door plugs on Boeing 737s, she says, is a perfect example.Pivoting to a Productive FailureModerator Adi Ignatius, editor-in-chief at the Harvard Business Review, posited a scenario that many modern business leaders are all too familiar with. “You have a strategy that’s based on a big product rollout that takes years to develop. And then near launch, the CEO decides this is not the right approach, and this massive project with all these people attached to it is suddenly stopped. How do you handle the disappointment? How do you make this a productive failure?” he asked.Amy Edmondson spoke about her book Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well in conversation with Adi Ignatius, editor-in-chief at the Harvard Business Review (photo by From Day One)Edmondson views this instance as an intelligent failure, suggesting that reframing it as a learning opportunity and acknowledging the effort invested can transform it into a productive experience. “You do it explicitly out in the open. You frame it as a really worthy effort that wasn’t able to achieve what you had hoped it would achieve,” she said.Some companies even celebrate failures. For example, in the pharmaceutical space, the vast majority of projects fail. It’s just the nature of the scientific experimental process. Eli Lilly, Edmondson says, has parties at the end of failed clinical trials to still celebrate its achievements. This achieves three goals: it satisfies the need for recognition, potentially prevents the same failure from recurring, and it makes the team more likely to end a failing experiment in a timely and cost effective way, knowing that there will still be some sort of positive outcome.At Takeda they don’t celebrate failure, that’s a bridge too far for their traditional Japanese culture, Edmondson says. But they do celebrate the pivot. “The difference is that the failure is the end, it's looking back, whereas the pivot is looking forward. Same ritual, different language,” she said. “For their culture, they are celebrating the fact that they worked hard.”Learning From and Admitting to Failure“Our temptation is very strong to gloss over it. No one wants to dwell on a failure,” Edmondson said. But the formal post-mortem process is important. Rather than placing blame on any one individual or entity, companies should approach it simply, briefly, and effectively: What happened? This is essential especially for multi-dimensional projects with potentially conflicting viewpoints and experiences.“Rather than a lengthy research project, this should be a quick compiling of the narrative so that we understand it better and resist the temptation to just say, ‘we'll try harder next time’ or ‘it wasn’t our fault, it was bad luck,’” Edmondson said. Organizations should walk away with key learnings as to what went wrong and how to improve on that process in the future.It can sometimes be challenging for certain individuals to admit to failure. But that’s exactly why it helps to have a ritualized process for acknowledging and addressing it. “If this is what we do around here, they’ll want to play the same sport,” Edmondson said. Organizations should build trust with their employees that there is a safe environment for acknowledging fault. “We are fallible human beings, and we have to be fine with that,” she said. “We are better team members when we are fine with that.”Building Psychological SafetyHow you handle failure as an organization should be a part of an overall strategy for building an environment of psychological safety. “The most important thing is to early and often call attention to the attributes and aspirations of the work that involves unfamiliar territory, stretches, or challenges,” Edmondson said. “We’re sending the intellectual message that ‘we need you, we need your voice and we need you to speak up if we’re to do well on these ambitious goals.’”Companies should also encourage a culture that welcomes inquiry. “The more facile we get at asking good questions, the kinds that give the other person a clear signal that we really want to hear from them, the more we’re creating psychological safety for speaking up,” Edmondson said. The safer employees feel communicating with leadership teams, the more likely they are to address failures early and often–turning them into opportunities for learning and growth.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | January 17, 2024

DEI Starts Over: How It Needs to Adapt to Survive the Battles of 2024

When Elon Musk and other headstrong billionaires start using you as a punching bag, it might be a smart time to duck. In his latest tirade against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Musk attributed the door plug blowing off a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet earlier this month to the aviation industry’s efforts to diversify their workforces. “Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety?,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Citing no evidence, Musk’s claim echoed the conspiracy theory asserting that DEI led to last year’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which proved to have no basis in fact. While corporate America proudly carried the banner of DEI in recent years, 2024 is shaping up as the year in which many companies will be lowering the profile of their efforts and changing the approach of their programs. Recognizing that the term DEI has become another cudgel in the culture wars, joining “wokeness” and ESG, corporate leaders are responding to a wave of legal and political challenges. Among them: The Supreme Court is considering a case that could inspire a raft of regulatory complaints against DEI programs, charging them with reverse discrimination; conservative billionaires are funding a wave of lawsuits against such programs; and red-state politicians are threatening to follow the example of Florida and Texas by passing  new laws threatening to limit the scope of DEI. “They’re starting with letters, but I don’t think that they’re bluffs,” said Zamir Ben-Dan, a Temple University assistant professor of law. “It’s going to be a problem,” he told the AP. “It’s going to lead to a decline in racial diversity in the workforces.”Corporate America doesn’t want that to happen. In a survey late last year by the Conference Board, none of the 194 chief HR officers said they plan to scale back DEI initiatives, programs, and policies; 63% said they plan to attract a more diverse workforce. Employers say that an embrace of diversity and inclusion has become an important corporate value when it comes to recruiting the workers they need, especially younger ones who tend to favor diversity. As Fortune put it, “DEI Is Dead. Long Live DEI.” Yet companies are looking for ways to step away from the term “DEI” as well as aspects of programs that could make them legally vulnerable. “Companies are really starting to look at other ways to do the work without saying that they’re doing the work,” Cinnamon Clark, cofounder of Goodwork Sustainability, a DEI consulting firm, told Axios. Among the pressures and the responses that will characterize the evolution of DEI this year:The Supreme Court’s Other Shoe to DropOnly a day after releasing its historic decision last year to outlaw affirmative action in higher education, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could have a parallel impact on DEI programs among corporate and government employers. In Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, a police sergeant alleges that she was transferred out of her prestigious job because of her gender, thus violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination according to race, gender, and other protected characteristics. Lower courts have upheld the city’s argument that Muldrow failed to demonstrate that the transfer amounted to an “adverse employment action” that caused material harm.The Biden Administration has supported Muldrow’s case because it could enable more people to file discrimination cases with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [EEOC], yet a broad interpretation of Title VII by the Supreme Court, relaxing the need to prove harm, could also “open the door to a flood of reverse discrimination claims against certain workplace diversity, equity and inclusion programs–such as mentoring and training programs for underrepresented groups–that ordinarily would not survive in court,” the Washington Post reported. “Such complaints have become more common since the Supreme Court overturned race-conscious college admissions in June.”Well-Funded Legal ChallengesEdward Blum (pronounced “bloom”), a white, 73-year-old former stockbroker, has made it his life’s work for more than three decades to stamp out affirmative action. He does not have a law degree, but he spends his day planning lawsuits to challenge affirmative action in the Supreme Court, helping to persuade the court to hear eight cases. Most recently, in June, he was in large part responsible for bringing the case that led to the court’s decision to outlaw affirmative action in higher education (Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College).Since then, he has been suing elite law firms over their DEI language. Many firms have yielded and made changes to avoid litigation. While Blum told Bloomberg Law that he’s done suing law firms–“There’s nothing left for us to do in that space,” he said–legal experts are watching where he’ll turn next. “Well, I think employment is one area that I think will garner greater attention, not just from me, but from other organizations, other legal policy foundations,” he told the New York Times. “I also think that some of the things that we associate with higher education–internships, scholarships, certain research grants–those need to be revisited if they have been race-exclusive.” One group that Blum founded, the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER), filed a lawsuit last August against Fearless Fund, “an Atlanta-based venture capital firm run by two Black women, alleging that the fund is engaging in racial discrimination by running a grant program exclusively for early-stage companies owned by Black women,” the Washington Post reported.While Blum has often been portrayed as a one-man-band, challenging major institutions on his own, a study by the Democratic Policy & Communications Committee, produced by seven prominent Democratic senators, called Blum’s various organizations “fronts for corporate mega-donors seeking to change the law through the courts.” In particular, the report cited Students for Fair Admissions as “funded primarily through the Koch [Brothers] operation’s shadowy dark-money operation DonorsTrust, known as the ‘dark-money ATM of the conservative movement.’” Blum has a fellow traveler in Stephen Miller, the arch-conservative former Trump Administration advisor best known for his hard line on immigration issues. Miller has been zealously targeting corporate DEI programs through his well-funded group America First Legal. Since 2022, his group has filed 25 complaints against companies with the EEOC. Miller’s organization has notched few legal victories, but that may not be the point. More than 85% of the AFL’s budget went to advertising, while only 4% was spent on legal services, the Daily Beast reported. Even so, “at least six major U.S. companies including JPMorgan Chase have modified policies meant to boost racial and ethnic representation that conservative groups threatened to sue over,” a Reuters review of corporate statements found.How Corporate Employers Can RespondWhile corporate leaders in the Conference Board survey said they don’t intend to pull back on DEI, the combination of corporate austerity and high-profile backlash is surely depleting the resources available to DEI. In a report last October, Forrester, a research and advisory company, found “the percentage of companies that funded a DEI function with an endorsed strategy and personnel dropped from 33% in 2022 to 27% in 2023; we predict that this number will fall to 20% by the end of 2024 in the wake of cuts that disproportionately affect DEI teams. As a result, too many companies will default to ‘check the box’ efforts such as heritage days, leading to performative–rather than substantive–DEI programs.”Organizations that are still motivated to maintain their commitment the principles of DEI will need to adapt their approach. “As the law inevitably evolves in a more conservative direction, the new legal standards will be absorbed into the field of DEI, transforming it as an enterprise. While this shift will occur organically, smart organizations can avoid a lot of pain and expense by thinking about how to adapt in a more intentional way,” reports Harvard Business Review. In their HBR story, Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow, lawyers at New York University and authors of Say the Right Thing: How to Talk About Identity, Diversity, and Justice, identify three aspects that can make a DEI program legally risky: it confers a preference for some individuals over others, the preference is given to member of a legally protected group under Title VII, and the preference relates to a palpable benefit, like a job, promotion, or L&D opportunities.Given those criteria, write Yoshino and Glasgow, the specifically risky programs include hiring quotas, tiebreaker decision-making for hiring and promotions based on identity; group-specific internships and fellowships; and tying manager compensation to diversity goals. While all of those measures may be designed to compensate for systemic biases, “it is clear that the conservative supermajority of the Supreme Court does not agree with such a worldview.”Reshaping Programs as Well as the LanguageTo avoid charges of reverse discrimination, employers can make several changes to existing plans. Among other things, they can make DEI initiative more identity-neutral yet still designed to remove bias, like making employee-resource groups and other affinity groups open to all, rather than restricted based on identity. “These approaches do not ‘lift’ certain groups above others, but ‘level’ the playing field for everybody,” write Yoshino and Glasgow.The language, too, is shifting, with more focus on the “inclusion” aspect of DEI, as well as “belonging” and “well-being.” Reported the Post, “While some demographic-specific efforts will probably remain, overall, corporate DEI is likely to shift and focus more on ‘universal’ efforts to make recruiting, hiring and retention more successful for everyone.” Even as they adjust to the risk of being sued for reverse discrimination, employers have to make sure they don’t over-correct in the opposite direction. “Getting sued for a regular discrimination claim from someone who belongs to an underrepresented identity in the workplace is still more common than a reverse discrimination claim from a white person,” reports Thomson Reuters.  Companies shouldn’t abandon DEI initiatives that help to make those from underrepresented backgrounds feel more welcome or offer more opportunities to succeed, NYU’s Glasgow told Reuters, “because doing so could create an environment that is more hostile and unwelcoming to people who belong to these marginalized groups.” For example, he said, eliminating mentorship or sponsorship opportunities that were helping more women advance through an organization might lead to a more one-dimensional leadership team–a prospective setback to decades of progress.Andrea Sachs, a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, began her career as a lawyer in Washington, D.C., at the National Labor Relations Board, then spent nearly 30 years in New York City as a reporter at Time magazine.  (Featured photo by Violeta Stoimenova/iStock by Getty Images) 

Andrea Sachs | January 17, 2024

Get It Together Today: The Guide for a Better Tomorrow

In the midst of planning her wedding, Abby Schneiderman reveled in the resources at her fingertips, transforming the daunting tasks into an exciting journey towards her big day. Websites, guides, and videos gave her all the dos and don’ts and provided ample space for organization and management. But she found herself thinking: what’s next? Where are the resources to guide her through the rest of those big life moments?She found information for many life stages, from having kids, to home buying, to retirement planning. But in her research, she discovered that these resources end at retirement. Who’s supporting people with what comes next? While not everyone gets married or has children, everyone encounters aging, estate planning, and death. So, why is there a gap in support? One reason may be that most people would rather not think about these later stages, but postponing such considerations can leave a person’s survivors in a difficult spot. Shocked by the lack of coverage, Schneiderman and business partner Adam Seifer co-founded Everplans, the first modern consumer brand in life and legacy planning.From Day One interviewed Abby Schneiderman, co-founder and co-CEO of Everplans (company photo)Schneiderman and Seifer recognized that the first step was to publish helpful planning advice and evaluate if there was an audience actively seeking it. “We started writing content. We wrote 500 original articles on everything like ‘How do you write a will?’ to ‘How do you name a power of attorney?’ to ‘What do you wear to a funeral?’” Schneiderman told From Day One. They posted the content as a blog and were inundated with readers. “This told us that not only was there a need for the content and the resources that we were putting out there, but that there was just a huge gap out there that nobody was helping people with,” she said.Everplans evolved into a digital vault for storing, organizing, and updating all of the important plans and documents to guide the later stages of life–and afterwards. Shortly after launching, Schneiderman experienced a tragedy that changed the trajectory of everything. Her 51-year-old brother was killed in a car accident. He had life insurance, but Schneiderman’s family struggled to access his accounts, get policies and documents in place, and ultimately, make the decisions no one wants to make on behalf of their loved ones. The pain of losing her brother complicated the hardship of making these difficult decisions.This tragedy led to the realization that in order to be effective, Everplans needed to reach people before they even started thinking about life and legacy planning. All too often people just begin planning when it’s overdue. “That’s my story, but everyone has a story,” Schneiderman said. And a common theme in these stories is disorganization: our stuff is everywhere.The average person has hundreds of online accounts to keep track of, on top of sticky notes, notebooks, desk drawers, and other means of storing important information. “And when the time does come, family members should not have to go searching around frantically in the middle of a fog having to find important information,” said Schneiderman.“Our mission is to help people get organized for themselves today, so that they can sleep better at night. In the event that their families need it, they have access to all the important information,” said Schneiderman. Everplans helps people organize, store, and securely share wills, life insurance policies, health care directives, online passwords, and even the small but important things like family recipes. “We cover all aspects of life, whether they be everyday practical pieces of information that you want to make sure don’t get lost, or extremely critical information that family members need to have access to.”One of Schneiderman’s key goals is making life and legacy planning accessible to everyone, even folks who tend to be put off by legal, healthcare, and technological complexities. Everplans gives people the toolkits to make informed decisions and make these complicated topics less overwhelming. In addition to all of the content on their website, Schneiderman and Seifer co-authored In Case You Get Hit by a Bus: How to Organize Your Life Now for When You’re Not Around Later and started a podcast to give people the resources they need in a bite-sized, colloquial way.The company’s founders see their platform as a great equalizer. “Everplans is really leveling the playing field for employees who may not have access to financial planners, accountants, or estate attorneys. It’s inherently educating all employees on the benefits of getting organized. The simple interface, easy-to-use platform, resources, and guidance engine will help get you organized for your family,” said Schneiderman. Everplans was available initially in a retail version as well as through financial services organizations. More recently, the platform became available as a benefit for employers to offer their workers.This inclusive approach not only helps Everplans’ customers, but also appeals to employers interested in offering Everplans as an addition to their total-rewards programs. Schneiderman pointed to the recent development of a management toolkit, which serves as a “resource for employers, specifically leaders in the organization, on how to have conversations with employees during challenging or pivotal moments.” Many well-intentioned managers lack the necessary guidance to support their employees and navigate tough conversations about life-changing events. Companies run the risk of losing employees when support feels inauthentic. The management toolkit provides employers with culturally relevant guidance to authentically support their employees.The benefits to employers don’t stop there, Schneiderman says. In a study conducted last year with 1,000 full-time U.S. employees, “we found a direct relationship between productivity and organization,” she said. “When my desk is messy, I’m less productive or when my closet is a mess, I’m frustrated. But also, when you don’t know where vital information is, you are more concerned and you’re less productive–there is this real relationship there.”By getting people organized, Everplans has a direct impact on productivity, the company asserts. People that are more productive or less stressed generally feel a greater sense of control about their lives. “Over time, as more and more people started using Everplans, we realized the site wasn’t about death–it was about life. Because getting organized lets you live to the fullest, knowing you’re prepared for anything, having done your very best for those you love.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Everplans, for supporting this sponsor spotlight.Erin Behrens is an associate editor at From Day One.

Erin Behrens | January 12, 2024

Strategies for Upholding and Rewriting Values in a Corporate Merger

Integrating two separate corporate cultures into one during a merger is essential for success–but what’s the best way to achieve that? In the opening fireside chat at From Day One conference in Denver, Denver Post reporter Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton sat down with Peter Leckemby, head of talent management at DISH Network, to discuss his thoughts on the challenges and opportunities that come with a merger.Leckemby was getting his degree in criminology when he started a job at The Home Depot “for college beer money.” His role led him into management, and he stayed with the company for 16 years. He quickly learned how much he enjoyed leadership development, went on to earn a coaching certification, and then joined DISH as a leadership development specialist.“It’s been an interesting year,” said Leckemby of 2023. “Back in February, we were, like a lot of big tech companies, a victim of a cyber attack. That started the year off in the spirit of adventure, which is one of our core values, but not the kind of adventure you want to be on. It was a challenge. We were reeling a little bit, and we had a lot of big goals to hit this year,” he said.Leckemby discussed some of their goals and reflected on their achievements for the year, including “providing coverage on our network to 70% of the population.” Then right on the heels of that in late summer, “we announced that we are merging with our sister company, EchoStar,” he said. They also launched Boost Infinite, their first postpaid network offering.Chairman and DISH co-founder Charlie Ergen spun off satellite operator EchoStar from DISH in 2008, but remained in charge of both companies. Then on December 7th, after this chat, the Federal Communications Commission approved the merger, reuniting Ergen’s telecom empire.Pete Leckemby, DISH Network's head of talent management was interviewed in the fireside chatEven with common ownership, the merger will prove a challenge. “We have similar cultures, but different values as they’re written out. The values at DISH began as “Pride, Adventure, and Winning,” said Leckemby. They went on to add “Curiosity” to the mix, and are working through that.“For us, it’s about going back to what the values are as they’re lived out, and what is important to our team members. I like to think that curiosity, pride, adventure, and winning will carry over, because we have that anchored to all of our talent management practices.” As they go through the merger, they’re making sure they do the right thing for team members, he says. The employees are top of mind and the focus of all the efforts in place.Building trust with team members during the upheaval caused by a merger can be an ongoing challenge. “We haven’t always done this right,” said Leckenby. But this year they launched a new listening strategy to get better. The first step is to listen to employees and understand what’s important to them. What are they stressed about? What are their anxieties? What are their pain points? Listen, and then be clear and transparent about the decisions, says Leckemby.“Our leadership team has done a really good job of being more transparent and having more upfront communications with all team meetings, announcements, and just being very upfront about ‘here's what we know, here’s what we don't know,’” he said.In spite of the challenges, Leckemby has found great opportunities in the changes presented by a corporate merger. “The merger has presented a tremendous learning opportunity, where you really find out how resilient your employees are. In recognizing that resilience and tenacity, there has been a lot of positivity in the workforce and excitement for the future. People are jumping in, they’re curious, they want to learn. So we’re seeing our values show up a lot throughout the process, and that will carry us into the future.”Cynthia Barnes has written about everything from art to zebras from more than 30 countries. She currently calls Denver home.

Cynthia Barnes | January 10, 2024

The Future of Talent Acquisition: Perfecting the Human Experience in the Age of AI

Gen Z will make up the majority of the workforce by 2030, and they’re a bit of an oddity in the hiring process. They want their transition from college to career to contain a bit of the old, like internships, work experience, and completed classes but especially the new, like quick and easy online applications. “What we’re seeing is that the ease of modern applications and technology is really contributing to this high volume of applications,” said Kate Beckman, executive manager of RippleMatch. “Students today are taking advantage of the way that technology is designed for volume without necessarily taking into account what happens after that application is submitted.”RippleMatch is a job matching AI technology and the brainchild of Andrew Myers, founder and CEO, who experienced his own turbulent entry into the job market after college. Beckman and Myers joined freelance journalist, and former managing editor of CNN Business, Kelly Bourdet, for a From Day One webinar. The platform started in Myers’ dorm and was “created to make life easy on companies so they can provide really strong candidate experiences and access the right candidates, regardless of race, background, or where the candidates come from.”Eliminating Bias and Streamlining the Hiring Process“We’ve been conducting a lot of research on Gen Z through the years, but new data really shows that the next generation of candidates are influencing the recruitment process for everyone,” Beckman said. She provided some key insights and research to head the conversation on how AI can perfect the human experience in talent acquisition.According to Beckman’s research for RippleMatch:50% of students said they'll submit over 100 applications (just this past autumn), a third of those will submit closer to 200.More than two thirds believe companies should respond to them within 5-7 days.72% of candidates say they would feel frustrated if they took the time to file an application and never heard anything back. They’d prefer an impersonal rejection notification over nothing at all. Gen Z job seekers expect no more than four weeks to get a response on a job, even if it's a rejection. About 70% say if they’ve gone through some kind of interview process that not hearing back lends to a negative experience.Lack of information on what to expect going forward is another contributing factor to a negative application process.A lack of diversity amongst interviewers is another factor that weighs on the minds of job seekers. Black and Hispanic women select that lack of diversity among interviewers is the number two factor that will contribute to a negative experience interviewing. The biggest hurdle for AI in talent acquisition is not reproducing the bias of their human creators as early platforms did. Myers says the goal and success of modern AI is to fix the mistakes of the past.Previously, recruiters would focus on the same top schools for candidates, which exacerbated biases. The same was, and still is, done in corporate America with diversity recruiting. Recruiters end up at the same HBCUs or HSIs, but neglect other talent pools.“There are incredible HBCUs and HSIs all over the country. But if we’re speaking from a representation perspective for Black or Latine candidates, many of those candidates don’t go to HBCUs or HSIs," Myers said.But as other From Day One panel experts have discussed, without proper monitoring, AI will reinforce human biases. To better train bias out of the AI recruitment process, Myers says you have to focus on outcomes, not intentions.Moderator Kelly Bourdet spoke with Andrew Myers and Kate Beckman of RippleMatch at the From Day One webinar (photo by From Day One)“This is a really new space. And even the regulators are having to learn how to do this really thoughtfully on the fly,” Myers said. The technology is there. “There just hasn’t been a very AI-focused diversity company that’s really existed on a massive scale before.”One of the regulators Myers referenced is a New York law seeking to regulate how companies use AI in the hiring process. The law requires employers to have annual third-party 'bias audits' to show that the AI technology they use is free of racist or sexist bias, according to reporting from Axios.However, as Beckman points out, modern AI tools are helping companies move beyond academic prestige, “which inhibits representation and diversity” by pushing them to “expand their reach and sort through those candidates in a more efficient manner.”Efficiency, though, has created an arms race of submitting applications where neither the candidate nor the employer wins. To avoid this, RippleMatch sends job seekers opportunities that truly fit their skills and qualifications. They quickly send a rejection if they’re not a fit for the role, or help companies move forward quickly if they are, Beckman says.“The beauty of AI is you can instantly tell that probably 50-75% of candidates don’t meet a basic qualification for a role,” Myers said. “We sometimes picture AI being this black box, doing all these weird scores. But the reality is, AI can be really transparent as to why a candidate isn’t qualified.”To accurately and efficiently match candidates, RippleMatch does two things. On the company side, they figure out what’s missing from their talent pipeline. On the candidate side, instead of getting “all these messages that feel a lot like spam,”  Myers says they’re getting sent opportunities directly related to their skills. “If you’re getting this opportunity, it means you’re really qualified. The company’s missing a candidate like you, and you should certainly pay attention to the opportunity.”Beckman says that with Gen Z, a cohort that’s just entering the workforce and may not have a lot of experience, RippleMatch can point them in the right direction, or towards jobs they didn’t know existed. “If you’re at a career fair, you go to the most recognizable companies. So many companies out there offer amazing pay and awesome culture, and candidates just aren’t discovering them organically. But this technology automates that career discovery process."Applying for Jobs and Starting a New OneWhat are the challenges RippleMatch sees going forward? Balance and nobility.Beckman points to the convenience AI lends to the application process, especially for Gen Z, but says a balance must be struck between using the technology to enhance career discovery and starting a job, not just endlessly applying for hundreds of jobs.“Submitting 200 applications because you just have to click a button instead of considering, is this an organization I want to work for? Am I invested in what this company is doing? Am I excited about this job description?” Myers said.Myers sees a noble cause in connecting people to the right jobs but touched on the apprehension and risk in AI. “I think being in the TA space, especially early career, is incredibly noble. Connecting people with the right jobs is a really meaningful thing to do. Jobs have such an impact on people’s identities, their livelihood, and on their families.”“My biggest push on AI in general is, if this is something that you’re passionate about, don't avoid it because you have some concerns. Engage in how we can design the course of this technology in a way that’s actually really good for humanity and for the values that you care about," Myers said.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, RippleMatch, for sponsoring this webinar. Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.

Matthew Koehler | January 09, 2024

Evolving Workforce Expectations: Key Areas for Leaders to Focus on in 2024

With the start of the new year, leaders are reflecting on a past year dominated by conversations about return-to-office and AI. Businesses also faced challenges like appealing to a new generation of workers and including diversity and inclusion practices, all while trying to meet their bottom line.Where did they succeed? What could they improve on in 2024? These are the types of questions leaders discussed at From Day One’s December virtual conference, in a panel conversation moderated by Steve Koepp, From Day One’s chief content officer. The leaders shared what they learning in 2023 and what they’ve planned for 2024. Among the highlights:Out With the Old, in With New ApproachesWith a mixture of vague expectations and a lack of appealing reasons for returning to traditional office hours, the transition has been a challenge for leaders to tackle since the end of the pandemic. However, 90% of companies express a plan to create a formal return-to-office policy by the end of 2024, suggesting that RTO conversations will still be a dominant theme in the new year.Leadership’s approach to this conversation needs to be different, said Khalil Smith, VP of inclusion, diversity, and engagement at Akamai Technologies. To get employees’ buy-in, leaders need to set their expectations clearly from the beginning and show the value proposition of well-spent office time.“Ambiguity creates a lot of tension and a lot of frustration for folks. We need to think about things like how do we stay connected and continue to invest in our culture?” Smith said. “Every organization needs to choose the right path for themselves but they need to be incredibly articulate, unapologetic, and unambiguous about what they're doing and why.”Setting clear expectations is only one part of the equation, said Paul Rubenstein, chief customer officer at software company Visier. Leaders need to model those behaviors for employees to follow as well to get their full support.“There’s nothing worse than coming to the office to find no one else there. The value proposition of coming to that space has to be there and leaders have to be there,” Rubenstein said. “People follow leadership behaviors so if they see dissonance in what they say everyone should do and what leaders actually do, you’re done.”Creating Better Pathways to LeadershipMore women have moved into high-ranking executive jobs over the past few years. McKinsey’s 2023 Women in the Workplace report showed a positive growth of women in C-suite positions from 17% to 28% since 2015. But while overall women’s representation increased, women of color continue to be underrepresented in leadership roles.This can be an alarming issue for Generation Z, who are set to be the most diverse workforce, said Giselle Battley, global head of early career talent at real-estate company JLL.“If Gen Z is looking up and not seeing themselves in their immediate leadership, that’s an issue,” Battley said. “Leaders need to understand the landscape and know they are on the front lines driving the culture and the success, especially for those underrepresented members of your team.”To support employees from underrepresented demographics, leaders, especially middle managers,  need to provide their teams with the proper tools, Battley said.“I can’t tell you how many times people get promoted and they’re never trained formally on DEI and they’re not given the tools to be effective,” Battley said. “Companies need to give them the tools to have that awareness to understand they are leading the charge to create this culture and change.”The full panel of speakers included, top row from left: moderator Steve Koepp of From Day One, Paul Rubenstein of Visier, and Mekayla Castro of Praxis Labs. Bottom row: Khalil Smith of Akamai, Kenya Jacobs Davis of Trane Technologies, and Giselle Battley of JLL (photo by From Day One)From championing their employees to providing mentorship and support, leaders are instrumental in supporting employees’ development into leadership roles. Kenya Jacobs Davis, HR leader of manufacturing company Trane Technologies, explained how providing key opportunities to employees not only demonstrates trust but can be pivotal in their overall growth.“One of the most powerful things that I’ve had happen over the last couple of years is not having someone speak for me, but sending me in their place,” Davis said. “Let’s not just talk about trust in terms of ‘I trust this person on my team, I know they’re capable,’ but demonstrating that trust by saying ‘You go instead of me.’ So when we talk about trust, it’s really important that you also model it when you have that opportunity.”Building Up Employees for Success, Individually and CollectivelyAccording to a Glassdoor poll, 76% of employees said they value a diverse workforce, and inclusive leadership leads the forefront of encouraging DEI in the workplace.To do so, leaders need to nurture a strong one-on-one relationship with their employees to understand them, said Mekayla Castro, head of curriculum at immersive learning and development company Praxis Labs.“To celebrate someone for their uniqueness, leaders need to have a strong one-to-one relationship with them.” Castro said. “Managers need to reflect on that dynamic they have with individuals and commit to understanding needs, motivations, expectations and goals that people have so they can then support them more equitably and inclusively,”From there, leaders need to cultivate a sense of belonging with employees as well. Castro said engaging employees in team-building activities and exercises can help build interpersonal connectedness at a team level and increase overall employee engagement.“Employees want to feel like they are part of a larger group,” Castro said. “Establishing a team identity or shared mental models can be helpful to build that high-quality connection at the team level.”Wanly Chen is a writer and poet based in New York City.

Wanly Chen | January 05, 2024

When Difficulty Arises in the Workplace, Try Inclusive Conversations

The workplace can be a breeding ground for conflict, whether it be a clash of personalities or mismatched expectations around the job. Hector Hernandez, leadership development facilitator at ThinkHuman, is no stranger to feeling dissatisfied with a colleague’s behavior.At From Day One’s December virtual conference, “The Arc of Change for People and Culture in 2024,” he shared a time where he experienced a breakdown in communication.He recalled sending a colleague a “very detailed” contract of how they would work together. They agreed upon the terms, but, “lo and behold, two days later,” the person did not follow through, he said.So, he began to prepare to give the colleague constructive feedback. “I was writing down all of my facts,” he said. “I was pulling all of my strategies from how to win these conversations and everything they had done wrong.”But, then, he paused to evaluate the situation.“I said, ‘Hector, what if you’re wrong? What if you are misunderstanding the entire situation? What if you have done or not done something that has led to this breakdown? What don’t you know?’”Hector Hernandez, leadership development facilitator at ThinkHuman, led the virtual thought leadership spotlight (company photo)So, he went back to the root of the conflict, the email he had sent, which had terms of agreement that were seemingly reneged upon. It was there, sure enough, in his inbox. But, Hernandez had never pressed send.“We still had the meeting. But, the tone of the conversation was completely different,” Hernandez said. “It was no longer me with my facts and how I want to win this conversation.”Addressing conflict in the workplace can be difficult, Hernandez says. But, a recognition that people may have blind spots in their knowledge about a conflict, as with the email incident, reframes these conversations as inclusive rather than as battles that produce winners or losers. The goal should be to work together to trace how a problem began and resolve it.An orientation toward inclusivity begins with inviting and welcoming the experiences of others in a dialogue to move beyond the individual, “a marriage of us and them to create ‘We’” Hernandez said. These difficult, but courageous conversations require a degree of introspection.What are the opinions you’re bringing to a conversation versus the actual facts? What are your biases and assumptions? What do you truly want to achieve from a conversation? To follow these lines of inquiry, Hernandez shared existing theories around active listening that lead to productive dialogue. There are three levels of listening.“Level one is your default state,” he said. “Listening takes a lot of energy. Your brain conserves it by not actually listening. So, how many times have you been on a call and there’s someone talking and you’re there, but you’re not really there. This is called listening to speak.”Listening to speak is essentially waiting for your turn in a conversation, he continued. It’s not inherently bad or good, but is not conducive in building understanding about a conflict.Level two is listening to hear. “You could regurgitate what was said to you,” he said.But, level three, listening to understand, is where the magic happens, he said.“You try to recall what you know about the person and their experiences, what is not being said through what is being said,” Hernandez said.People often ask one another how they’re doing at the beginning of calls. The customary reply tends to be in the affirmative (e.g. that they are doing fine, well, or all right). “Did they say they’re all right? Did their voice go up, go down? Did they lean back? What are they actually saying?” Hernandez asked.Active listening can promote empathy and resolve conflicts, still even with these practices, the path forward may include additional dialogue or even escalation. “The important thing is you’re doing it together. You’re doing it transparently,” Hernandez said. “It’s still a win-win for everyone.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, ThinkHuman, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Uwa Ede-Osifo is a writer, journalist, and producer based in Brooklyn, NY. She recently concluded a reporting fellowship at NBC News where she covered national news including youth culture, race, and inequality.

Uwa Ede-Osifo | January 03, 2024

Connecting Aspirations to Talent Development: Using Technology for Personalized Growth

What if employee development felt so ingrained into your company that your workforce had a great experience and became better at whatever they were lacking? Everyone wins. It sounds hard. And time-consuming. Thankfully, companies don’t have to run out and develop upskilling programs from scratch and tailor them to their people’s unique needs. Because there’s already one out there, and companies can easily integrate them into their workforce.Dror Yaacobi, VP of global HR at SimilarWeb, talked about how he used GrowthSpace to do exactly that at From Day One’s September virtual conference. Omer Glass, co-founder and CEO of GrowthSpace, joined the thought leadership spotlight, noting how the platform is meant to bring the above-tier experience so employees would not only use it, but thrive with it. “First of all, your employee doesn’t log on to a platform,” said Glass. “They log on to a branded platform that speaks your company’s language and actually looks like your company’s website.” From there, they see which skills they need to work on, but there is a level of choice. From a list of 80 different skills, they decide which they want to develop next in order to further their career. It’s important to note, Glass added, that upskilling isn’t only about their current job position or company; these are skills that can stay with them no matter where they go. “We’re linking the career growth to what we’re trying to achieve,” he said. Since they’re investing in themselves, they’re on board. Next, GrowthSpace recommends coaches who can work with employees in one-on-one sessions to help develop their skills. Again, the employee is offered several options to choose from, and they can compare and decide who they want to work with. The power to choose helps the employee own the experience.“It’s kind of like shopping on Amazon or Airbnb. They see the best engagement scores and feedback on the experts,” Glass said.Omer Glass of GrowthSpace and Dror Yaacobi of SimilarWeb led the thought leadership spotlight (photo by From Day One)Expert coaches are vetted before coming on board, but the real sell is that feedback. Are employees happy with what they’ve gained from the coaching sessions? Reviews and comments help your workforce build trust from the beginning. Thousands have already used GrowthSpace and given feedback, including 500 employees from SimilarWeb.While SimilarWeb is a tech company operating in the digital intelligence market with about 1,000 employees, there’s more to its success and growth than tech knowledge.“We believe there are two important things to focus on when you work on your career development: technical skills and your behavioral skills,” Yaacobi said.Technical skills are software. Behavioral skills are how to behave, like being a good team member, he added. “We think both are important, but behavioral skills are the engine for growth. Therefore, we’re basically telling our employees they need to focus 70% on behavioral skills and 30% on technical skills.”To grow into the next role, or even cross over into a different discipline requires various skills. The way SimilarWeb accomplishes this is by using GrowthSpace’s platform to offer a service called Similarcoach to its employees. “You might need to learn some technical skills, but for all of them, improving how you behave at work is crucial,” Yaacobi said. Changing behaviors isn’t easy, which is why one-on-one coaching is so helpful. Someone who already has the skills you need, who is impartial, can point out where you lack and expand your perspective. Yaacobi showed viewers how their workforce can register for SimilarCoach. Since it’s customizable, it can have the same look and feel employees are used to at SimilarWeb. Employees can then choose their location, language, seniority, and role. “Then it asks me, ‘How do you see your next career move at SimilarWeb?’ So I would say, grow within my role.” As an example, your career aspirations could be from account manager to senior account management. From there, the system provides the different competencies SimilarWeb views as most crucial for that move: relationship building, driving value communication, problem solving, and self driven.“I can share with you, it works,” Yaacobi said. “At SimilarWeb, because we are an analytical company, we very much believe in measuring everything.” An impressive 82 percent of people who visited the landing page registered, and 120 employees participate every year. So far, half of their employees have completed coaching, with a 90 percent satisfaction rate.  “Those are very good numbers,” Yaacobi said. The employee is actively working on skills that will help them achieve their career goals. Those employees are more engaged, happier, and therefore, better at their jobs.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, GrowthSpace, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.

Carrie Snider | January 02, 2024

Transforming Your Company from Military-Friendly to Veteran-Ready

At a time of chronic labor shortages, the U.S. has the benefit of a cohort of highly skilled professionals to draw on: the roughly 200,000 service members who exit the armed forces every year. Resources for transitioning service members and veterans are plentiful, so the challenge for many job candidates is navigating what Army veteran Dave Harrison calls the “sea of goodwill.” Employers have to work hard to stand out. Veterans entering the civilian labor force “are so bombarded with information that you can’t assume that they know what you do, or who you are, or what a career path is,” he said.  Harrison, a former soldier in the airborne infantry airborne who is now the executive director of workforce development and government programs at the recruiting firm Fastport, spoke in a From Day One webinar on how employers can transform their organization from military-friendly to veteran-ready, which I moderated. During our conversation, he described the qualities of a veteran-ready workplace and how companies can help transitioning military members launch new careers.Mapping a Civilian PathwayEmployers should the attention of transitioning military members–and their families–by helping them map a new path. Many won’t know the types of jobs available to them on the other side, how their skills translate to new industries, and how to grow a career outside the military. “Being able to articulate a career path is really the key to recruitment. It doesn’t have to be a ladder; it can be a lattice,” Harrison said. He recalled being approached by a veteran at a hiring seminar, who described her skillset and asked for advice on career direction. To Harrison, she sounded like a good match for a career in industrial refrigeration, an industry she had never considered. “[Industrial refrigeration] is a big deal,” Harrison said. “That affects the economy and the food supply. Now you have a job where you are one of the most important people on the planet; you have a certification, and when you get to a third-level certification, you’re earning six figures plus. With those certifications, you can go work anywhere in the world, and you have job security.” People just don’t know what they don’t know, he said. Recruiters can help them find out.Offering Stability in a Time of TransitionVeteran-ready organizations help their former military hires build meaningful connections in their new workplace. “The more connected they feel to something, the quicker they are engaged and become dynamic and very, very purposeful,” Harrison said. He recommended installing a mentoring program for veterans–ideally, one where veterans mentor other veterans. There’s a natural camaraderie, a shared language and a common experience that enables them to build meaningful connections quickly.Dave Harrison, executive director of workforce development and government programs for Fastport (Courtesy photo)Employers can be the stable point during a transitional time. When Harrison returned to civilian life, resources like workplace-mentorship programs just weren’t available, and it’s one of the reasons he has devoted so much time to building them. Without it, veterans and transitioning military members are at risk of being disenfranchised and disconnected. Those first six months are crucial to retention, Harrison said. Without connection and support, your new hire might bail.Those leaving the military will also be sorting out their GI Bill benefits and working with the Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA) to access the resources they need. “When they’re in transition, a lot of these folks will seek VA supportive services, medical services, things like that,” Harrison said. Some will enter civilian life with various levels of disability. Those new hires, especially, will need the time and flexibility to access healthcare providers and mental health services.Reaping the Benefits of Hiring VeteransEmployers willing to make their organizations veteran-ready can take advantage of federal incentives to hire veterans. While participating in training programs under the GI Bill, veterans, as well as some of their family members, can get funding for books and supplies, and some are even eligible for monthly housing allowances. An apprenticeship is one such program, but only if registered with the federal government. Harrison has made a substantial effort to set up registered apprenticeships as a way to provide veterans with job training across all kinds of industries and job types and help them access benefits.Without programs like this, Harrision said, “I couldn’t look them in the eyeballs and say we’re veteran-ready. I thought [apprenticeships] were only for bricklayers and pipe fitters, but it was a path to get the monthly housing allowance GI Bill benefit to veterans we were hiring.”Adding Veteran Strengths to the Civilian WorkforceCorporate recruiters and military veterans don’t always share a language, Harrison said, and this can amount to missed opportunities. Hiring managers may read a veteran’s resume and think the skills don’t match what they need, and veterans may not know how to translate their skills for a non-military job.Though veterans come to the civilian workforce with all kinds of skills, backgrounds, certifications, and experience, employers can expect to find many who excel in people management and logistics, Harrison said.People management in the military is an around-the-clock job. “While deployed, they’re managing 30, 40, 50, or even 60 people, and responsible for them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They’re responsible for everything,” Harrison said. Others succeed in logistics. “There is nothing in the military without logistics in place. Everybody has to understand what the goal is, what the mission is, what the idea is, what the intent is.”Employers looking for local talent may be wise to tap veteran talent pools. Military folks aren’t intimidated by moving. It’s part and parcel of military life, and the transition to the civilian workforce is an opportunity for the veteran and their family to make a big move. A great employer can be a worthwhile destination.Former military hires typically come in with a special kind of grit, and it serves them well in the workplace, especially in tough moments. “The wonderful thing about most transitioning service members and veterans is you don’t have to tell them that every meal is a feast and every day is a holiday,” said Harrision. “You can look them in the eye and say ‘Today is not going to be good. It’s going to be really bad.’ They will take a lot of damage for you and with you. They’ll jump in the hole with you.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Fastport, who sponsored this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.(Featured photo by Liudmila Chernetska/iStock by Getty Images) 

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | December 30, 2023

How a Culture of Well-Being Goes Hand-in-Hand with Greater Productivity

“We want everyone to know that we’re a stigma-free company, one that focuses on openness, acceptance, and understanding about mental health and well-being,” said Courtney White, head of HR for agricultural solutions at the global chemical manufacturer BASF. “Safety and well-being are key priorities that are front and center in our engagement strategy.” So central, in fact, that one way the company protects its workers’ well-being is by giving people permission to just say no: When teams are overworked, when more responsibilities would threaten safety and well-being, then they have the latitude to say so. “We have to help our people leaders and our employees know how to actually say ‘no’ to things in order to know what to say ‘yes’ to,” White said. “So we make sure that everyone has a voice–because while most times you would love to do everything, you just can’t.”Employee well-being was the focus of a panel discussion at From Day One’s December virtual conference on the arc of change in 2024. In the conversation, which I moderated, White and his professional colleagues in people operations and employee engagement shared their philosophies on how companies can keep workers happy and productive in the coming year. Setting the Cultural ToneAttitude matters, and attitude is often set at the top of the organization, said Jane Cha-Lee, the SVP of global talent and culture at the market-research firm Nielsen. “One way that leaders can help create environments of well-being and support is to just show care. It’s so basic, but I think it’s hard to do in practice.”Tell your people managers that it’s good–and expected–to acknowledge tough and uncomfortable circumstances, to be frank about what the managers know and what they don’t know. “In the worst of times is where we like to show the best of us,” Cha-Lee said. “What is it that you can provide so that you remove as many distractions as possible and just allow the employee to focus on their work?”Cha-Lee was clear that managers aren’t the only ones responsible for shouldering the weight of company morale. “It’s also about empowering the employee and to own what it is that they need,” she said.Especially in critical moments–during layoffs and reorganizations, major disruptions and crises–let workers and leaders take mental-health days and set an example for their teams, said Kumud Sharma, the chief people officer at Betterment, which offers employers ways to help workers manage their finances. “It’s OK to say, ‘you take the rest of the day off,’ or ‘the company will take the rest of the day off,’ and not focus on things immediately because something has just happened or a communication has just gone out.”As the dust settles, continue to check in on the well-being of your workers and your leaders. “Do a weekly check-back and a monthly check-back to make sure that there isn’t someone who’s suffering from a decision or a non-decision,” she said. “Provide them access to EAP programs to any other internal programs and solutions that we have.”Leaving the Office Behind When someone is out of the office, work should be left behind, and a culture that supports people in their absence is one in which people are free to care for themselves and their families.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the conversation among leaders from GiftCard Partners, Betterment, Nielsen, BASF, and McKesson (photo by From Day One)Chris Coultas, the senior director of performance and engagement at the pharmaceutical-distribution company McKesson, recently took paternity leave and used the time to be present with his growing family. That can happen only when workers can trust their manager and their colleagues to have their back.Teams have to build trust to have confidence that the work will get done when a team member is out, he said. “If I were somewhere where there was an expectation of being ‘on’ even when you’re ‘off,’ paternity leave would have been a lot different. [Instead], I was able to come back energized and pleasantly surprised with how much progress had been made.”Offering the Best ChoicesEven if your company institutes wellness-focused policies and practices and offers a benefits package to match, it’s only effective if workers are confident using what you offer. “Offering the best benefits is not enough. If employees don’t know what they are, they won’t understand how to use them,” said Sharma. Instead of waiting for employees to ask questions, Sharma prefers being proactive. Catch your employees in moments of opportunity, like when they join the company, when they undergo a life change like getting married or having a baby, and when it’s time for open enrollment.“During open enrollment, instead of just sending out the forms and paperwork, we actually bring the providers on-site. We set up sessions for employees to have one-on-one consultations and office hours that continue even through the year,” she said.The panelists unanimously recommended that employers offer their workers a choice in the way they take advantage of their benefits. “What is good for one person isn’t necessarily good for another, and a reward that is meaningful to one person isn’t necessarily meaningful to another,” said Kate Balboni, VP of sales operations at employee-incentive platform GiftCard Partners. “Happier employees equals engaged employees, and engaged employees equals increased productivity, which then positively impacts the bottom line and helps to maintain a positive work culture.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, the Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.(Featured photo by Daisy-Daisy/iStock by Getty Images)

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | December 29, 2023

How Worker Collaboration Can Become More Productive–and Satisfying

“Technology must not get in the way of what we’re doing,” said Snorre Kjesbu, SVP and general manager of WebEx devices at global software firm Cisco. “We should never win the Oscar for main actor. We should win it for best supporting actor.”That technology should be a background act may seem like an unusual statement from someone whose job is to develop world-class collaboration tools, but Kjesbu is clear on the role he believes tech should play in our working lives. “Technology should be there to support whatever is happening in the meeting,” he said. “It should be there to make sure that the people can go about their daily business.” Video conferencing is mission-critical for businesses now, Kjesbu said, which means it has to be both exceptional and invisible. “Ninety-eight percent of meetings will have at least one remote participant, which basically means that every meeting has a remote participant.”In a fireside chat during From Day One’s recent virtual conference on the arc of change in 2024, I spoke with Kjesbu on the place of tech in our working lives, the new role of the office, and the future of remote collaboration.Reaching Distance ZeroProductivity, satisfaction, and success is a matter of building a connection among workers that is as natural as possible. For Kjesbu, the goal is a state he describes as “distance zero,” the feeling of being in the same room, even when the connection is digital.When the tools his team develops are the invisible undergirding to human connections, the job is well-done. “The day when we are not noticed–because it’s just working–that’s when we’re doing the right job. That is what we strive for,” he said. “With every meeting having at least one remote participant, how do we make sure people get the feeling of being in the same place? We call that distance zero.”Magnet, Not MandateDespite the ubiquity of remote work, many employers are itching to fill their offices again, and some have resorted to issuing ultimatums. To attract workers back to the office, Cisco aims for “magnet over magnate.” If the workplace is a worthwhile place to be, people will show up for the right reasons; no requirement needed.There are three ingredients to a magnetic workplace, said Kjesbu. First, people have to come back for the right tasks–ones that require collaboration and creativity, like product design, marketing, or mentoring. Whatever can be done remotely, should be done remotely. Don’t make your staff sit in freeway traffic to review a spreadsheet in an empty conference room.Snorre Kjesbu, SVP and general manager of WebEx devices at CiscoSecond, the office has to offer a great environment. “The venue you go into must offer something more than your home,” Kjesbu said. “A lot of us have comfortable homes and a nice desk where you don’t have to jump in the car to beat traffic, so you must make sure that the venue has the qualities that give you energy. It means that you have the right technology to be able to do that.”And third, you need good coffee. Metaphorical coffee, that is. Kjesbu relishes the serendipity created while waiting in line for coffee at the office–informal moments that turn into conversations about personal lives or challenging work projects. “People will approach me in a way that they will not do if things are scheduled. They will have conversations–maybe about kids or grandchildren or pets–but more often than not, there will be unsolicited discussions about technology, design, and business.”Actual coffee helps too. Cisco has a barista that slings drinks three days a week. Even in Silicon Valley, most people can’t replicate an in-house barista. Collaborating in 2024 and BeyondIn the coming year and beyond, Kjesbu believes that artificial intelligence (AI) will be hugely influential in our remote and hybrid working lives. He and his team are working on new AI-powered projects, including programs that read facial expressions to deduce the tone and sentiment of a meeting. There are digital whiteboard tools for real-time collaboration and features that suppress background noise so effectively that someone could take a video call from a coffee shop, sitting right beside the espresso grinder, and still be heard loud and clear. Other tools will understand the content of meetings. Even if you step away from a video call to sign for a package at the door, the program will capture the most important bits you missed–like notes most relevant to you or action items you’ve been assigned–and feed you a real-time update when you return“I think that what we will see is that AI will have a big impact,” he said. “It will help you improve the meeting by being able to understand context and make sure there is natural conversation.”Kjesbu is fully aware of how companies use video tools for remote work, and he’s under no illusion that Cisco’s products will be the only ones around. Nor is that his goal. The fact is that companies use a variety of tech systems, and their clients and partners do too. For Kjesbu, the goal is interoperability, “[it’s] absolutely essential,” he said. Companies have to move seamlessly among Cisco’s own WebEx as well as Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Zoom, and more.For HR and people operations, the future of collaboration tools promises greater insight into how, where, and when employees work best. Leaders will better understand how many people attend a meeting, the types of meetings that occur, plus the content, tone, and outcome. This new tech will make it easier to improve, helping employers create an environment that is a magnet for collaboration, not a mandate to sit in an uninspiring office.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz at Work, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.(Illustration by Alisa Zahoruiko/iStock by Getty Images)

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | December 29, 2023

What’s Next: Reinventing Yourself and Your Organization

“While all marginalized groups face barriers, women are especially likely to reinvent their careers, and women of color are even more likely to do so. In part, that’s because the workplace has been alarmingly slow to acknowledge the needs of working moms,” renowned journalist and bestselling author Joanne Lipman writes in her new book Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work. Workplaces have an opportunity to better support and engage with all employees–women included–by recognizing the role of personal change and its impact on career development. People are searching for meaningful transformation in their lives and work. For employers, it means they need to know how they can support their workers as they advance in their careers and personal lives. This month, From Day One hosted the webinar “What’s Next: Reinventing Yourself and Your Organization,” a conversation with Lipman about her new book to discover what’s behind this trend and how to reinvent your organization, your teams, and yourself. Fellow speaker Liz Pittinger, VP of global customer success for Stork Club, illuminated how her organization is helping to innovate family-building and reproductive health benefits.Normalizing the Concept of ReinventionLipman was inspired to write the book “when the world shut down” during the pandemic, and she realized there was no roadmap for what was next. “I set forth to look for stories of people who had successfully reinvented themselves, their careers, and their lives; for companies that had successfully made it through major transitions; and to the researchers who study these kinds of things,” Lipman said. But career reinventions aren’t limited to times of global change. Pittinger herself experienced career upheaval first-hand, starting with a transition from a role in the Department of Justice dealing with political economic development to a communications role at a Fortune 100 company following her marriage and move to Atlanta, followed by 15 years as a stay-at-home mom, a breast-cancer battle, a second master’s degree, and a return to the workforce in a flexible remote role. “I want to make sure all women know it's okay to follow your own path. These are all different chapters and our own books,” Pittinger said. “The whole idea of a linear career was so 20th century. It didn’t really happen then, and it’s certainly not happening now,” said moderator Steve Koepp, From Day One’s chief content officer. Through her work at Stork Club, Pittinger helps provide crucial support to employees facing important life transitions. Stork Club, which sponsored the webinar, is a comprehensive, flexible end-to-end family-building solution. It provides inclusive care for all individuals with family-planning benefits. The company supports various pursuits of parenthood, including covering fertility treatment irrespective of an infertility diagnosis, as well as adoption and surrogacy.The Reinvention RoadmapReinvention is not always the “dramatic pivot” as portrayed in popular culture, Koepp noted. But it does usually follow a pattern. Lipman has developed what she calls the Reinvention Roadmap, with four distinct steps:Search: Gathering information that will ultimately lead to your transition (even if you don’t realize it yet). Struggle: “This is where you're sort of leaving your old life behind, haven't figured out the new one yet,” Lipman said. This may feel like you’re stuck, but you’re actually moving forward and growing. Stop: In this phase, you are pulled out of your routine and gain new perspective–this is where transformation truly begins. Solution: With newfound clarity through struggles and change in perspective, you finally land in your new transformed form.Incorporating Inclusive Women’s Healthcare Into HR PolicyAs Lipman notes in her book, personal change has a profound impact on the careers of women. “Women typically leave the workplace when they have a baby or when they hit menopause,” Pittinger said. When women are starting families, they are typically in manager-level positions; during menopause, they are in the C-suite. So Pittinger emphasizes the need to support women in those roles especially as they hit these crucial moments in their lives as part of an organization’s DEI strategy. “At Stork Club, we ensure that we are giving a dedicated care navigator to each of these people, who is uniquely positioned to provide longitudinal care. We’re focusing on supporting the member and making sure they have positive outcomes, and providing additional support for their mental health,” Pittinger said.The speakers, counterclockwise from below left: Author Joanne Lipman, Liz Pittinger of Stork Club, and moderator Steve Koepp of From Day OneIn an increasingly remote working world, it becomes that much more important that employees feel supported rather than isolated. Employee benefit programs like Stork Club, Pittinger says, allows women space to have highly personal (and even embarrassing) conversations with experts outside of their organization, rather than with co-workers or HR colleagues, to get the exact support their need. “What I’m seeing HR teams do is they’re creating a culture of trust. They’re pulling the information from their teams, they’re incorporating that information. And then they’re enhancing this parental leave policies, and they’re creating bereavement policies that also include pregnancy loss,” she said. This also means developing benefits inclusive of all identities and lifestyles, such as fertility benefits that are not contingent on a diagnosis of infertility. Women’s Aptitude for Transformational ChangeLipman notes that studies at Harvard Business School have shown that when women hit their 30s, regardless whether they have children, they begin seeing a widening income gap between themselves and their male peers, as well as fewer promotions. “That said, the research suggests that women are actually better at navigating change and massive disruption,” Lipman said, because their self-identity is less attached to their job title. They find it much easier than men do, Lipman says, to pivot to alternate identities during times of career change, which can only serve to benefit them on their journey. Lipman shares that Prof. Deborah O’Neil at Bowling Green State University has found that women’s career paths are more jagged than men’s. “She calls the last stage of women's careers ‘the reinvention’ because very often as they reach seniority, they are either boxed out by the glass ceiling–they don’t get promotions–or they have careers and are ‘mommy-tracked’ and can’t get the attention to get revved up again,” Lipman said. Forced to reinvent themselves, women will often focus on giving back to others or bringing other women along with them on a greater cause. “Women who are 50+ have so much energy and ambition and they are virtually invisible to employers. We are losing so much incredible talent,” Lipman said. Companies should not be afraid to hire older workers, as in reality they may be even more focused than their younger, child-rearing counterparts. The Impact of Small Moments on Mental Health“We're reading in so many different news sources about how unhappy the American workforce is today,” Pittinger said. Lipman writes about the importance of “weak ties” to boost one’s mood, such as a positive interaction with a barista or doorman. This small attitude shift can have big results. “If you have that boost in mood, that optimism, that growth mindset, you're more likely to be able to solve the business problem or the puzzle that you’re trying to work out,” Pittinger said. Personal experiences can have a profound impact on our outlook, Pittinger says, which is why Stork Club works to make sure members never have to deal with an impersonal call-center approach to service, especially with something as sensitive and emotionally fraught as fertility and reproductive care. “All of our nurses are also certified mental health coaches,” she said. “We have to be supporting people in a very human and empathetic way.” Transformation on an Organizational Level“In personal life, I talk about the ‘expert companion,’ somebody who knows you well but can reflect back to you your strengths, talents, and potential in a way that is objective,” Lipman said. “There is an equivalent version of that in corporations.” Lipman shares that reinventions often come from not from experts but from people in the trenches who understand a company’s product or culture intimately. She notes several examples–including Viagra and the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser–of products that failed for their initial use but were found to fill an entirely different need through discoveries along the way. “Employees, customers, vendors need to be heard,” Lipman said. Employee listening, whether its tied to benefits needs or product innovations, can be key to an organization’s transformation. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Stork Club, who sponsored this webinar.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.(Featured illustration by Wildpixel/iStock by Getty Images)

Katie Chambers | December 21, 2023

If Jobs Have Gotten Worse, You Can Blame Financial Accounting

Organizations today frequently tout that their people are their most important asset. But to financial accounting departments, is that true? Driven by a need to please and prioritize the needs of investors, talent is often put on the back burner. Peter Cappelli, George W. Taylor professor of management at the Wharton School and director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources, explores this “penny wise and pound foolish” concept in his book, Our Least Important Asset: Why the Relentless Focus on Finance and Accounting Is Bad for Business and Employees.In a fireside chat at From Day One’s December virtual conference, Cappelli made the case that financial accounting, as practiced today, undercuts all the evidence about what works to improve the quality, productivity, and creativity of workers. But why did this happen–and what can be done to reverse the trend?Playing to the ScorecardThe problem with financial accounting departments having a say in hiring and management decisions is that the nature of their work means their priorities are elsewhere. “Financial accounting is the language of investors. It is the scorecard that tells you who’s winning and who’s losing,” Cappelli said. “So you’re playing to the scorecard” if you let balance sheets alone determine your practices.While all companies want to succeed financially, incorporating financial jargon into leadership decisions that involve personnel can muddy the waters. “There are quirks about financial accounting, which set the rules for the language that determines how well you’re doing. This can really disadvantage anything to do with employees in particular, and people in general,” Cappelli said. People management is far more nuanced than, say, generating a budget.Impact on Recruitment and Performance ManagementCappelli developed his interest in this topic as he noticed certain trends while writing a different book about modern HR management. He noticed that many modern organizations he surveyed didn’t necessarily have a traditional hiring system in place, and weren’t tracking the effectiveness of job descriptions, where applicants were coming from, or how exactly they were qualified. “They didn’t do sophisticated tests or anything where they decided that based on your record, it looks like you could do this job,” Cappelli said. “We [the company] may interview you, but we do it really inappropriately. And we're just going with our gut.”He found there was little thought given to tracking the success of the process, only the financial impact. “What do we track? We track cost per hire, and time to fill positions,” Cappelli said. In other words, just the financial factors. “We don’t track quality of hire.”This extends far beyond the hiring process. “You can do the same thing with how we manage performance, performance appraisals, and training.” Cappelli became concerned when he saw how many organizations “worry about cost per hire, not quality of hire.”Employees as AssetsIn speaking with accounting colleagues, Cappelli began to understand why this is the case. Employees can’t be assets to financial accounting departments because from that strict perspective, they are not owned by the company and therefore there is no way to put an accurate dollar amount on human capital. Companies that need to prioritize the needs of investors therefore find themselves with a shifting approach to HR. “Investors who are looking at contemporary companies, where the assets really are human, come away and say, ‘I don’t know anything about the value of this,’” Cappelli said.Andy Serwer, editor at large at Barron’s interviewed Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School during the virtual fireside chat (photo by From Day One)While training might be seen as a theoretical investment in employees, it’s not a literal one. It can’t be tracked. It often ends up on the company budget along with coffee runs and office supplies, Cappelli says, so even the investors who do believe in the value of training programs can’t find them or track them in the bottom line.Focusing on the finances and little else can impact an employee’s security and well-being. Cappelli shares the example that if a company is measuring success on a cost per employee basis, it could instantly prove itself more successful by reducing the talent headcount, changing the ratio in the process.Additionally, organizations that offer unlimited vacation time opposed to a set amount that is owed (and tracked financially), can remove vacation as a liability on the balance sheet–and employees might be more reluctant to take it in an effort to prove their value. Moderator Andy Serwer, editor at large at Barron’s, calls unlimited vacation time “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” The more organizations see employees and employee benefits as fixed costs, Cappelli says, the more they will work to reduce them.The Greater Impact on EfficiencyWhile all of this may be done in the name of efficiency, that is often not the end result. “The thing that’s maddening about these approaches is that none of this is about efficiency. This is simply moving costs from places where accountants can easily see it to places where they don't easily see it, but it still matters,” Cappelli said.He notes that high employee turnover actually costs money, as it’s expensive and time consuming to replace people, and then takes even more time for their performance to get up to par. But this nuance might be buried in a balance sheet that simply shows a newer employee with a smaller salary replacing the old one. “If you’re concerned about economic efficiency, this is a terrible thing,” Cappelli said. “Accounting is imperfect, particularly with respect to human capital, and it’s leading to these distortions.”Who is doing the hiring has also been impacted. “One of the weirdest things in hiring is that we have gotten rid of recruiters,” Cappelli said. “But recruiters are relatively cheap,” Cappelli said, and more equipped to do the job correctly. Plus, adding on the task of hiring keeps department managers from “doing the important stuff,” yet another unnecessary waste of valuable time and talent. To a CFO, though, Capelli said, “it would look great. You don’t see the cost of hiring badly. You only see the cost of hiring cheaply.”The impact of a squeezed, cost-cutting working environment can be seen in productivity. “Productivity in the U.S. has been flat for the last 15 years,” Cappelli said, as white-collar workers are expected to work longer hours for less pay, leading to diminishing returns. European working models, with more guaranteed vacation time and fewer working hours, are ultimately more productive, he says. “What we are doing is not good for the economy and not good for society,” he said. “It may just be good for the appearance of financial accounting in companies right now, not even in the long term.”But there is hope: Cappelli says there is a proposal in front of the Security Exchange Commission to get companies to be more transparent in their actual investment in human capital, requiring them to disclose turnover rates, investments in training, and the statistics of the workforce. As investors continue to put pressure on financial accounting departments, they will be forced to truly value talent as a critical asset for success.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | December 21, 2023

What We Can Learn From the Latest Trends in Employee Experience

How do employees feel about AI coworkers? Does remote work make employees more productive? Will frontline workers ever love their jobs again? According to Marcus Wolf, senior employee experience scientist at Qualtrics, the answers to these pressing questions are found in five employee experience trends for 2024.Wolf spoke in a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s December Virtual conference, where he offered actionable tips on creating employee experience strategies. His findings are based on Qualtrics’ 2024 Employee Experience Trends Report, which studied responses of 37,000 employees from 32 countries.How Employees View AIThe first trend relates to employees’ evolving relationship with AI. “Employees would rather have AI as an assistant than a manager,” Wolf said. “Organizations will need to pay attention to where the technology feels like it’s an overlord and where it feels like it’s an enrichment for the individual.”The report indicates that most employees preferred AI that they could control and direct. This means there is a lot more acceptance for AI technologies in tasks related to writing, for instance, than for using AI to evaluate performance.Only one demographic, employees with disabilities, reported a greater level of comfort when being interviewed by an AI assistant. Wolf says this is because AI is perceived as offering non-judgmental interactions, which is especially crucial for a group that may have experienced biases in the past.What can organizations learn from these insights? “These findings may really help us understand how to begin to adopt these tools and think of new use cases for them,” Wolf said. “Think of which ones will be a lower effort to adopt and which scenarios may need more due diligence.”The Plight of Frontline WorkersThe second trend relates to frontline workers. “You might have seen some of the commercials in 2020 about how much companies and communities cared about our frontline workers,” Wolf said. “They’re not feeling the love lately, unfortunately.”Employees in customer-facing jobs, or those expected to be on their feet all day, report a lack of recognition, lower satisfaction with rewards, and fewer growth and development opportunities.At the same time, the cost of job switching is low. Combine this with career growth assuming priority and younger populations struggling to afford basic necessities, and companies may find it hard to retain frontline workers in the coming years.The solution? Listen to your people.“A whole population of burned-out people may cause that next viral video for bad customer interaction. And if we don’t know where things are bad, we can’t really prioritize the support,” Wolf said.The Missing Honeymoon PhaseThe third trend indicates that the “new-job honeymoon phase” is on the decline.In the past, fresh employees would rank higher on almost all metrics. But, according to the report, things have changed. Employees with less than six months of tenure have shown the lowest intent to stay at their organization.One reason for this is the deprioritization of onboarding processes. “CHROs are being tasked with other jobs. Processes that were created before the pandemic haven’t really been reviewed or refreshed,” Wolf said. “People get their laptop, but not much else when it comes to onboarding and training.”Austerity measures further reduce training resources and force already overworked employees to learn on the job.In this case, the key to success for organizations lies in thoughtfully redesigning onboarding processes. “Much like when we design with accessibility in mind, we improve the experience for everyone. By considering the onboarding journey, we can sustain and improve experiences for long-tenured employees.”Similarly, an organization that supports its employees with formal and informal development opportunities will see the most success in 2024.Marcus Wolf, Senior XM Scientist, EX, at Qualtrics, presented the thought leadership spotlight (company photo)Employees are Willing to ShareA surprising trend from the report, Wolf says, relates to “passive listening,” or the process of analyzing employee chats, instant messages, emails, group chats, or social media, to identify and close experience gaps.“I would have guessed that no one was ready to really reveal more. As it turns out, I was wrong. People are actually incredibly willing to let their companies use this information, so long as it’s to make their work life better,” Wolf said.As many as 72% of engaged employees said they were ready for their instant messages to be reviewed, and 80% were okay with sharing their emails. And while the numbers weren’t as promising for disengaged employees, Wolf believes they too can be won over.“We can bring people along for this journey as long as we make the benefits clear of what improving their experiences is going to be like and what barriers we’re going to be able to remove for them,” he said.That said, employees draw a clear line when it comes to social media. Organizations must respect this boundary or risk pushing employees to use other channels to maintain their privacy or stop sharing ideas altogether.The In-Office Vs. Remote Work DebateThe report’s final trend for 2024 relates to a question on every organization’s mind: What is the most productive work model moving forward?The report gives us a definite answer, which is the hybrid model. “Those with a blend of experiences, a couple of days in the office and a couple of days remote, are having the highest levels of engagement,” Wolf said.The reasons for this may include a need to socialize or create more pronounced boundaries between work and home. Alternatively, it could boil down to employees finding more purpose–a reason to get up and get dressed for the day.In 2024, organizations that have returned to completely in-office models must show more flexibility to boost employee engagement.“I’ve even seen organizations with warehouse and distribution centers figure out flexible and remote work policies for their employees,” Wolf said.It isn’t just enough to provide the hybrid schedule, however. “We need guidelines for leaders and managers to work with. Having a policy that speaks to flexibility doesn’t have the same impact as when your leaders and managers bring it to life by encouraging employees to take advantage of it,” he said.Wolf left the audience with some crucial advice–he urges leaders to focus on communication and follow through. Show employees that leaders keep the same commitments they expect of employees.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Qualtrics, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Keren's love for words saw her transition from a corporate employee into a freelance writer during the pandemic. After having made her mark as a Top Rated Writer with over 2000 positive reviews in the extremely competitive Upwork space, and having been featured on various magazines and publications, Keren has now moved on to bigger and better with her own digital marketing agency aptly named Epic Owl. When she is not at her desk whipping up compelling narratives and sipping on endless cups of coffee, you can find her curled up with a book, playing with her dog, or pottering about in the garden.

Keren Dinkin | December 21, 2023

5 Secrets From the Top 5% of Strategic HR Leaders

In the recent past, HR was all about compliance, payroll, and benefits, but its fundamental nature now includes capacity planning, employee experience, manager effectiveness, engagement, and much more.However, “Budgets didn’t change, so somehow we’re supposed to do more with less,” said Adam Weber, chief evangelist at 15Five. Weber spoke in a thought leadership spotlight titled “5 Secrets From the Top 5% of Strategic HR Leaders,” during From Day One’s December virtual conference.Although more than 50% of HR teams are now viewed as strategic, only 35% saw increased resources this year, says Weber. “It’s no wonder that you’re dealing with burnout,” he said. “The work that you hope to do is different from the work that you’re actually doing. But it doesn’t have to be this way.”5% of HR leaders have a far more positive experience than everyone else. He shared their five secrets to doing the work of their dreams.Speak the Language of the BusinessToo often, HR “gets stuck in their own silo apart from the rest of the company,” said Weber. That’s why the most effective strategic leaders come from other departments, such as customer success, operations, sales, and even finance.“What’s interesting about these transfers is that from the start, they’re used to understanding a company strategy and then translating their strategy as it relates,” Weber said. “And so, one of the most important things that you can do is mimic the language of the executive team, know every single acronym, and know how the business makes money.”Leaders who want the opportunity to do innovative work also should be able to “rattle off the top three company priorities at any moment,” he added.Use Metrics and Data“One of the things I admire about HR leaders is they often know the issue and understand it intuitively,” he said. “But they can’t seem to get internal buy-in around what that issue is. And when you don’t have data as well, you can end up in this reactive posture, going from fire to fire.”On the other hand, proactive HR leaders build strategies by using data to prioritize their most important work, according to Weber. He said the three things that are central to making this happen are figuring out the data that matters, increasing engagement through motivation, and decreasing avoidable turnover.Have Courage and ConvictionWeber emphasized the importance of showing courage when pitching ideas to senior management.Adam Weber of 15Five led the thought leadership spotlight (company photo)“Fight for a yes, and debate until you understand the no,” he said. Although this idea seems simple, it takes some work.“How often have I seen an HR leader get super excited about something that was a squishy idea?” he said. “They believed in it, but they went to the leadership team with an apathetic pitch. And you know what happens in this scenario? You get rejected.”Instead, effective leaders “speak with confidence and conviction,” Weber said. “Executive teams, in general, are constantly scanning for risk; that’s their job. And if they sense risk, they’re going to avoid the bold initiative at all costs.”Activate Your ManagersPeople in HR tend to “have this superhero tendency,” Weber said. “They try to take on an incredible amount of work on their own shoulders. And this is a large reason that 98% of HR people are burned out.”This is why the best HR managers align the whole organization with them, including the executive team. Some of the best ways for HR leaders to support managers, says Weber, include creating consistent management expectations, providing skill-development resources, and assessing management effectiveness.Share Your ImpactThe final secret to strategic HR success is instilling belief in HR across the company, says Weber.“There are so many good-hearted HR people that don’t sell their work,” he said. “They’re doing amazing things, they take the first four steps. But they fall short on telling others how awesome what they’re doing is.” Weber recommends promoting success stories because “people gravitate to stories.”Finally, HR needs to share its impact through every possible medium, including team meetings and Slack. “This is not just a one-time thing,” he said. “You need to integrate selling your work into every single element of what you do.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner who supported this thought leadership spotlight, 15Five.Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.

Mary Pieper | December 20, 2023

How Career Growth Can Be a Part of Employee Experience from the Beginning

Today’s workforce is facing a myriad of challenges, from rising education costs, a shift to remote or hybrid environments, and career paths that aren’t clearly defined. It’s becoming more and more the responsibility of leaders to help employees become their best professional selves. As a result, workers are more likely to select an employer willing to invest in their development.Increasingly, workers say they want to grow in their jobs. How are companies designing an experience that provides a variety of career paths and development opportunities? At From Day One’s Miami conference, in a panel titled “How Career Growth Can Be a Part of Employee Experience from the Beginning,” experts discussed the most effective new educational techniques and pathways.Rethinking Traditional Education as an Indicator of TalentThe role of higher education is changing in today's hiring environment. “Enrollment in master’s programs is down,” pointed out moderator Joe Johnson, contributor at WLRN. “It’s incredibly expensive to go to school, sometimes the salaries are not necessarily keeping up, and they’re weighing out their options,” said Amy Turner, talent operations leader and senior director at RSM US.“What's happening is a lot of organizations are having to reevaluate what it takes to be successful in roles,” she said. Companies are taking a hard look at the value of higher education and whether those accredited employees actually bring special skills to the workplace, or if perhaps an alternative talent pool could be just as effective.For Market Leader and EVP at Aon, Brian Bark, who recognizes that perhaps not many college students are dreaming of being insurance professionals, that talent often comes from Aon’s internship program. “I’m interested in helping these kids in college find their way after they graduate, whatever way that is,” Bark said.“Employee growth starts in the interviews: letting them know they’re joining an organization where your entry role is important, but where you end up is more important.” Aon is also finding that four-year degrees are not necessary to many of their roles and has established an apprentice program to bring diverse talent into the workforce. “We’re taking kids who might not have ordinarily made it to college at all, giving them jobs, putting them through a two-year degree program, and then giving them full time employment after college,” Bark said.Training and Development for a New EraHR leaders are looking at professional development as a human-centered customer experience for employees, rather than one-off classes. “I never want to hear the word ‘training’ out of this team’s mouth ever again, we are now a CX practice, and our deliverable just happens to be learning in organizational design,” said Loren Blandon, global head of learning & growth at VMLY&R.“We really put ourselves into the seat of being learning and experience curators, designers, and architects versus trainers,” she said. With this mindset, development becomes more about how to help people grow within the flow of work, rather than through pop-up training sessions.In conversation moderated by Joe Johnson of WLRN, the panelists discussed how they support career growth within their workplace. Jackie Perez, VP, HR and corporate functions at Lennar, says that the company had experienced a turnover rate in the high 90s, until the organization established a three-day in-person orientation at company headquarters in Miami, recognizing that the moment someone joins an organization is a pivotal moment in their career journey. “We want to invest in how we immerse our associates from day one into our culture,” Perez said.“We have large groups, 50+ associates that are all starting the same day, and they go through an experience journey. Our CEO speaks to them, and we take them to our communities, and we create that excitement that’s going to create a lasting effect.” Lennar is looking to expand this pilot program into its other new company learning centers throughout the country.Not all successful employee engagement programs happen in-person, says Toni Banket, global head of TA, workforce development & employee branding strategy at Edwards Vacuum. Banket described her company’s online learning platform, called Coach Hub, which established long-term mentorship and short-term coaching pairings among employees. “The idea is to have someone that you trust whose opinion you value that can guide you through your journey to be successful within the work environment,” Banket said. “Continuous learning is embedded into our DNA.”Part of continuous learning is also recognizing when more seasoned talent might need a refresher or should be shifted to another department where their abilities are more valuable. “If you have an aging skill set, we want to get everything we can out of that employee, while it's still revenue generating,” Turner said.“It’s about having that performance management culture and those courageous conversations internally to talk about an aging skill set and the need to develop something and give them all the tools they need to be successful to embrace that.” These conversations, if handled correctly, can engender company loyalty and longevity rather than alienate older workers.Onboarding for Organizational SuccessIn today’s talent marketplace, onboarding isn’t just a quick sit-down with HR to go over company policy. “Onboarding is about how you bring an individual into the organization and set them up for success in such a way to not only be a contributing member in their job, but of the overall organizational culture,” Turner said.This engagement shouldn’t stop after an employee is no longer considered new. “Sometimes we over-index in creating this amazing experience for folks for those first weeks or the first 30 days,” Blandon says, while longer term talent is left out. “You have to continue to engage your associates at every point,” Perez agreed. It’s important to come up with creative ways to make them feel appreciated and keep them excited about the work.One way VMLY&R accomplished this was through its “Learnfluencers” program, where expert employees deliver and facilitate workshops to others, a boon to both the employee asked to teach as well as an inspiration to those in the audience. “It almost gives them an intern-like experience as existing employees,” Blandon said.Personal Growth for Employee SuccessUltimately, forward-thinking organizations are investing time, resources, and energy into ensuring personal career growth for their employees to drive loyalty, engagement, and organizational success. “We think about that entire employee lifecycle in terms of skill development: the skills you need to be successful in the role you’re in today, the skills you’ll need in a year, the skills you’ll need in three years, the skills you’ll need to get where you’d like to go in your career, and the skills you can take with you [if you leave],” Bark said.“It’s all about finding people that have the right DNA to excel in these roles, and then giving them the tools and experiences and training and, and development opportunities they need to actually get there.” Turner’s motto is “hire for attitude, and train to retain.” Companies should place a higher value on a worker’s ability to learn and grow, and then provide them with the tools and network to achieve.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | December 19, 2023

The Long-Term Shortage of Talent in the Post-Industrial Age: How Companies Can Respond

In the early industrial age, companies had a hierarchy built around manufacturing and machinery. But now workplaces are organized much differently. Their new priority? The talent. We’ve entered an era where the shortage of workers, obsolescence of skills, and new levels of employee agency will present employers with historic challenges. Most companies are not ready.The new Intelligence Age is a time when skills, employee creativity, information and AI will define our companies. In a recent From Day One webinar about “The Long-Term Shortage of Talent in the Post-Industrial Age: How Companies Can Respond,” speakers explored three strategies for success: rethinking the organization as dynamic rather than static, rethinking management with human-centered leadership, and rethinking HR as no longer an expense center, but rather a function like R&D that must build and invest in the company's people.All told, this means we need to redesign our companies around the person and shift to a new model for work. The time to act is now, experts say.The Changing Power Structure in the Labor MarketThe renowned Josh Bersin, founder & CEO of The Josh Bersin Company, says that with Baby Boomers retiring and declining fertility rates, there will be smaller generations coming forward to replace them. Employers will have a high demand for skilled workers but a much smaller talent pool, he says.“If you look at the supply and demand of workers and the labor force, it’s absolutely different from what we’ve seen in the past,” said Sania Khan, chief economist and head of market insights at Eightfold, an AI-driven talent intelligence platform.This could signal tough times ahead, especially in an age where companies are defined more and more by people and ideas than by machinery and products. “Scarcity of talent is one of the biggest challenges out there for companies,” said moderator Steve Koepp, From Day One’s chief content officer and co-Founder.Bersin notes that his company is getting consistent feedback from employers post-pandemic that they are having trouble sourcing new talent and with the retention of what is “a highly empowered workforce. We have employees saying, ‘I'm going to quietly quit. I'm going to work my wage. I'm going to do what I need to do. I don’t care what you say. You don’t like hybrid work? Tough luck, I’ll go find a job where I can work remotely.”Bersin predicts this is a long-term trend, and companies need to get smarter about finding and keeping their people. This is especially true in industries like healthcare, which is facing a major labor shortage despite a recent BLS report predicting 54% of new jobs will be in healthcare due in part to that same aging population that is decreasing the workforce.A Renewed Focus on Employees and ProductivityWith technology changing rapidly and more and more roles relying on it, companies will need to prioritize upskilling and reskilling opportunities to keep their workforce up-to-date and competitive. “Companies will need to focus on their employees,” Khan said, noting that companies that don’t prioritize training are already experiencing higher employee turnover.Another way to curb turnover is to take a hard look at workplace policies and make sure they are serving employees personally to make the organization more attractive, whether that is through flexible hours, hybrid options, and even AI assistance, Khan says.Bersin’s organization just finished a report on the prevalence of the four-day workweek or work time reduction. “This is becoming a big deal because employees want flexibility. We’re finding that this idea creates job productivity, and forces companies to redesign jobs,” Bersin said. “There are things that we’re going to do that seem unnatural now to deal with this labor shortage. In the future they will be commonplace. That’s just one example.”The recent webinar featured Josh Bersin of the Josh Bersin Company and Sania Khan of Eightfold (photo by From Day One)This changing definition of productivity, a focus on “revenue per employee” rather than hours worked, will also serve working parents well, Khan says, as they manage to get more work done in a shorter period.“Hiring more people isn’t necessarily more productive,” Khan said. Companies will start to measure their success by how efficiently they are utilizing their human resources to generate revenue, a focus on output rather than the size of the team. “The companies that are really good at productivity are good at human resources. They’re good at training, facilitating workshops, redesigning jobs, flattening the corporate hierarchy, changing the role of leaders, and democratizing career development,” Bersin said. “These things that might have felt like ‘nice-to-haves’ ten years ago are becoming critical to becoming productive in this new economy.”Reimagining a Skills-based HierarchyIn the information age, employment has been less about job titles and more about the work, Bersin says, with employees taking on tasks and using their skills for objectives far beyond their stated job description in order to accomplish the mission of the day, week, or month. “These rigid job descriptions, titles, and hierarchies are getting in the way of reorganizing and redesigning the company to be more efficient,” Bersin said. He anticipates an existential change in which the titles of managers and corner office perks will be deprioritized in order to get the work done.In turn, companies will be looking less at what skills prospective employees currently have and instead look at adjacent skills that show an employee has the potential to be upskilled to be the right fit, Khan says. A focus on skills, says Bersin, can also pave the way for automation. Employees can be allowed to utilize the top of their skill set if their lower-level, less skilled tasks can be automated.“If you look at the needs of an organization, you can put employees in specific, goal-centric projects,” Khan said. “Instead of just having you siloed to one department, you can now move around to where you’re needed based on your skills.” This would also allow employees to be well-versed in the whole enterprise, rather than just one area, so both the individual and the organization benefit. And tools like Eightfold can use machine learning to help companies analyze what skill areas are lacking and fill those gaps with talent.How Leaders Can Adapt to the New Workforce“Leaders have to understand this labor shortage existentially and operate in a company where transformation and growth isn’t an episodic thing–it's never-ending,” Bersin said. “The new model of leadership is, ‘can you build a company that can move people around, that can develop people, that can hold people accountable, but also give them the opportunity to move when you need them into a new place?’ Those are different kinds of leadership skills.”And with the hierarchy flattening, workers need to be prepared to sometimes be leaders and other times be more subordinate depending on the current project. “We have to democratize the concept of leadership.” Those with flexibility and an appetite for innovation will be most attractive to potential employers, Khan adds.And in a talent-driven company, HR will become more and more essential, and will be called on to understand a wide variety of skills, roles, and changing corporate models to operate within skills-based planning, Bersin says. Gone are the days where HR will be associated with conflict resolution and complaints. Instead, HR is becoming a forward-thinking, technology, and data-driven career path.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Eightfold, for sponsoring this webinar. You can read more from Josh Bersin on the post-industrial age here.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | December 19, 2023