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Jacqueline Mumford | April 27, 2023

Collective Efforts That Create a Workplace Community

To kick off his thought leadership spotlight for the From Day One conference in Salt Lake City, Steve Artnz, co-founder and CEO of Campfire, a Utah-based leadership development company, invited the room to close their eyes.“We’re going to check in with ourselves,” he said, and asked three questions:1. What are you feeling today?2. What are you thinking about or distracted by the most today?3. Who are you today?“Now, think of someone on your team and go through the same three questions,” he said. 30 seconds later, eyes open, he explained that we’re blocked from making meaningful connections by the language we use.“Notice I didn’t say ‘How are you’ or ‘How are you feeling,’” he said. “If the person on the other side of the Zoom can’t empathize, you’ve got some big challenges in your workplace. We have to know how to check in and get to know [who our coworkers] are.”You can’t start diving deep in conversation if you’re stuck in generalizations, though—something Artnz says we do both at work and in our everyday lives.“I’m going to describe all of the salespeople that you’ve ever worked with,” he said. “They all love sports, sports all the time. They love to close—it’s their favorite thing about their job. And they’re absolutely driven by money; it’s all they want.”His exaggeration of the boxes we’re prone to put people into is met with bashful laughter. But he goes a step further, into the real research.“I [sat down with] 200 salespeople, and only 20% of them ended up with money and rewards in their top six of [drivers],” he said. “They’re motivated by mission and vision, purpose, problem solving, collaboration, teamwork…all these things matter as much to them as they matter to us. Turns out, they’re human too.”Steve Artnz, co-founder and CEO of Campfire, led the thought leadership spotlight in Salt Lake City (photo by Sean Ryan for From Day One)But even with a change in perspective and improved conversational techniques, Artnz posits that you’ll be walking in place unless your company’s environment instinctively fosters this kind of connection.“Raise your hand if you work at a company that you would describe as ‘an engine for your mental health and well-being,’” he said. To a few hands, he said, “Some, but not a lot, right? Are we doing the things that we need to [achieve that]?”Campfire takes its name from the “warm, connected gathering place” friends and family make s’mores over.“Somehow you just feel safe, sharing stores and thoughts, ideas and mistakes, challenges, lessons learned, all of these sorts of things from the deepest part of your life,” he said. “How do we create that campfire culture at work?”It falls on all of us to develop that culture collectively, making honest efforts to know and understand the people we work with. The most efficient culture changes, though, start at the top.“We’ve learned throughout the pandemic how critical the manager role has become,” he said. “If you take a company that’s become successful and exploded in growth, at some point, they will hit a ceiling if their management is ineffective.”The expectations of managers have risen since the start of the pandemic, he says. What might be tagged as “soft skills,” he says, are anything but.“They’re not soft conversations, they’re hard,” he says. “‘What do you expect of me as your leader? Here's what I expect of you.’ We need to have conversations about career development, ones that provide direction and clarity.”When these conversations are informed by his earlier three questions Artnz asked initially, he says “your company will grow, see success and achieve results.”The reverse is also true, though.“If we don’t do this, people will leave,” he says, referencing a McKinsey & Company study on the Great Attrition. “The biggest reason that [people quit] during the pandemic was uncaring leaders. [We need to] make people feel seen. In a post-AI world, we really need to focus on what makes us human.”In closing, he invited the audience to get a head start on that.“Please pull out your phone and text someone on your team, in your family, [whoever]: ‘How are you? (honest answers only),” he said. “I promise you’ll enjoy the results.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Campfire, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Jacqueline is a writer and Master of Accounting graduate from the University of Utah. Specializing in tax, she's interested in business, government, and the intersection of the two. When she's not in Excel or writing, she loves to run, play Candy Crush, and read novels.

Michael Stahl | April 27, 2023

How HR Can Help Employees Flourish at Work

While at work about a year ago, Glenn Jackson, chief diversity officer for M&T Bank, took what ended up being a memorable trip to the office bathroom. Jackson, who is a person of color, bumped into a 60-something white male co-worker he’s known for years, but hadn’t seen in a while. Jackson noticed the man was, for the first time at work, sporting long locks of hair.Wait, how does a white co-worker with long hair have anything to do with DEI?Like many companies, M&T Bank had responded to the killing of George Floyd by committing to cultural change within the organization. Leaders promised to boost the equity of team members from underserved groups and better establish a sense of community throughout the company.Enhanced engagement with company ERGs, particularly those that represent worker experiences for M&T women, LGBTQ+, Latino and Spanish, and Black staffers, were among the initiatives, Jackson said. Those efforts led to sponsorship and leadership development programs geared toward supporting specific demographics. It also prompted policy changes that just made life at work more comfortable for M&T employees.“Multiple groups talked about hair,” Jackson explained to a From Day One audience in Brooklyn this month. Workers asked M&T leaders if they could finally start showing up to work with their “natural hairstyles,” Jackson said, some of which were not allowed according to workplace bylaws.“We said, ‘Could we go back into that policy and say words that were never said before, like: Afros are fine?’” Jackson recalled. And they did.Upon seeing his now long-haired white compadre in the office restroom last year, Jackson was surprised, but also realized the policy change affected more team members in a positive way than intended.“We thought it was for those three or four groups,” Jackson said. “You find out there’s themes across [community groups], you attack those and you communicate it. You never know who it’s going to benefit.”Jackson told the story as part of a panel discussion, “The Role of HR in Helping Employees Flourish at Work,” moderated by Trey Wiliams, a senior writer at Fortune. Onstage, the From Day One speakers discussed the changing expectations of people managers and the challenges that have come with the radical workplace culture shift of the past few years, especially those revolving around the need to keep workers of different backgrounds content, secure, and engaged.“HR has the responsibility to come up with a holistic plan to address these different areas [of concern] in different ways,” said Angela Li, VP of HR, chief data office for Citigroup, a company she noted was “pretty big”—with 250,000 employees—and, thus, difficult to establish consistency.“It really needs to trickle down to every manager and every manager’s manager,” Li continued. “Every team needs to understand: This is the direction where we’re going; these are things companies are doing for you, and they have to be implemented and tracked with some sort of metrics, because what’s measured is always what can be achieved later on.”“We’ve [also] been helping organizations to think about their culture holistically, which includes things like hybrid work, DEI, all of it together, rather than continuing to keep things separate,” said Anthea Hoyle, executive vice president of United Minds, a global management consultancy.“Thinking about all of this in terms of inclusion…all comes down to managers being more aware of who’s on their team and how they can connect meaningfully with them, so we focus on equipping managers and leaders to do that better.”Achieving as much might not take much effort at all—just some attention to small, but crucial details.The full panel of speakers, from left, moderator Trey Williams of Fortune, Laura Lomelí of BetterUp, Anthea Hoyle of United Minds, Glenn Jackson of M&T Bank, Angela Li of Citigroup, and Jane Cha-Lee of Nielsen (Photo by Cassandra Sajna for From Day One)Laura Lomelí, AVP of people insights for the coaching platform company BetterUp, said a key for people managers is to locate “that authenticity space” in their interactions with workers. Employees, of any demographic, she continued, do not want to think, “How do I show up at work and not feel like I have cover who I am?”Using her own experience as an example, she said while comfortably applying a Latino accent that she wants to go by “Laúra Lomelí” around the office, not the under-emphasized, diluted version. So simply taking the time out to learn how to appropriately pronounce employee names can go a long way in helping workers feel included.Whatever the initiative, Jane Cha-Lee, SVP of global talent & culture leader at Nielsen, the ratings company, said its implementation will come down to the foundational element of communication.“It really takes every employee and every manager having those critical conversations and making sure there’s alignment, meaning, focus,” Cha-Lee said. “It’s the easiest stuff and the hardest stuff because it’s so basic and yet we don’t do it. So I would just go back to the need for those human conversations to take place, so that people are treated as such.”Given the chance to express themselves, perhaps prompted by a greater sense of inclusion, employees have the opportunity to provide managers with ideas on how to make the workplace better, with thriving and productive team members. Otherwise, there’s greater risk of attrition and worker disengagement, Cha-Lee observed.“People are the knowledge holders, the heart of the culture, the ones that really are the glue that makes a company what it is,” she said. “Every individual that comprises a company brings so much, so I think we want people to be at their best and to really contribute to a culture that makes people stick around.”Considering the current “paradigm shift” in workplace culture and expectations, as Glenn Jackson from M&T Bank described it, and the real financial risks that come with not adhering to the demands of today’s employee, he predicted that “the winners coming out of this in the next 10 years are going to be the companies that actually focus on that human center and that employee experience.“If you don’t,” he added, “you’ll lose.”Michael Stahl is a New York City-based freelance journalist, writer, and editor. You can read more of his work at MichaelStahlWrites.com, follow him on Twitter @MichaelRStahl, and order his first book, the autobiography of Major League Baseball pitcher Bartolo Colón, at Abrams Books.

Michael Stahl | April 26, 2023

Employee Recognition Trends & Tips, With Help From Coach Ted Lasso

People managers today must constantly come up with ideas to ensure their company’s employees are engaged, productive, and committed. To keep up with this increasing demand, Matthew Willis, SVP of North America at the global employee engagement and recognition platform Advantage Club, has one suggestion: theft.“Some of our job is selling up as well as selling down and sideways,” said Willis. “But we’ve gotta keep these things fresh. The best way to do this is to steal.”Of course, while speaking to a recent From Day One audience in Brooklyn, during his thought leadership spotlight titled, “Employee Engagement and Recognition: Trends and Tips With Help From Coach Ted Lasso,” Willis wasn’t advocating for criminal behavior. Instead, he was saying that HR folk shouldn’t be shy about adopting useful and effective strategies and approaches that other organizations may utilize.To show just how much he believes in the stealing of ideas, Willis himself referred to life lessons exhibited through dialogue on the hit Apple TV series Ted Lasso, about an American football coach struggling to manage a British soccer team. Here are a few quotes Willis lifted from the comedy show and how they apply to the current people management landscape:“A challenge is a lot like riding a horse, isn't it? If you're comfortable while you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong.”Willis explored the robust cultural shift in employee priorities and attitudes toward the workplace, spurred by the pandemic.“Everything shuts down, then all of a sudden we start the engines again and it’s pandemonium because it’s very hard to get people in the door,” Willis said. “Then we have things like the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting, a hybrid workplace and an HR tech boom.”If that wasn’t enough, more recently economic insecurity has crept in, which has already led to layoffs. Citing data from polling, Willis said up to 68% of U.S. employees are not “fully engaged” at work, which leads to a lack of productivity. Deloitte research, Willis said, recently found that a single disengaged employee costs up to 34% of their salary.Then there’s turnover as a result of disengagement. Citing Microsoft data, 46% of the global workforce is currently evaluating their work situation for the long-term. Should a single employee be lost, it costs a company $4,700 on average, Willis noted. Meanwhile, engaged workers boost productivity, sales, customer ratings and profit, while lowering turnover, he continued. Matthew Willis, SVP of North America for the global employee engagement platform Advantage Club (Photo by Cassandra Sajna for From Day One) Perhaps the best way to get employees engaged is through recognition. Among workers, being recognized for a job well done or getting some kind of credit for one is the single most important area in terms of establishing job satisfaction, according to an American Management Association survey that Willis cited. But among supervisors, out of a total of eight such areas, including “interest in work” and “fair pay,” employee recognition placed second to last on the list. So there’s quite a disconnect between what employees want and what their supervisors think their employees want. Therefore, people managers across departments are probably going to have to get outside their comfort zone, ride that metaphorical horse and recognize employees more regularly and fervently. “There’s two buttons I never like to hit: ‘Panic’ and ‘Snooze.’”Conditions have been difficult for people managers for a few years now, but with such a radical change in employee outlook, any new direction HR might want to take is on the table. So there’s no need to panic, Willis said. It will just require a bit of thoughtfulness to get moving, which can be fueled by data, mitigating the impulse to hit the snooze button about the issue.Willis suggests identifying employee needs through any number of ways–particularly surveys and engaging with employee resource groups (ERGs). Then, employers should expand recognition opportunities, celebrate the work and, finally, analyze recognition results and tie them to key performance indicators (KPIs).Another guide is Maslow’s celebrated Hierarchy of Needs. People have baseline needs just to survive. Above things like air, food and water, though they also require safety, then love and a sense of belonging. Finally, there’s the need for esteem and self-actualization. According to Willis, those same principles can inform an organization’s approach to employee engagement. He presented a chart that said offering workers with just enough so they can survive will promote disengagement. Going further up the pyramid–i.e., providing workers with greater senses of security, belonging, importance and self-actualization–will enhance engagement. “The more we create this sense of belonging, this sense of need that is in line with what the employee wants, the more motivation we get out of them,” Willis said. “Boy, I love meeting people’s moms. It’s like reading an instruction manual as to why they’re nuts.”Willis said that quantitative data obtained through surveys is useful, but only to an extant. Qualitative data matters, too, perhaps even more so, and it can be procured through the establishment of workplace communities, most evidently in the creation of ERGs, Willis suggested. Virtual events can also be helpful, as well as the digitization of recognition and engagement efforts when in-person execution is too challenging. Willis also advocated for more one-on-one time between managers and employees and breaks during virtual meetings for social interactions. This will provide people managers and employees to create stronger bonds by simply getting to know each other better–without necessarily being introduced to any workers’ mothers–and establishing a greater sense of community. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner Advantage Club, who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight.Michael Stahl is a New York City-based freelance journalist, writer, and editor. You can read more of his work at MichaelStahlWrites.com, follow him on Twitter @MichaelRStahl, and order his first book, the autobiography of Major League Baseball pitcher Bartolo Colón, at Abrams Books.(Featured photo: Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis with other members of the cast in the briefing room at the White House last month. Photo by Chris Kleponis-CNP/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

Michael Stahl | April 26, 2023

How Hiring Teams Can Create Value During Economic Uncertainty

Nobody reasonably wishes for an economic downturn. But in business, difficult times also provide opportunities for positive change. Besides, as Maria Culbertson, senior manager of talent planning and acquisition at the hiring software company, Greenhouse, recently pointed out, the economy always bounces back.“The U.S. alone has endured 13 recessions since the Great Depression, and that includes four global recessions,” she said during a From Day One virtual conference thought leadership spotlight titled, “Three Ways Hiring Teams Create Value During Economic Uncertainty.” “Albeit painful, these corrections are part of the economic process.”Sticking most closely to her area of expertise, Culbertson highlighted how within the past two years alone there was a stretch of hiring freezes. First during the initial spread of COVID-19 and then a time of rampant rehiring during the Great Resignation. She advised company leaders not to panic over the current economic forecasts, and urged them to instead identify ways their organization can make some tweaks during the slowdown, while preparing itself for a new period of growth that will inevitably arrive.“A slowdown provides all of us the much needed opportunity to prioritize the things that are ‘important’ and not just ‘urgent,’” Culbertson noted. “Periods of low hiring present an opportunity for you to build a strong foundation for when things pick back up.”Hiring teams, she added, can help a company “thrive” instead of simply “survive” a challenging handful of financial quarters. Seeking quick savings by canceling technology that helps workers in this area is a no-no.“Strategic leaders know that short term fixes like this are rarely supportive of a long-term strategy for success,” said Culbertson. “The analogy that comes to mind for me is: you don’t throw away your umbrella when it stops raining, you simply store it away in a safe place that’s easy to access for the future.”In the long run, she said companies that remove key hiring software spend more—qualitatively and quantitatively—when they begin hiring again. Re-implementing hiring tools to support that effort will require resources that would not have been needed if leaders exercised some patience.When there’s a hiring slowdown or a freeze, hiring teams can shift focus toward a number of areas. In practicing what Culbertson called “data hygiene,” hiring teams should “prune” their pipeline “to mitigate future sourcing clutter.” They can also build a recruiting analytics team to “find and fix process bottlenecks,” as well as data inefficiencies. An examination of pipeline metrics, capacity modeling and hiring manager satisfaction may also be in order.Greenhouse's Senior Manager of Talent Planning and Acquisition, Maria Culbertson led the presentation during the virtual conference (company photo)“With a little extra breathing room, I encourage all of you to take this time to focus on evolving [your] structured hiring process, and in doing so, create equitable and fair hiring experiences for your candidates,” said Culbertson. This can be done, she continued, by “revisiting your interview kits and templates, and reviewing your questions to ensure that they’re thoughtful and inclusive.” She advised that this initiative’s focus would be best applied to the roles that hiring team members believe will reopen first. “One of the things that our team is working on right now is more standardization of our interview kits, particularly for roles that share common skills and attributes,” Culbertson said. “This will make less work for our recruiters when they begin building out roles in the future. And that will create more consistency for interviewers and candidates ultimately, leading to less bias in the process.”Any training that might be required to better execute this initiative, or any others, down the road should be deployed now, before the next hiring frenzy.Hiring teams can also devote more time to, as Culbertson said, “making sure you’re doing the work to add representation to the teams that you support.” She urged teams to set inclusion goals and measure the state of the company’s inclusive sourcing strategy, its diversity and to locate where there’s opportunity for increased representation throughout the organization.The value of diversity to a company has been well-documented.“If you’re going to focus on long term strategies to diversify your talent,” Culbertson added, “it’s important to spend this time building long-term partnerships with communities and organizations that represent underrepresented groups, and incorporating DEI into your company brand and continuously using data to track your goals when it comes to increasing representation in your pipeline.”Finally, she advised hiring teams to sure-up their targeted talent pools to make sourcing more efficient once the company needs new recruits again. They can even engage with candidates before getting the green light to hire to “increase the likelihood they’ll remember your employer brand,” she said. And, if there isn’t one already in place, organizations should build an internal mobility program to help develop existing employee talent.“The decisions that you make right now,” Culbertson said, “can be the equivalent to either taking 10 steps back from the starting line of that crucial next race, or if you’re keeping your end goals in mind, it can be the equivalent of taking 10 steps forward and creating a vast competitive advantage.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Greenhouse, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Michael Stahl is a New York City-based freelance journalist, writer, and editor. You can read more of his work at MichaelStahlWrites.com, follow him on Twitter @MichaelRStahl, and order his first book, the autobiography of Major League Baseball pitcher Bartolo Colón, at Abrams Books.

Steve Hendershot | April 25, 2023

The Role of the CHRO in Shaping the Employee Experience

A year ago, the Great Resignation was spurring HR leaders across the country to reconsider their approaches to recruitment and retention as Americans abandoned their jobs in droves. The “quit rate” in the U.S. hit a two-decade high in late 2021 and the trend continued into 2022, with workers citing factors ranging from a lack of opportunities for advancement, employer inflexibility and feeling disrespected at work among the top reasons they were moving on, according to a Pew Research report.Now, with a potential recession looming and layoffs roiling the technology sector, employers have regained some leverage and conversation could look different.But should it?The HR leader of Northwestern Mutual, the Milwaukee-based insurer and investment firm that consistently ranks among the country’s best places to work, says it’s a mistake for companies that have taken the lessons of the Great Resignation to heart to abandon those learnings now that the labor-market dynamics are shifting.Northwestern Mutual didn’t experience a spike in turnover during the Great Resignation, and doesn’t plan to lay off staff or strong-arm its workers in the event of a downturn.“Pre-pandemic, we didn’t have this attitude that the employer controls everything, and therefore we're going to put all these draconian things in place,” said Don Robertson, Northwestern Mutual’s executive VP and CHRO, during a conversation with Bloomberg’s Chicago bureau chief, Isis Almeida, at a From Day One conference in Chicago.The company is sticking with the same approach now.“We play a long game,” Robertson said. “Anytime we hire an employee, they’re part of us, and we want them to be with us for their entire career,” Robertson says.That commitment to longevity isn’t limited to avoiding layoffs. It applies equally to a culture that’s focused on fostering connections and opportunities for career-long growth.Don Robertson, EVP and Chief HR Officer of Northwestern Mutual speaking on the importance of connection (Photo by Tim Hiatt for From Day One)“We’re very much focused on really creating a personal experience for every person—how they grow their career, how they develop, how we interact with them,” said Robertson. “As a result, we’ve just been much more intimately connected to our employees.”Of course, pandemic-era shifts toward remote work can make those sorts of connections more challenging. Almeida asked Robertson about how Northwestern Mutual is approaching hybrid work arrangements as many employers are calling their workers back to the office.Robertson said there’s value in gathering in person, and that some teams will gather in person more than others—but that the company isn’t planning to turn back the clock to its pre-pandemic culture. Instead, he’s focused on ensuring that Northwestern Mutual’s culture remains strong regardless of where employees do their work.“I don't think engagement is about proximity; it’s about connecting with people,” Robertson said.Building and maintaining those connections sometimes means tailoring leadership styles to the specific contours of remote work. At Northwestern Mutual, for example, managers are now trained to schedule more frequent one-on-ones with employees to facilitate relational connection, because impromptu water-cooler gatherings don’t happen as frequently.“You have to be much more intentional about connecting,” said Robertson.Robertson also cautioned against focusing on productivity metrics, which can be a factor in calling employees back to the office. He said Northwestern Mutual bases its evaluations on performance rather than productivity—and had the two best years of its 166-year history during the pandemic, when remote work was the norm.Embracing remote workers also opens up the potential to build remote teams. Robertson said it has become easier for Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual to hire tech talent, for example, by expanding its footprint and adding employees in cities such as Atlanta, Denver and San Francisco. Yet Northwestern Mutual’s emphasis on connectedness also comes into play there: rather than hiring isolated employees in far-flung regions, Robertson said the company aims to add clusters of employees in target markets.Community-building is just one of Northwestern Mutual’s points of emphasis regarding employee experience. The company also has altered its approach to accommodate young employees, for example, who expect to be more involved in high-level projects early in their careers than workers in previous generations. The idea, Robertson says, is to ensure that the company shows that it values its people as essential stakeholders rather than disposable parts.Robertson was interviewed by Bloomberg's Chicago Bureau Chief, Isis Almeida, at From Day One's 2023 Chicago conference (Photo by Tim Hiatt for From Day One)“If you want to be a talent magnet to those employees out there, you need to be thought of as a company that actually puts the employee on the same plane as the shareholder or customer,” Robertson says.The value of that sort of intentionality also applies to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). In response to a question from Bloomberg’s Almeida, Robertson said Northwestern Mutual has remade its approach to hiring and developing diverse employees over the last five years, substantially increasing both the overall number of women and Black employees, but also the number of people in both groups who hold leadership positions. The key, Robertson said, is structure: holding regular meetings with groups of diverse employees to ensure that their voices are heard, and ensuring that hiring processes includes slates of diverse candidates.“Be very intentional, but with a lot of action,” Robertson said. “Your strategy has to match your operational rigor.”There’s a lesson there for companies that find themselves in a reactive mode as the economy swings from the pandemic and Great Resignation to an era when employees are returning to work—and may need work more than work needs them.Rather than press their advantage, those companies are well-served to foster cultures that will endure across trends and seasons, and that value employee well-being on the same level as shareholder returns.Steve Hendershot is an award-winning multimedia journalist and bestselling author. He hosts the Project Management Institute’s top-rated Projectified podcast and operates Cedar Cathedral Narrative Studio in Chicago.

Michael Stahl | April 25, 2023

A Sense of Purpose, in Both the Workplace and the Work

Despite the pandemic, worker productivity in 2022 matched pre-COVID 2019, according to Holly Tyson, Chief People Officer at Cushman & Wakefield, the country's largest commercial property manager. Citing company survey data, they discovered that 75% of the time people spent at work was productively.Unfortunately, that data also contained some bad news. “When we compare 2019 to 2022 on well-being that was also around 75%” in 2019, and now that’s down to 39%” says Tyson, speaking during a Fireside Chat at From Day One's Chicago conference.During her talk with Christian Farr, General Assignment Reporter at Chicago's NBC5 News, Tyson noted that much of that burden has fallen to the feet of people managers across industry, who were tasked perhaps most heavily with managing workplace transitions from office-only to all-remote and hybrid capabilities—arrangements that appear sticky even in a post-pandemic world.“What we really need to be focused on most is human connection and the impact it has on wellbeing,” said Tyson during the session, entitled “Creating a Sense of Purpose in Both the Workplace and the Work.” Observing that people are “social creatures” and “pack animals,” she said, we “crave connection and collaboration,” especially when it truly works “towards a purpose.” Therefore, within a few years or more, we may start to see the residual effects of the big disconnect we endured during COVID, especially in industries reliant on innovation. Farr of NBC5 News and Tyson of Cushman & Wakefield on stage at From Day One's Chicago conference (Photo by Tim Hiatt for From Day One)“Because innovation happens by accident, mostly, right? Innovation happens when you discover something that wasn't necessarily intended, and those things happen when you have collisions and coincidences. And not being together, you have less of those collisions and coincidences.” One area that may suffer the most from hybrid and all-remote workplaces are career trajectories, Tyson said. It’s too soon to tell, but Tyson intimated that in this post-pandemic, remote-heavy culture, people who don’t report to a physical workspace and interact with colleagues and leaders may struggle to get ahead. She’s not the only leader with this concern. A new study from a trio of economists, The Power of Proximity to Coworkers, said young workers and women employees are particularly at risk of being held back from promotions if they are part-time or full-time remote workers.“[T]he office, at least for a certain type of white-collar knowledge worker, [has historically] played an important role in early-career development,” wrote the New York Times in an article about the “Power of Proximity” paper. “And the mentorship and training people get in person [has] so far proved hard to replicate on Slack and Zoom.”However, ensuring workplace equity to remote workers is an issue that can be addressed with more mindful approaches and the supplementing of connectivity in light of a remote-work arrangement with employees. Tyson stopped short of supporting companies that go hard with return-to-the-office mandates. “The competitor in me says [to those organizations], ‘Go ahead. I'll take the person who quits,’” Tyson said. “Wise companies recognize that talent is the only real differentiator, and the best talent names their criteria.”She suggested to companies that want to retain terrific talent who demand remote- or hybrid-work arrangements gather them together once a month or once every couple months, whatever the company can facilitate. But quality over quantity prevails. “It needs to be purposeful,” she said of the gatherings. She added that they should also stretch “long amounts of time, like two or three days to build that connection.” This type of setup will allow personnel to “inject” themselves with “that humanity that can sustain you when you’re [each] just a face on the screen for the next two to three months” until the next gathering.So, in a sense, when one removes the digital component to it all, things haven’t really changed all that much. Even before the pandemic employees didn’t like sitting in meetings that felt pointless.“It always comes back to purpose,” said Tyson. “It’s: Why are people getting out of bed? What does your company do that differentiates themselves to make a difference in the world? And if your company is not clearly articulating the impact that they are making, it's going to be harder and harder to recruit.”Michael Stahl is a New York City-based freelance journalist, writer, and editor. You can read more of his work at MichaelStahlWrites.com, follow him on Twitter @MichaelRStahl, and order his first book, the autobiography of Major League Baseball pitcher Bartolo Colón, at Abrams Books.

Emilia Benton | April 24, 2023

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Recognition in a Hybrid Workforce

How can employers give employees thoughtful recognition in a hybrid workforce? That was the challenge posed to audience members during From Day One’s Houston conference in a Thought Leadership Spotlight led by Matthew Willis, senior vice president, North America, at Advantage Club.Willis discussed how company policies and programs are moving toward a direction that focuses on keeping the workforce engaged while also considering its future aspirations, changing needs, and employee needs. It’s no secret that while many companies have largely embraced a hybrid work culture and the benefits it provides to all involved, many have been challenged by the prospect of cultivating a collaborative work environment. However, by recognizing employees’ needs, work, and contributions, organizations can create a healthy environment that can still successfully achieve business goals. Willis emphasized how recognition needs to largely focus on employee experiences and satisfaction levels, an area where there is a growing disconnect in many industries. Even with a recession pending and mass layoffs in industries like technology, many workers truly feel like the ball is in their court and are willing to “quiet quit” (i.e. perform the minimum requirements of their job, and no more than is necessary). Many would rather be unemployed than stay in a job where they’re unhappy, and would not accept a job where they have no work-life balance. Willis continued by sharing a “new age” job satisfaction checklist that employers should consult, highlighting the six factors of culture, autonomy, growth opportunities, flexibility, purpose, and recognition.“As we go up that list, motivation and engagement go up,” he said. “So our job, whether we are executives or HR leaders working with executives, is trying to create that sense of the ability to create that belonging down the chain quicker to create that sense of importance and build some structures around that to allow for it.”With that, though, Willis acknowledged the real challenge of keeping employees who aren’t physically in the office consistently engaged. One potential solution is creating communities related to their skill sets and interests, such as those focused on diversity and inclusion or women in leadership, or even hobby-focused ones like cycling and photography clubs.“With leadership, it starts at the top, and then with managers, as HR progressions, we need to make it personal, we need to be empowered to do that,” Willis said.Willis concluded the session stating that the bottom line is that companies don’t need a formal structure or advanced technology to provide adequate recognition and appreciation for their employees. “Let's think about it, what fits our culture, what fits our organization, and our employees,” he said. “We're building the team, we're training the managers, and the fun one is keeping things fresh. But you must first win the workplace.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Advantage Club, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Emilia is a freelance writer and editor living in her hometown of Houston. She received her B.A. in journalism with minors in Spanish and women's studies from Hofstra University in Long Island, New York. Her work has been published by Women's Health, SHAPE, Prevention, POPSUGAR, and the Houston Chronicle, among others.

Tania Rahman | April 24, 2023

Bringing Transparency and Accountability to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At global power management company Eaton Corp, Ernest Marshall, chief human resources officer, says that leadership has worked hard to separate the sensationalism often associated with employee data analytics by redefining these numbers to ‘workforce insights.’Such insights have been analyzed and leveraged in a manner that equipped the organization to drive real change. Shana Lebowitz Gaynor of Insider interviewed Ernest on this subject during a From Day One virtual conference.Leveraging Workplace InsightsMarshall picked up on the fact that when women candidates get to the offer stage, 90% of them accept the offer–highlighting how gender diversity led to a higher acceptance rate.Similarly, Eaton has set up an initiative to hire more women globally and increase minority representation into general management roles. Upon further investigation, it was found that the company had a large percentage of diverse employees internally, yet there was a gap when it came to driving these individuals toward management positions.Marshall highlighted that when data is presented, often in the form of a percentage increase, the full context of the data is rarely clarified. “It’s only one piece of the puzzle. We aren’t looking at what could that number have been,” he said.When it comes to analytics and workforce insights, he adds that companies must unpack what the easy percentage is trying to tell them. He does this by staging a hypothetical company goal: reaching an employee base that consists of 40% women.“People could suggest hiring more, but that’s only one variable. You need to control for things like your attrition or your rate of promotion,” he said, and mentions that focusing on such factors enables leaders to control the process and better understand what’s happening in the organization.The Role of Workplace FlexibilityDesiring flexible work options is a facet of corporate culture that has existed long before the pandemic. At Eaton, some form of flexibility has always existed, such as a hybrid work policy, but the question came down to how it was utilized and whether leaders were supportive of their remote employees.“Flexibility by definition is the quality of blending without breaking,” Marshall said. “Flexibility is about trust.”He said that for a flexible solution to succeed, it hinges on the priorities and outcomes for the business and less about why the person wants the flexibility.Gaynor, left, interviewed Marshall, right, during the From Day One virtual conference (photo by From Day One)“There seems to be this reluctance to have this discussion, because people think when I do [ask for flexibility], someone’s going to think differently about me.”Historically, people felt the need to prove they deserved flexibility–an approach that is misguided as it adversely impacts the company’s culture. He said that the discussion should be avoided entirely, pointing to sensitive situations such as employees who needed to care for aging parents who lived far from company headquarters.Such flexible solutions can be adjusted to an as-needed basis, where managers can green light it for a team member and check in periodically on progress.“We've got to ensure that we stay focused on the main thing: partnering with one another and helping each other drive those priorities and deliver those outcomes, in the best way that the person operates based on our flexible work policy,” he said.As CHRO, Marshall shares how he brings his personal experiences to the table to inform his outlook on inclusion and diversity as a part of his calling, underscoring how a diverse workforce makes the collective intellect of an organization far better.“What we all bring to the organization every day is our lived experiences, which is what makes diversity so profound,” he said.Tania Rahman is a native New Yorker who works at the intersection of digital marketing and tech. She enjoys writing both news stories and fiction, hot chocolate on cold days, reading, live music, and learning new things.

Feature

7 Things HR Leaders Need to Know About AI

Like those car headlights in your rear-view mirror that suddenly are right up to your bumper, artificial intelligence has arrived gradually and then suddenly. While AI has been with us in one form or another for decades, the last six months have brought more disruptive changes from AI than in the previous 60 years.An outpouring of news stories predict that automation will expand on a massive scale, disrupting potentially hundreds of millions of jobs. New tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, which generate images and text on the fly with human-like skill from a simple prompt, can make it seem like the robots are on the verge of replacing us all.In an interview Sunday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that his experience with AI products like his company’s Bard chatbot were “unsettling” and have left him speechless. “We need to adapt as a society for it,” Pichai said. “This is going to impact every product across every company.” That includes Human Resources in profound ways. While it can be hard to cut through the hype and uncertainty about such a transformative change, here are seven points to help HR leaders wrap their heads around what’s going on, at least in the short term.You’re already using AI at work, even if you aren’t aware of itAccording to a survey by Eightfold AI, more than nine out of ten HR pros are already using AI to perform their jobs. Common tasks enhanced by AI tools range from records management (78% of those surveyed) and onboarding (69%) to recruiting (73%) and retention (69%). In another survey, a consensus 98% say that algorithms will play a key role in deciding who gets laid off in the future.Those numbers are only likely to go up over time. Per that Eightfold survey, 92% of HR leaders say they’re planning to increase their use of AI over the next 12 to 18 months.AI won't take your job, but it will change your jobAI excels at automating rote tasks, rapidly digesting vast amounts of information, and identifying patterns within data. That makes it an ideal tool for rapidly parsing resumes, identifying promising candidates, or devising customized training programs.One of AI’s biggest benefits is the ability to give busy people a head start on necessary but time-consuming tasks, says Jess Lantis, vice president of people operations at Guru, an AI-powered knowledge management platform for teams. For example, you probably don’t want tools like ChatGPT to write entire job descriptions or company policies for you, says Lantis, but they can get you 70% of the way there–and that represents a huge time savings for people who rarely have enough of it.But AI can’t simulate empathy or form genuine connections with employees, notes Matt Schmidt, founder and CEO of Peoplelogic, a real-time employee-engagement platform. That’s why organizations will always need a 'human' in 'human resources'.Many lower-level jobs will be automated. Organizations need to anticipate thatThe fact is, AI will make some jobs redundant. HR personnel on the front lines must be ready to deal with it.Information retrieval is an obvious application for automation. Someone on staff who spends all day answering questions about employee benefits, health coverage, PTO policies, and so on is at greater risk of being replaced by a chatbot, says Schmidt. But that person could then be given an opportunity to do work that provides greater long-term value to the company, such as skills development.Organizations need to start by fostering an environment of transparency and trust, says Lantis. When people are willing to talk about the possibility of their jobs going away, it allows the organization to engage in a deeper discussion about what they really want to do.“I would go to concerned employees and ask, ‘What do you enjoy doing? What motivates you? What could you be learning that helps you thrive in a workplace that uses AI?’ You should be having a lot of those conversations already.”Lantis suggests establishing programs that allow employees to rotate in and out of different projects, to see if there are opportunities for them to have an impact elsewhere in the organization. Companies may also have to devote more resources to upskilling and retraining.AI may force HR leaders to change how they assess talentShortly after generative AI platforms like ChatGPT became available to the public, people quickly learned how to use these tools to cheat on tests and plagiarize published materials.Potential job candidates can also use these tools to misrepresent their suitability for roles, says Teresha Aird, CMO and hiring manager at Offices.net. “They could use AI to generate tailored yet disingenuous cover letters, respond to online questionnaires, or pass screening tests,” she said. “Remote hires could leverage AI to complete their tasks, misrepresenting their actual abilities and performance.”Last June, the FBI issued an alert about scammers using “deep fakes” and stolen information to apply for remote jobs, pass background checks, and even perform work. HR pros may need to change their assessment methods, incorporating more in-person interviews, situational judgment tests, and realistic job previews, adds Aird.AI literacy is a new core competency–especially for HRWhile you don’t want to hire people who cheat, you do want your new hires to be AI literate, says Eric Sydell, EVP at the hiring platform Modern Hire and author of Decoding Talent: How AI and Big Data Can Solve Your Company’s People Puzzle. One of the skills recruiters will need to look at is how good applicants are at using tools like ChatGPT to do their jobs.“We have to view people as augmented and figure out what that really means,” said Sydell. “Digital readiness is one of the things we‘ll need to be looking at more”The need for literacy extends to recruiters and talent evaluators. "They've got to be somewhat fluent in data and understand how these tools work at a high level," he adds. "They need to look beyond the marketing hype and know the right questions to ask."HR needs to use AI tools for the right reasons and in the right wayAI tools offer myriad ways to make peoples’ work lives better. They can, for example, determine if someone is struggling with a task and offer automated assistance. But they can also be seen as intrusive, especially when used to surveil employees or identify disgruntled workers.According to a March 2023 survey by Hunter Marketing, 68% of executives whose companies have not yet adopted AI cite concerns over ethics.HR pros need to establish clear guidelines about the appropriate applications of the technology, notes Schmidt. For example, Peoplelogic’s AI tools analyze metadata produced by employee interactions to determine the overall health of organizations and teams, but only with the knowledge and permission of people in each group, says Schmidt.“Our goal is to enhance the employee experience,” he added. “Even then, the tools never look at the content of these interactions, and they only display data at an aggregate level.”HR pros need to tread very carefully when it comes to deploying AI, adds Lantis. “Anything that makes people feel like Big Brother is watching over them is a recipe for a really unhealthy culture,” she said. “It ends up encouraging busy work over business outcomes. At the end of the day, you have to instill a culture of trust and of accountability, so people are focused on the right outcomes, not on how many widgets you're making or keystrokes you're generating every hour.”It’s a good idea to get your feet wet nowUnderstanding AI’s potential, as well as its limitations, is essential for people in the HR business. Fortunately, with many AI models now open to the general public, it’s fairly easy to get started. People are using tools like ChatGPT to plan gardens, organize their messy computer desktops, summarize meetings, write wedding speeches, and much more. Getting familiar with what these tools can do now will help later, when you need them on the job.Dan Tynan is a Bay Area-based journalist whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications. He has served as editor-in-chief of Yahoo Tech and executive editor of PC World. He recently launched a newsletter on AI.

Dan Tynan | April 19, 2023

News

Has the HR Profession Gone From Undervalued to Overwhelming?

In just three years, HR leaders have gone from aspiring to be where the action is to rarely getting a break from it. The professionals once regarded as paper pushers and corporate law officers are now charged with an increasingly long list of duties: developing the future workforce, protecting employees’ mental health, maintaining equity, preventing attrition, and lots more. For many if not most HR professionals, the result is burnout. Just as one crisis eases, another springs up, with HR often the first responders. In a recent surreal turn reported by Bloomberg, some HR leaders have now been tasked with laying off their peers when even the HR department starts getting the axe. Many leaders in HR have celebrated the expansion of HR into so many business operations, but has the department taken on too much too quickly? Is the job overwhelming? According to a recent poll by business software company Sage, 95% of HR leaders and C-suite executives say that HR role is too much work.Tamara Jolivette-Smith, the director of HR at health care provider Houston Methodist agrees. “In day-to-day operations, the work never stops,” she said in an email to From Day One. “New and unexpected issues continue to arise, with mental health issues becoming more and more prevalent with employees.”To handle the department’s growing responsibilities, Jolivette-Smith added three new positions to her team: two new hires for employee relations and one for recruiting–the duties that consume most of her team’s time. She’s ready to add more if that’s what it takes. “Burnout is real and I want to ensure the integrity of the team,” she added. Indeed it is: Few HR practitioners need reminding how exhausting the work can be. According to the Sage poll, 81% of HR leaders said they are personally burnt out, and 62% said they’re considering leaving the field.The department has spent three years battling challenge after challenge, Christopher Shryock, SVP and chief people officer at Sam’s Club, told From Day One. First there was Covid, then the Great Resignation and the need for rapid hiring, and now they’re managing fallout from massive layoffs, specifically in the tech industry. That’s just the new stuff.Shryock said everyone is feeling the burn, not just the HR department. The difference is that HR has an obligation to put on its proverbial oxygen mask first. Shryock believes that a burnt-out HR department is an ineffective one, and the messages that HR department sends about well-being have to be applied to the HR team first. “We talk a lot about how our team isn’t going to be very helpful to the organization if we don’t have our own oxygen masks,” he said. “We have to take some of our own medicine in terms of what we are saying, what we are articulating, and what we are encouraging the rest of the organization to do.”One reason for the significant burnout in the HR function may be its demographic makeup. HR departments are predominantly staffed by women, and women bear the brunt of unpaid work. “You’ve got 34% of women today saying they’re burned out, vs. 26% of men,” said Shryock, citing a 2021 Gallup poll. “That’s a delta of eight percentage points. If you just go back three years, that delta was three percentage points.”Despite the weight of the work, HR leaders are remarkably resilient and optimistic. The Sage poll found that 91% of HR leaders are excited about the future of HR, and 86% consider themselves speedy and agile. “I love HR and people, and I love working through the challenges,” Jolivette-Smith said. So, what does HR need to succeed? According to the poll, the department needs to upskill its team with a focus on tech specialization, invest in well-being initiatives, and develop stronger peer-to-peer networks within HR. Jolivette-Smith said that she’s taking team lunches and making time for off-site activities so her HR team can give back to the community together; she has added morning huddles to field team questions and guide her staff through what’s on deck for the day. At Sam’s Club, Shryock has been automating and digitizing as much as possible. His team has invested in consolidating data across fewer tech tools and apps, automating processes, making process approvals easier, and in opening learning opportunities “so the HR team can be out of the minutiae and can be more focused on value-add and engaging work.” He said digital products and tech teams in the company are great partners. If the HR team can take care of its own well-being first, they can use that energy to pour into the rest of the organization. Shryock cited a favorite quote: “It’s chaos, be kind,” attributed to late author Michelle McNamara. “I think if we take that mentality, not only of the business functions and the associates and the employees we’re supporting, but we take that mentality with each other, I think that can actually unlock a lot for us.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance reporter and From Day One contributing editor who writes about the future of work, HR, recruiting, DEI, and women's experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Fast Company, Quartz at Work, Digiday’s Worklife, and Food Technology, among others.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | April 18, 2023

Jacqueline Mumford | April 18, 2023

Kindling Community and Engagement in a Hybrid Workplace

When Covid-19 moved school, work, and the rest of our lives online, some speculated that the change would be only temporary. Three years later, hybrid work remains the norm and companies are still figuring out how to manage it. Glen Mills of ABC4 News moderated a panel discussion on this topic during From Day One’s conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, where five leaders who are navigating the hybrid workplace shared best practices and advice on creating engagement in a hybrid workplace.What Does a Hybrid Workplace Look Like?Before you can manage something, you need to be able to define it. “When you say ‘hybrid,’ it can mean something different to every person,” said Logan Mallory, vice president of software company Motivosity. He goes into the office four times a week, and often sees other team members there.On the other hand, Grace Zuncic, chief people and impact officer at Cotopaxi, works remotely from New York and doesn’t often see her coworkers face-to-face. “Our CEO made a decision to have a remote-first workforce,” she said. “[We spent] our time and energy thinking about how to make that experience great.”Determining what approach is best for a company should be a shared responsibility. “For all of the HR practitioners and professionals, if you feel like you have to solve these problems on your own, say something about it,” said Robin Strup, vice president of DEI at global AI company Dataminr. “Great organizations have executive teams that all feel responsible for the employee experience.”Can You Balance Productivity and Flexibility?“I remember being sick to my stomach because I had to ask for an hour off to get my teeth cleaned,” Mallory said. “I’ve gained a little bit of confidence that I didn’t have, and I wouldn’t work somewhere like that [now].”It’s about more than doctor’s appointments though—remote and in-office workers alike are starting to expect more of a work-life balance than in the pre-pandemic years. If you can lean into that, the panelists agree you’ve tapped into HR magic.“Don’t say that you have a headache because you’re going to your kids’ soccer game,” said Gia Dowling, vice president of people and culture at Nicholas and Company, a food distribution and transportation company. “Don’t say you have a doctor’s appointment because you want to go to your daughter’s dance recital. Let’s be honest. Let’s talk!”If leadership sets the example of transparency, more honest conversations flow. And when you trust you colleagues, the work always gets done — and you’ll make your appointments, too.“We’re very, very specific when hiring,” Dowling said. “I spell it out: these are the expectations, because not everyone is coming into the office and seeing [how it works]. The more explicit you can be in your instructions, the better.”Stages of a CareerStill, Zuncic cautions that an employee’s needs (and expectations) may vary drastically based on how far along an employee is in their career. “We have to be mindful about the remote experience for new people coming in,” she said. “You must design programs around this [being someone’s first job], and ensure that there are opportunities for them to connect with folks at the company.”The full panel of speakers from left, Robin Strup of Dataminr, Brooke Shreeve of Weave, Grace Zuncic of Cotopaxi, moderator Glen Mills of ABC4 News, Gia Dowling of Nicholas & Company, and Logan Mallory of Motivosity (Photo by Sean Ryan for From Day One)Brooke Shreeve, chief people officer at software firm Weave built upon Zuncic’s comment by getting into specifics. “Gen Z is the most volatile right now because of that learning opportunity,” she said. “If we don’t get it right the first time, they’re going to be lost. Other generations want to work from home, but this younger generation is missing an opportunity to learn from them. There is going to be a big gap between the two if we’re not careful.”The solution is being intentional, she says.“There have been many days that I’ve walked into the office and there’s nobody there,” she said. “What a waste of time! If you’re coming in, make sure there’s a group of individuals there too, and you have a purpose. And even when you have people coming in, in a lot of cases you will also still have people at home, and you can’t forget them. You have to continue [to foster] that sense of belonging.”Can We Dispel the “Us vs. Them” Mentality?Coordinating schedules isn’t the only roadblock facing managers trying to balance at-home and in-office employees, though. Often, emotions come into play.Dowling’s company has employees that can work from home, like sales and finance, and employees that cannot, like truck drivers and warehouse workers. “Is there some jealousy? Yes,” she said. “It is an every single day, 24/7 experience of us trying to bridge that gap.” Through year-end thank you bonuses, career trainings and pay-by-incentive programs, Dowling says they’re leveling the playing field.The gaps don’t have to be filled exclusively by monetary value. Zuncic says as a remote employee, phone calls and videos sent on company messaging platforms can mean a lot. “When you think about recognition, there isn’t just one good way,” she said. “Show you appreciation with different platforms and technologies.”A Win-Win SituationAll panelists agreed that hybrid work environments, however they present, can be a strength for a company when applied correctly.“Before the pandemic, [individuals with disabilities] could ask for reasonable accommodation and be able to work from home, but they were isolated,” Shreeve said. “Now, their counterparts are working from home too, so they feel like they’re part of the group.”Dowling mentioned hiring more working mothers, and Strup highlighted that LGBTQIA+ and other underrepresented populations benefit from hybrid working options.The panel concluded on the idea that it’s not just in the individual’s interest to embrace a hybrid workplace.“[Hybrid work] opens up opportunities for all of us,” Strup said. “It’s no secret that organizations that are diverse and inclusive are better performing and have higher retention rates. We are now able to recruit talent from all over the world. It opens doors by allowing people to live wherever they live—you aren’t restrained by regional boundaries or demographics. That’s a real, tangible benefit of the hybrid model.”Jacqueline is a writer and Master of Accounting graduate from the University of Utah. Specializing in tax, she's interested in business, government, and the intersection of the two. When she's not in Excel or writing, she loves to run, play Candy Crush, and read novels.

Michael Stahl | April 17, 2023

Designing Recognition Programs That Promote a Sense of Purpose

The word is out: Employees today, especially those in younger generations, are seeking a greater sense of personal fulfillment out of work than their parents or grandparents did. Where older generations worked simply to survive or take pride in the mastery of a craft, those in the newer waves of workforce entrants want to feel a sense of purpose at their jobs.According to Smiti Bhatt Deorah, co-founder and chief operating officer of Advantage Club, an employee engagement, rewards and community building platform, organizational leaders can generate a more fulfilling work experience for employees by building strong relationships, as well as showing respect, gratification and recognition.“Today’s Millennial and Gen-Z employees do not want to work just for salaries; they want to be acknowledged,” Bhatt Deorah said. “They want to be recognized for whatever challenges they’re facing and whatever challenges they are overcoming.”Her remarks were made during From Day One's March Virtual conference in a thought leadership spotlight titled, “Designing Recognition Programs That Promote a Sense of Purpose.” She not only outlined why people leaders and those in c-suites should foster a sense of fulfillment in their employees, but also tips on how to carry out such a mission.The first step, she said, is to build an employee rewards and recognition program. Its foundation should be laid with assessments of employee needs and strategies on how the company can align with them (if it isn’t already).“Second, be relevant to those needs,” Bhatt Deorah said. “Don’t just build a recognition program because everyone else is designing one. It needs to be relevant to your core company values, to your organization, to what your employees want, and their needs specifically.”Such data will help to empower managers in their efforts to build a company culture reflective of those values and its dedication to employee fulfillment. That culture should include an element of workforce-wide recognition.Smiti Bhatt Deorah, co-founder and chief operating officer of Advantage Club“Lastly, you review, again and again,” Bhatt Deorah said. “You revise and you renew your policies, based on constant feedback and constant results, which you identify.”To get a sense of what employees’ needs are, Bhatt Deorah advised people leaders and other stakeholders to inquire about their morale (the extent to which they enjoy the work that they do), the presence and fairness of a system that provides recognition and rewards for work achievements, if they feel like they belong, whether or not they take pride in their job, find it interesting or stimulating, or if it makes them just feel good about themselves.Once data on these areas is acquired—perhaps through surveys, engagement with ERGs or other means—a company culture that nurtures worker fulfillment and sense of purpose can be built, alongside a recognition and rewards program offering a tangible manifestation of that goal.But another challenge is the emergence of the hybrid work environment. Bhatt Deorah said company leaders simply have to adjust to the changing conditions, mindful that all their employees have needs. With the presence of remote workers, “You need to digitize your entire recognition program in a tool or any sort of internal platform, or you can partner with platforms out there,” said Bhatt Deorah. “Second, you need to replace all your physical gifts to virtual currency. It could be reward points, it could be vouchers, it could be e-gift cards, it could be anything. You have to replace your physical awards with e-badges, physical certificates with e-certificates, which can be safely delivered over email or printed out.”Automation can help in recognizing work anniversaries and birthdays of employees, especially in a large corporate setting, she said. Incentive-based awards’ processing, like in the sales industry, for another example, can also more easily be dispensed with automated tools. And once the R&R program is established, make it a “holistic” one, Bhatt Deorah said. There should be recognition and rewards for some day-to-day goals. Approbation should be carried out in both formal and informal ways, and employees could even have a say in what the program looks like. Organizations must also recognize their programs’ efficacy. “The simplest way of doing that is by identifying data within your recognition programs,” Bhatt Deorah said. “Your budget utilization rates need to be a minimum of 95%; your redemption rates need to be a minimum of 90%. Below that, nothing should be acceptable. You can also look at attendance absentee rates, whether they have declined since you’ve deployed your recognition programs.”Employee satisfaction surveys should also include questions about the R&R programs, and HR leaders might also want to look at attrition and retention rates and figure out how the R&R programs have had an impact. Then, of course, analysis of performance rates, before and after the rolling out of R&R programs, or changes within them, can also be done.Going through these processes will help business leaders show employees they want to establish a corporate culture where everyone has a chance to feel fulfilled by the work they do, and wake up everyday with a sense of purpose. In other words, leaders will have better luck “winning the workplace,” which as Bhatt Deorah said, while quoting renowned business-focused speaker Doug Conant, is the best way for them to “win the marketplace.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Advantage Club, who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight.Michael Stahl is a New York City-based freelance journalist, writer, and editor. You can read more of his work at MichaelStahlWrites.com, follow him on Twitter @MichaelRStahl, and order his first book, the autobiography of Major League Baseball pitcher Bartolo Colón, at Abrams Books.

Jacqueline Mumford | April 14, 2023

Building an Inclusive Team in the Arena and the Community

For Betsy McCann, nurturing the authentic self must be at the center of all diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.“There’s no way that you can be a different person from nine to five than you are from five to nine,” said McCann, the new senior vice president of people and culture at Utah Jazz. “As soon as you start doing that, you feel this pull inside that tells you you’re not your authentic self.”McCann started her role in 2022 and has spent the last year pouring herself into making that approach not just a possibility, but a commonplace.Lori Prichard, anchor and reporter for Utah’s KSL, interviewed McCann during From Day One’s March conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. Establishing that McCann herself is from out of state, Prichard asked what it’s like to build a team with different backgrounds.“This particular area of the country isn’t necessarily known for being as diverse as some other regions,” Prichard said. “How are you transparent with people who are coming to the organization from outside about [some of] the obstacles or challenges that they may face?”When it comes to feeling as though you can be your “authentic self” at work, McCann asserts that it all starts in your company’s hiring practices.McCann, left, and Prichard, right, kicked off the Salt Lake City conference (Photo by Sean Ryan for From Day One)“As the human resource function has evolved, we have a diligence and a duty to our candidates to provide them more of the real picture,” she said. “I promise most of you have gotten a job and been like, ‘Alright, when is the other shoe going to drop?’”The Jazz’s response was a program for the Black community, where current employees and prospective candidates can use confidential meeting time to talk about their experiences. The hiring manager, other employees, and even McCann herself aren’t involved—it’s an entirely safe place to have a real heart to heart. McCann says candidate feedback has been “incredible.”“This is something I’ve shared with the NBA, that I think other teams are figuring out how they would incorporate something like it,” she said.But you can’t hit the brakes after the hiring interviews. Consistent reminders that team members are seen and heard are key to maintaining a sense of belonging.Last year, for Día de los Muertos, “we had an ofrenda on the concourse,” she said. “We had incredible performances by Latinx and Hispanic artists, and we took the time to connect to that community in a meaningful way.”The Jazz will also be hosting their second pride night this year.“The night after I accepted [this] job, our chief experience officer took me to a Jazz game. It was our first ever pride night, and as a queer person sitting there, I felt like they’d done it before. It’s something that they’re proud of.”But while its foundational and second-story levels of inclusivity efforts are massive, what seems to make the Jazz’s impact uniquely successful is its ability to reach far outside of the core organization.“Seeing the reach of the Jazz into the [larger] community, particularly in schools is so critically important. What are some strategies that you use as an organization to make sure people know in the state that we care about diversity, equity, and inclusion?” Prichard asked.McCann immediately pointed to Junior Jazz, the largest youth-focused basketball program in the NBA. Currently, over 60,000 students in six states participate every year.“I grew up in a very small town where no pro-athletes [came to] show me how to play basketball,” McCann said. “[When you participate in] Junior Jazz, your family, and you as an individual, start paying attention to the work that the Jazz does, how we interface with the community and the events we build.”All of these efforts combined make the Jazz’s employees, players and fans feel connected not only to the game, but to each other.“The first time I went to a game, [I felt] the sound in my body,” McCann said. “This is something special. To be able cultivate the next generation of [the Jazz] is incredible.”Jacqueline is a writer and Master of Accounting graduate from the University of Utah. Specializing in tax, she's interested in business, government, and the intersection of the two. When she's not in Excel or writing, she loves to run, play Candy Crush, and read novels.

Samantha Campos | April 14, 2023

Embracing Flexibility Increases Employee Satisfaction

Two and a half years ago, Sheela Subramanian was a mother of two young children and worked a traditional nine-to-five office job, five days a week. When the pandemic hit, she noticed that her office, as well as most organizations around the world, simply did the “lift and shift.” “We lifted office space norms and shifted them into people's living rooms,” she said. “And we realized quickly that it wasn't working.” Subramanian is the co-founder of Future Forum, a consortium reimagining workplace flexibility, inclusivity, and connection. She is also the co-author of How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to Do the Best Work of Their Lives, released in May 2022. In December she spoke with moderator Katie Johnston, a reporter for the Boston Globe, in a fireside chat entitled, “Flexible Work and the Future Workplace.” The conversation kicked off a From Day One virtual conference on “The Future of Jobs: Trends Shaping How We Work in 2023 and Beyond.” “So much of the way that we work is focused on trust, it's focused on transparency,” said Subramanian. “It's also focused on giving people choice–not just in where they work, but when they work, and ultimately how they work.” When Subramanian and her team began studying how work was changing in 2020, they also discovered that flexibility played a huge role in terms of creating greater belonging, especially for historically discriminated groups, including women and employees of color. “We wanted to better understand how managers could build cultures of inclusion, and rebuild work to work for all groups of people, rather than the select view that built these traditional norms decades ago,” she said. “How can technology play a role? But also how can in-person gatherings play a role for people as they thought about building culture, camaraderie, and action across an organization?” Flexibility is a core expectation among employees, according to Future Forum research. It ranks second, only behind compensation and benefits when it comes to determining job satisfaction. While 58% of workers are open to looking for a new job in the next year, that number increases to 70% if they're not happy with their current levels of flexibility.Sheela Subramanian, bestselling author of How the Future Works, and co-founder of Future Forum (company photo)“The conversation prior to the pandemic was, how’s my life going to fit into my work? Work was the nucleus of people's identity,” said Subramanian. “And then, as people had more flexibility, they're able to get things done and live their lives, the conversation has shifted to, how is my work going to fit into my broader existence?” While employees want more choice in how they work, they also want to be measured on the outcomes that are delivered instead of outdated in-office metrics prone to “proximity bias.” Managers will require additional training in order to shift from gatekeepers to empathetic coaches, said Subramanian. “So much of traditional performance management has been based on how many days or how many hours is this person spending in the office or this person is responding to my email at midnight, or responding to my message within seconds–they must be a hard worker. But activity is not necessarily a measure for performance.” Subramanian encourages leaders to evaluate their employees on the impact that they're producing for the organization rather than the way they're sacrificing their health or their lives in order to show that they’re good employees. Speaking out against activity monitoring, she advocates for the “boom loop” rather than “doom loop” approach. “The doom loop is measuring keystrokes, or measuring when someone is clocking in and logging off,” she said. “Whereas the boom loop is saying, ‘This is what our team is held accountable for, this is what you are responsible for. Now I'm gonna give you the resources, the budget in order to help you get there and the guidance that you need, but figure out how to get there on your own.’” It's important for leaders to set behavioral guardrails as well as the overall principles of how they want their organizations to work. Then leaders need to get out of the way and empower managers to set team-level agreements. “Team-level agreements go a long way in terms of fostering psychological safety and trust amongst the team,” she said. Two-thirds of executives are not including their employees as they think about the future of work planning, according to Future Forum data. And applying a one-size-fits-all model across disparate organizaitions, and teams within organizations, is actually burning people out. Collaboration, experimentation, and a fundamental shift in performance metrics can aid leaders in creating a culture of connection, increasing satisfaction and productivity, by offering their workers more of what they want. “How can we help people live fuller richer lives,” said Subramanian, “both as employees as well as human beings?” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in Hawaii and California, with forays into medical cannabis and food justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, California.

Nick Wolny | April 13, 2023

How to Blend Profits With Purpose, According to a Harvard Business School Professor

Business leaders say they want both purpose and profits. But what does that actually look like in day-to-day efforts?Harvard Business School professor George Serafeim has ideas. As a leading authority on environmental, social and governance initiatives, and the author of the book Purpose + Profit: How Business Can Lift Up The World, the researcher said the assets of the future—ones that will drive an organization’s competitiveness for years to come—go beyond financial resources alone. “It used to be about financial and physical capital, but increasingly, other types of resources are defining the competitiveness of organizations—human capital, natural capital, and social capital,” Serafeim said. The scholar’s research has shown that, when organizations are successfully able to diffuse their company purpose down to middle managers and individual contributors, the results are better financial performance and higher employee retention.But how do you get started with ESG initiatives? And which ones should you prioritize first in your organization? In a fireside chat at From Day One’s recent virtual conference “Pulling in the Same Direction: Strengthening Employee Purpose Within Your Corporate Strategy,” Serafeim weighed in.Expand Your Company’s PurposeTo identify meaningful ESG initiatives, Serafeim suggests thinking about how your company can create more positive impact as it grows.“The reality is that the answer will be different for different companies,” he said. “If you have a transportation company, it will be about delivering safer, cleaner vehicles. If you have a health care company, it will be about access to healthcare and innovation—very different elements.” Serafeim also urged attendees to define KPIs early on in the process to create accountability across an organization, citing DE&I efforts as an example.Nick Wolny interviewing George Serafeim during the From Day One March Virtual conference (Photo by From Day One)“In current research, we're finding that lots of organizations have gotten much better at hiring a diverse set of people,” he said. “But guess what? In many organizations, those people end up leaving. [Companies are] observing higher employee turnover because they’re not measuring the right things, and as a result there is no accountability inside the organization.”How to Overcome Pushback on ESG InitiativesWhen you advocate for more purposeful profits, you may encounter financial roadblocks, office politics, or both. In one chapter of Serafeim’s book, he recaps the challenges PepsiCo’s then CEO, Indra Nooyi, faced when pushing her “profits with purpose” initiative, which prioritized investing in healthy food and beverage offerings. Under Nooyi’s tenure, the PepsiCo stock price doubled—but in the short term, the lack of confidence in her campaign nearly ousted her as CEO.Expanding on that anecdote, Serafeim emphasized that the phenomenon of “worse at first, then better later” applies to many types of organizational change.“A fundamental uncertainty exists when you're engaging with environmental, social and governance issues,” Serafeim said. “The way you mitigate it is to first build an enormous amount of credibility inside the organization. Assemble a team of people inside the organization who have already a lot of credibility, [people who are] excellent at what they do and are masters of their craft. That gives quite a bit of social capital and trust that actually has a high probability of working.”Serafeim also suggested working quickly at the start of an initiative, conducting various sprints and experiments to establish a small-scale blueprint for success. “You need to show some quick wins, that actually demonstrate the innovation process that you're trying to catalyze is already working,” Serafeim said. “Also convey the risks of not taking action and falling behind.”As the hybrid workforce talent war unfolds, human resources professionals have become more strategic and central to the competitiveness of an organization. Serafeim encouraged attendees to keep human capital front and center, even as whispers of a recession continue to persist.“In a downturn, investments that organizations make in their people and their processes are what will differentiate the leaders from the laggards,” he said. “It's truly affecting an organization’s ability to compete.”Nick Wolny is a senior editor at NextAdvisor, in partnership with TIME. He has previously written for Fast Company, Fortune, Business Insider, Entrepreneur Magazine, and OUT Magazine, and was named a “40 under 40” by the Houston Business Journal in 2021.

Steve Hendershot | April 12, 2023

The Future of Work Is Now: Offering Child Care Benefits Is Essential

As the pandemic subsides and Americans return to a reimagined version of everyday life, the question is exactly how much reimagining is in order.Will the millions of workers who grew accustomed to remote or hybrid work arrangements return to their desks? Offices are certainly busier than they were during the pandemic, but there remain plenty of signs that workers will continue to seek at least a measure of the flexibility they gained in recent years.Family dynamics are changing, too, as working parents who spent more time in the home alongside their kids now attempt to redefine their work-life balance. Many experienced firsthand the relational value of family proximity during the pandemic—while also gaining appreciation for the challenges that go along with juggling child care and professional responsibilities.As a result, working parents who are returning to the office are placing special emphasis on child care. Child care ranks as the second-most valuable benefit in retaining employees, ahead of paid time off and retirement contributions, according to a 2023 report from KinderCare. Two-thirds of working parents want their employers to offset the cost of child care, up five percent from 2020.Sixty-nine percent of working parents said they had either switched jobs or would consider switching jobs because of childcare concerns, according to the report. Similar numbers reported a willingness to scale back their professional activities to better accommodate their kids’ needs.Dan Figurski, president of the KinderCare Education and Champions divisions presenting on the importance of child care benefits at From Day One's Chicago conference (Photo by Tim Hiatt for From Day One)That puts the stakes for employers in stark terms: support families or risk losing your people. Yet it’s unclear whether most companies are getting the message. In an informal, show-of-hands survey at From Day One’s conference in Chicago in March, a group of HR leaders indicated that forms of childcare support were far less common at their companies than other benefits.“I’m not surprised by the hands that came down. I am surprised about the disconnect,” said Dan Figurski, president of the KinderCare Education at Work and Champions divisions within KinderCare Learning Companies. “The benefits that served us five years ago are not the benefits that are going to serve us going forward.”One reason for the lagging adoption of child care benefits may be that employers don’t understand the extent of the burden that child care places on workers. Figurski said that during one presentation to a prospective health care client, the organization’s CEO asked an assistant how much of her income was allocated to child care—and was stunned when the answer was nearly half.“We see the cost of childcare continuing to be a big prohibitor, and keeping people on the sidelines,” said Figurski.Companies looking to add or expand their child care benefits have several options, ranging from strictly financial offerings such as subsidies and access to pre-tax dependent-care accounts, to providing either daily on-site care or backup care. In the KinderCare report, more than half of parents indicated they would be motivated to stay at their job if their employer offered on-site care, even though only 17 percent of full-time working parents said they currently had access to such a benefit.The best approach varies based on the company, Figurski said. He recommends that companies start with a survey to assess their employees’ needs.Investigating a child care benefit can feel unfamiliar for companies that offer traditional packages focused on health care, time off and retirement support. But working parents are making clear that in the post-pandemic work world, they’re relying on their employers for child care support.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, KinderCare, who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight.Steve Hendershot is an award-winning multimedia journalist and bestselling author. He hosts the Project Management Institute’s top-rated Projectified podcast and operates Cedar Cathedral Narrative Studio in Chicago.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | April 12, 2023

Connecting Employees to Corporate Purpose for Greater Impact

Employers that can tie the experience of working at their company to the social and environmental good will have the advantage when it comes to retaining staff and attracting new hires.Disillusioned by years of burnout, social unrest, and constantly shifting work environments, employees are thinking more deeply about the purpose of their work. According to a 2021 McKinsey report, 70% of workers feel their sense of purpose comes from their job.During a panel titled “Attracting New Employees With a Genuine Sense of Purpose Beyond Profits,” during From Day One’s March virtual conference, five panelists shared the ways they connect workers with purpose in a way that both satisfies employees’ search for meaning and supports business goals.Some employers may already have the components of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) or environmental, social, and governance (ESG) plans operating in their organizations. Used car retailer CarMax created its first CSR team out of existing parts.The company’s longtime mission has been to bring integrity to used car sales, but there was no coordinated strategy to deploy that mission outside the business. CarMax had teams working on energy, community relations, and diversity and inclusion, but “we weren’t building strength of impact. We had a lot of good work being done, but it wasn’t aligned and it wasn’t coordinated,” said Laura Donahue, who was appointed to a new role as VP of corporate responsibility, charged with organizing this work. Donahue’s marketing background equips her well for this job. Consumers and candidates alike are increasingly looking for mission-driven companies.The questions they asked in forming the CSR plan were both business and community-oriented, like, how will CarMax lead the industry and differentiate itself from the competition? And, how could this be meaningful to their employees?Other panelists endorsed the philosophy of taking the corporate mission and pointing it in a new direction. Jennifer Kartono, the SVP of people, organizational strategy, and culture at data management company Iron Mountain, described it as aligning the customer and employee experiences.Eightfold, an A.I. talent acquisition and management platform, tweaked its business philosophy, A.I. for good, making it Eightfold for good.The company created a committee of leaders from different departments to identify opportunities for the company to contribute to the social good. “We’re always trying to take the expertise we have in house and figure out how we can provide that to the communities where we work and serve and live,” said Jason Cerrato, Eightfold’s senior director of product marketing. Because its employees have a lot of expertise in HR and talent management, Eightfold started holding career development events in its local community.Other HR leaders are directing corporate expertise in new directions. Megan Trotter, who leads social impact at customer service software company Zendesk, recommended sticking to what your company does best to be most effective in your community.“We’re about great customer service, and we have that consistent message, whether in our products or the ways we show up for impact.” Trotter said the company provides its products to some nonprofit organizations for free and trains underrepresented groups in its tech to help them move from traditional customer service jobs to a career in the field.Iron Mountain also offers its services for philanthropic purposes, including storing digital scans for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. “Whether it’s the Lincoln Papers or whether it’s recording an interview with somebody who won’t be here in the future, we link our brand and what we do to our values, and then bring that to our employee population,” Kartono said.Where there are dozens of causes a company could take up and even more ways to get involved, it helps to pick a lane. Use the tools and expertise you have. “We can’t lead everywhere,” Donahue noted.The panelists from top left, moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, Jason Cerrato of Eightfold, Jennifer Kartono of Iron Mountain, Judith Almendra of TTEC, Laura Donahue of CarMax, and Megan Trotter of Zendesk (Photo by From Day One)Pick Causes Your Employees Already Care AboutWhen you’re ready to take on new causes, involve your employees. Customer experience tech company TTEC asked employees to “pitch” its executive team, Shark Tank–style, on new ways to give back.“We wanted to make sure that we not only focus on the areas that we thought were important, but also that our employees were passionate about,” said Judith Almendra, the company’s VP of global human capital and TA. Employees from Africa, Latin America, and Europe made pitches. “Sometimes what we understand as important, it may not necessarily be the case in certain geographies,” she said.Almendra said that finding people who really care about the work matters. It can require a lot of hours, and employees have to care. “In some cases, it’s not necessarily a full-time job, it is something to do in addition to all the other responsibilities that you have.”Remind Your Employees How They Can Get Involved Even if a company has a plan for social contribution, employees might not know about it. Trotter said that despite having an internal marketing plan, she still meets employees who don’t know about the company’s sustainability program.She recommends repeating the message in many ways: ask employees to talk about what they’re doing on social media, create blog posts that can be shared, “and then resurface all of that in three months,” she said. “That consistent drumbeat and having that information everywhere, in the job postings and the website, it’s hard to overestimate how much you need to get that message out to have it land and resonate with folks.”The panel recommended involving employees to evangelize their peers inside and outside the company. It helps staff see how their work connects to the greater good, and it gets potential hires interested in your organization.TTEC asks its employees share testimonials as part of the onboarding process. “To be able to make that connection between what the employee is going to be doing and how it’s going to impact the lives of different customers is very important,” said Almendra.At Eightfold, Cerrato said his HR background has come in handy for just this purpose. “You always want to try to emphasize how someone’s work touches the customer or the product in some way, and I think now you even take that further to say, ‘this is how you are impacting the community.’”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance reporter and From Day One contributing editor who writes about the future of work, HR, recruiting, DEI, and women's experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Fast Company, Quartz at Work, Digiday’s Worklife, and Food Technology, among others.

Steve Hendershot | April 10, 2023

The New Frontier for Work-Life Balance

While last year’s hit TV show Severance conjured a world where there was total separation between characters’ home and work lives, the recent real-world trend veers in the opposite direction. The line has blurred dramatically between work life and, well, life life—especially over the course of a pandemic in which, for many people, home became the new office. It’s created a fascinating dynamic for HR professionals who are attempting to respect and facilitate their teams’ rich personal lives, while also nurturing a cohesive and high-performing company culture. Among the challenges—and opportunities—is that many employees are now looking for a high degree of personal fulfillment from their jobs, rather than just a paycheck. “What's been bubbling to the top [of employee priorities] is meaning and purpose and a sense of belonging in the company,” said Rose Sheldon, Chief Learning Officer at KeyBank, speaking as part of a March panel discussion at a From Day One conference in Chicago.In response, KeyBank has tweaked its onboarding process. Before teaching new employees “our purpose, we need to understand their purpose. When you can help lead someone to how their personal purpose aligns with the company's purpose, then it gives you more of a reason to not just be a high performer, but actually care about the work you're doing.”Creating that sort of alignment is hardly the only step HR teams are taking to encourage employee wellbeing without sacrificing performance. There’s also an increased focus, for example, on ensuring that employees don’t burn out—a particular danger among the hard-charging, high-performing employees upon whom companies often depend most. It falls to managers to keep their star performers from reaching that point, sometimes in spite of the workers’ objections. These aren’t people who like easing back on the throttle, so one tactic to help them maintain a healthy level of focus is to ask them to participate in mentorship and coaching programs, which provide variety and a focus on investing in others—along with an intentional absence of deliverables.“A lot of people get engaged around how they can help someone else and how can they pay it forward, so that's not as draining to them,” said Kim Nero, Executive VP & Chief HR Officer at railcar lessor GATX, another of the From Day One conference panelists. “There’s not a deadline or result that you expect from them.”The full panel of speakers, from left moderator Alex Maragos, Kat Frosolone of Care.com for Business, Matthew Willis of Advantage Club, Rose Sheldon of KeyBank, Kim Nero of GATX Corporation, and Jordana Kammerud of Claire's (Photo by Tim Hiatt for From Day One)Of course, that approach only works when those employees aren’t worried that they’ll fall behind if they take their foot off the gas pedal. Thus it’s crucial for senior leadership to model healthy work habits—including a willingness to unplug. People in the C-Suite “have to step away, and they have to be really vocal about it,” said KeyBank’s Sheldon. When executives post social media photos of a family beach day, it sends the message that spending time on family and leisure is both worthwhile and brag-worthy. In the remote-work era, many professionals have discovered that they’re able to do great work at odd times, and in strange places. Alex Maragos, an anchor and reporter at NBC5 News Chicago who moderated the discussion, asked about the “future of flexibility“—and how companies should think about balancing productivity and remote or hybrid work arrangements in the post-pandemic era. The panel’s consensus? Flexible work arrangements are here to stay and can correlate with great productivity. The onus is on companies and managers to learn to accommodate asynchronous work—and workers.“It’s understanding that my working hours may not be your working hours, and that just because I am not doing something at eight o'clock in the morning doesn't make me less valuable,” said panelist Kat Frosolone, director of strategic partnerships at Care.com for Business. At their best, flexible work arrangements enable employees to better manage their schedules and fulfill a broader range of personal and professional priorities. “People's families come first, and understanding that will allow them to be more productive and happy employees,” said Frosolone.But there’s also a danger to such arrangements: some people who work from home struggle to unplug, which can lead not only to burnout but also to other unhealthy outcome. Accordingly, managers must be prepared to help with that, too. “Everything's melding a bit now, which is helpful and important for flexibility, but also potentially harmful from a standpoint of creating separation and finding opportunities to disengage from stress,” said Jordana Kammerud, Chief HR Officer at fashion retailer Claire’s. In those cases, she recommends employers provide some guardrails—structure that’s not for the company or manager’s benefit, but where it’s “needed to support the health and well being of the full employee.”One such strategy is building in time for relationship-building. In the past, work friendships formed naturally in the cafeteria, by the water cooler, or around the conference table. But a remote or hybrid work environment necessitates “more time spent learning individual needs, and doubling down on those structures to fill that [relational] void with belonging and recognition and trust,” said panelist Matthew Willis, Senior VP and general manager for North America at employee-engagement platform Advantage Club.Amidst a series of seismic shifts in employee expectations as well as ways of working, companies and HR leaders are working to find a playbook that will serve their organizations’ needs as well as the needs of their workers. In times of upheaval, there can be a tendency both for people and organizations to revert to what they know best, but in this case, Claire’s Kammerud says the right move is to invent a new corporate template.“The future of work is about balancing these opposing forces,” she said. And like any balancing act, success will require trust and confidence. “We have to trust that people are adults, and that we're in it to win it together,” said GATX’s Nero. “Hopefully there's a vision and a mission that compels us to work at this place, and we’ll trust each other to do our best every day.”Steve Hendershot is an award-winning multimedia journalist and bestselling author. He hosts the Project Management Institute’s top-rated Projectified podcast and operates Cedar Cathedral Narrative Studio in Chicago.