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Steve Hendershot | April 04, 2023

Closing the Connection Gap: Redefining Modern Leadership

A paradox of post-pandemic life is that even though people and organizations are better connected than ever before, many people are also struggling with a sense of relational disconnection. Despite the proliferation of tech tools like Zoom, Slack and teams, more than a third of workers say they’re dealing with feelings of loneliness, isolation and disconnectedness, according to a 2022 survey. How can we spend so much time communicating while building so little community? One potential factor is that while people are spending a lot of time interacting with colleagues, they’re missing out on opportunities to go deeper and build more meaningful relationships. And when isolated employees look elsewhere to seek more fulfilling professional opportunities, it’s bad for business. That puts added pressure on employers looking for ways to engage and retain their people. Their challenge is to “create that kind of psychological safety in our workplaces, so people can be centered around something that's all about community connection, warmth, and kindness,” according to Megan Galloway, head of learning experience at Campfire, a company that provides training and development that enables managers to better engage and support their teams. Galloway spoke at From Day One's recent Chicago conference.Galloway pointed to research on psychological safety by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson that indicates that leaders can enhance the perceived level of psychological safety on their teams by modeling behaviors such as admitting mistakes, approaching problems with curiosity, and adopting a collaborative work style. When those behaviors are present, not only are there positive implications for employee wellbeing, but overall team performance is booster, as well. Research at Google indicates that how a team works together—influenced heavily by psychological safety—has a greater impact on the work product than the roster of people on the team. Megan Galloway of Campfire presenting in Chicago (Photo by Tim Hiatt for From Day One)Then there’s the retention risks associated with disconnection. In her presentation at From Day One, Campfire’s Galloway highlighted McKinsey research showing that a perceived lack of care from leaders was the top reason for people to leave a job without another one lined up. That implies an exceptional amount of influence among leaders, but it checks out with the findings of another recent survey from UKG that managers impact on their employees’ mental health is equal to that of a spouse, and substantially greater than the impact of a doctor or therapist. Organizations whose leaders and managers excel at building connections and an atmosphere of safety and trust clearly have a competitive advantage, not to mention a happier and healthier workplace. So what are the keys to equipping and encouraging managers to operate in that mode? For starters, Galloway suggests ensuring that those leaders are taking time to reflect on their own wellbeing, possibly aided by insights from 360 assessments. She also suggests encouraging leaders to build new connections with others. While feeling isolated during the pandemic, for example, Galloway began hosting virtual coffee meetings with LinkedIn connections—an exercise that blossomed to include more than 750 participants located around the world. During those gatherings, she sends participants into breakout rooms and encourages them to eschew surface-level conversation in favor of more vulnerable stuff. When the breakout sessions conclude and everyone returns to the primary session, Galloway describes the atmosphere as “electric.” “These people have made these incredible, deep connections, they've found intimate things that they have in common with these other folks that they've met, and it's just been an absolutely amazing experience to show how much you can connect with people in a virtual environment,” Galloway says. There’s another lesson in Galloway’s virtual gatherings: they were her idea, not something foisted upon her by her company. She says HR leaders interested in fostering organizational community are smart to look for organic groups and activities that they can support and amplify, rather than developing and pushing out their own programming. “The engagement initiatives that have always done the best are not the ones that HR started,” Galloway says. “They're the ones that somebody inside of the company was super excited about, and so they took the initiative to go and put themselves out there. And they show up as their own authentic selves, and they attract other people that are also able to show up as their authentic selves.”It’s never been easy for organizations to foster trust, community and relational depth among their leaders and teams. These days, despite the presence of so many high-tech communication and collaboration tools, the task appears to be as challenging as ever. Yet there are several strong incentives for organizations that commit to nurturing that sort of culture: better work, lower employee turnover and happier people. Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Campfire, 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.

Mekenna Malan | March 28, 2023

Making Inclusive Growth Part of Your Corporate Purpose

To better understand why equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace are crucial, consider this anecdote: we live in a right-handed world. Scissors, can openers, guitars, notebooks, coffee mugs—all these objects and more are typically created for right-handed people. “And because right-handed people [are the majority], our experience becomes the norm. We absolutely forget that other people are having a different experience in the same exact setting,” said Weslie Porter, director of the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Accelerator at the Utah Department of Government Operations, during a panel on inclusive career growth at From Day One’s Salt Lake City conference. According to the United States Census Bureau, overall racial diversity in the U.S. increased dramatically from 2010 to 2020—and it’s projected to continue increasing. “Some trends show us that in the next 30-60 years, 60 percent [of Utahns] will identify as white and 40 percent will identify as other,” Porter said. “Our initiatives and how we hire aren't necessarily in line with where we are going.” To create an equitable environment for career advancement, business leaders must first ensure diverse populations are represented in their workforce in the first place. Ben Gross, chief people officer and general counsel at outdoor retail company Backcountry, suggested inclusive hiring requires implementing untraditional strategies rather than relying on existing networks to present diverse candidates for job openings. “Backcountry historically never had an undergraduate internship program,” Gross said. “[When I was hired], the charge I gave to my talent acquisition team was, ‘Go to HBCUs.’” As a result, out of Backcountry’s 15 summer interns, 40 percent were people of color. “You have to have the mindset; you have to have the systems,” Gross continued.Removing educational hiring requirements in favor of a skills-based approach is another important step that business leaders can implement immediately. In requiring college degrees rather than specific skills, “We're just completely wiping away folks that can be great for our jobs,” says Michael Watson, head of customer success for Eightfold, an AI recruiting and talent management platform. “I think we all know people that are smart and capable, but frankly didn't have that silver spoon or those opportunities to go to school.” The full panel, from left, moderator Mekenna Malan, Ben Gross of Backcountry, Weslie Porter of the Utah Department of Government Operations, Emma E. Houston of the University of Utah, Mike Harmer of Intermountain Healthcare, and Michael Watson of Eightfold (Photo by Sean Ryan for From Day One)As artificial intelligence becomes more and more advanced, hiring managers can utilize these tools to identify candidates with the required skills. “I think in 20 years, the resume will be a thing of the past,” Watson said, explaining that, in the future, candidates might instead submit a “digital fingerprint” outlining soft and hard skills. Another resource companies can use to help ensure a diverse workforce is the OneTen initiative, which aims to close the opportunity gap for Black talent in America. “We went through job descriptions as partners with a lot of other big companies and found the ones where we could really pull out those degree requirements,” said Mike Harmer, VP of workforce intelligence and talent at Intermountain Health, a healthcare company that partnered with OneTen. “It's been really eye-opening for us and made us ask a lot of questions like, ‘What do you really need for someone to be successful?’ Really, today, it's about learning new skills.” But hiring is just the beginning. When it comes to creating and keeping a diverse workforce, retention is key. Offering regular company-wide surveys and incorporating more people into decision-making can help employees feel a greater sense of belonging in their organizations, the panelists suggested. Emma E. Houston, assistant VP for EDI and chief diversity officer at the University of Utah, believes consistent onboarding platforms and effective communication throughout organizations can also aid retention and foster inclusivity in career growth. “When I am hired, my supervisor will tell me all the expectations they have of me … It is now my turn to say to my supervisor, ‘These are my expectations of you,’” Houston said. “In order for that conversation to happen, you have to work in a safe, trusted environment. You have to have a leader that says, ‘I have an open door policy.’” Ultimately, team members can’t leave inclusive hiring and career growth up to the highest level of leadership, Watson said. “You change your culture. You and your teams are in charge,” he continued. “Let people see you acting in a way that inspires them for change.” Mekenna Malan is the editor of Utah Business magazine and a graduate of the print journalism program at Utah State University. She has written about business, music and culture for publications like Business Insider, Time Out, SLUG Magazine, Visit Salt Lake and the Standard-Examiner. She loves hiking, thrifting, reading and taking camping trips with her partner in their 1986 Land Cruiser.

Feature

The Great Getaway: Travel as a New Employee Benefit

When Cana Whitted and her husband traveled from Portland, Ore., to Istanbul for their honeymoon last year, they took advantage of a novel employee perk. Whitted, a recruiting manager at the employee-search firm IsoTalent, tapped into her company’s partnership with Dónde, a platform that enables employers to offer travel as an employee benefit.As she planned the trip, Whitted’s employer matched up to $50 in savings she put into her Dónde account each month, then helped with travel advice in picking their destination and setting up side trips, she said. “I ended up being able to book a couple of hikes that I wouldn’t have found on my own, some experiences in the center of the country.”Just as important was the message from her company in providing this benefit. “It feels like you’re empowered to take some paid time off,” Whitted said. "You get to see the world, and they just make it a sweet process.”At a time when demand for leisure travel is booming, and many employees are suffering burnout after years of workplace disruption, a notable number of companies are finding travel-as-a-benefit to be an attractive new way to boost worker satisfaction and retention. Travel companies were natural candidates to lead the way–notably Airbnb, Expedia and United Airlines–but tech companies have joined the trend as well, including BambooHR and Evernote.“Anything an employer can do, now in particular, to be creative in terms of benefits to employees is significant,” says Rick Grimaldi, an HR lawyer and author of Flex: A Leader’s Guide to Staying Nimble and Mastering Transformative Change in the Workplace. Today’s workers, especially younger ones, Grimaldi said, “come to the workplace with a very different set of expectations.” Among those are not only fair pay and a sense of purpose, but also an acknowledgement of the need for time off and rejuvenation. “Mental health is a huge issue in the workplace, particularly post-Covid,” Grimaldi said. “So to the extent that an employer is concerned about employee well-being–as well they should–that is now part of the social contract.”Employers have more than altruistic reasons to pursue such benefits. The boost to employee well-being and productivity that comes with paid time off and travel has been well-documented. So have the corporate cost savings associated with retention and strong recruitment capabilities. Many workers now rank personal and career growth as being as important to them as their salaries, said Grimaldi, so they may look at the offer of travel in a benefits package as “an opportunity for me to grow socially and intellectually.”One more factor stimulating travel-as-a-benefit is the growth of so-called “bleisure travel,” in which workers combine their business trips with leisure time. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that nearly half of the ticket revenue at American Airlines, for example, is now coming from people on bleisure trips, “and those customers are spending nearly as much as what corporate travelers once shelled out” for business-only travel before the pandemic.The marketing platform Conductor is one believer in bleisure. The company permits its employees to work two months out of the year from any location in the world. The only catch is that workers must maintain business hours aligned with those of the company’s New York headquarters.Outsourcing the ProgramsGiven that busy HR leaders may not want to administer these programs themselves, startup platforms like Dónde can offer one-stop-shopping for both funding and planning employee getaways. One feature establishes a company-matched, travel-savings program, which works like a 401(k), but for travel. Dónde also aims to make travel-shopping less stressful and cheaper for employees through a marketplace available on its own branded app. Employees set travel goals on the app and monitor financial progress toward them. They can also set up recurring deposits into their travel savings accounts and see company contributions. When workers are ready to vacation, getaways can be booked and scheduled on the app, too.Jessica Lim Sorenson and her husband on a visit to the Dole Plantation in Hawaii (Photo courtesy of Jessica Lim Sorenson)“It’s a way for companies to reward their employees with time off and vacation, and it can look like anything they want it to look like,” said Rilee Buttars, Dónde’s CEO and co-founder. “We believe that the employer and employee relationship will be stronger if the employee is able to take time off and feel like they can have the work/life balance that is so often promised in interviews. The company will get a better employee because they enabled that to happen.”’One of Dónde’s partner companies is Zartico, a “destination operating system” designed to help grow tourism economies. Dónde provides Zartico with employee-rewards programs that include worker-recognition events and employee contests. To drum up attention, Zartico’s chief people officer, Leslie Hooper, launched an internal wiki page and paid employees to craft posts for it, with a couple of workers earning as much as $1,000 each in travel benefits in their Dondé accounts.“We are in the travel and tourism space, so people who work for us–even though they’re data scientists or engineers–they’re passionate about travel and that’s one of the qualities that speaks to them for working at Zartico,” said Hooper. “To have that as an added benefit is very, very attractive to them.”A Range of OptionsThe features of such packages vary widely. Some, like Calendly and Evernote, simply offer workers $1,000 yearly stipends for travel expenses, such as plane tickets, vacation activities, dining allowances and even passport fees. Travel stipends provided at other companies can run upward of $7,000 per year. Airbnb gives its employees $2,000 a year in platform travel credits, while United Airlines allows its workers to travel for free, on standby, on an unlimited basis.HR and benefits leaders who would like to incorporate travel into their company’s benefits package will need to devote some thought to how they might sell the idea to upper leadership. Grimaldi says the C-suite might be a little afraid to offer travel as a benefit, especially at a time when efficiency and austerity are corporate watchwords.Grimaldi suggests that HR leaders conduct research and accrue data that quantifies, to some degree, the positive impact that paid employee travel might have on productivity, retention and recruitment, among other considerations. “Show statistical data as well as anecdotal information where it’s been successful,” Grimaldi said. He also suggests framing travel-as-a-benefit as a cousin of the more-familiar sabbatical arrangement to help communicate its upside. “Then, develop a plan that works for your company,” he said.One of the goals of benefits leaders is to make sure workers understand their options and how to navigate them. That has been a challenge as travel-as-a-benefit gets off the ground. A few years ago, New York City resident Debbie Martinez was working for a tech company that offered subsidized PTO travel benefits and bleisure options to employees, but many co-workers were unaware of them. “It was like something that was a rumor,” she recalls. The company’s people managers didn’t understand how to deliver the benefits. “There was a whole mixup with HR,” Martinez said. “I didn’t really know how to make it work and no one gave me straight answers.”Once she figured out the system, it proved to be a boon. After logging eight days of work in Florida, she added 12 days for vacation. Other destinations included Hawaii and the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, both of which included subsidies paid by her employer. “It’s extremely beneficial,” Martinez said of the benefit perk. “I wish more companies would offer it, and sometimes just a change in location while you work is all you need. It was a great reset.”Since her early experience, travel programs have sought to become more user-friendly. Jessica Lim Sorenson, a Utah-based user-experience designer, used Dónde to book her honeymoon in Hawaii last year, partly paid by her employer at the time, Lendio. “You’re getting free money out of it. All you have to do is use it,” she said. “It kind of takes your traditional benefits and gives it a nice twist. It was reassuring to know I can take PTO and I don’t have to feel pressure to always be working all the time.” 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 | March 22, 2023

Michael Stahl | March 20, 2023

How a Company’s Sense of Purpose Can Boost Employee Retention

It’s true: Today’s employees want more. The challenge for HR leaders and managers is that the aspirations of today’s employees are not necessarily traditional ones.Employers can’t simply throw money at workers in the form of bigger paychecks–that didn’t work out well for the Big Tech companies–and still expect to compete for talent with others in their industry. C-suite leaders and managers need to be more thoughtful, creative and intentional, because the current demands of the workforce, writ large, are far more abstract than dollar sums. Among other intangibles, employees want better work-life boundaries and exhibitions of trust in them to get the job done without micromanagement. Perhaps above all, a new study shows that when people go to work, they want to feel a sense of purpose. And that kind of emotional connection can boost not only their commitment but their performance as well.The report comes from Benevity, builders of a leading employee-engagement platform. Among its most compelling data, the study found that companies see 52% lower turnover among newer employees when they participate in “purpose programs,” which include charitable giving, volunteering, and other positive actions. “There’s a clear link between corporate purpose and employee retention,” said Janelle St. Omer, VP of impact and inclusion at Benevity. “For both the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice and HR leaders, this is a really tangible solution for them, showing the value of their investments in their social-impact programs, particularly in highly competitive industries that are always looking for talent. They’re not just a nice-to-have; they’re actually a strategic lever for your business and should be a part of your talent-retention strategy.”This link between purpose and retention is strengthened especially in the first two and a half years that employees work for a company. And such an approach to retention translates across regions. Reduction in turnover among employees with a tenure of 2.5 years or less who participate in purpose programs scored 51% in North America, with similar results in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The figure was just one percentage point lower in Benevity companies located in the Asia-Pacific area.Multiple industries see even higher retention than the 52% average. In retail, there’s 60% lower turnover among those employees who engage in purpose programs during the first 2.5 years of their tenure, while some industries scored lower, including finance (42%) and media and internet companies (35%).Janelle St. Omer, VP of impact and inclusion at Benevity (Company photo) “The impact a purpose program can have on improving a company’s bottom line, by reducing employee churn, cannot be underestimated,” said the Benevity report. “The cost of replacing an entry-level employee is estimated to be around 30% to 50% of their annual salary. Go up a few levels, and you’re looking at 150% for mid-level employees and 400% for seasoned and specialized team members.”There’s also team cohesion, morale and productivity to consider. All are negatively affected while teammates and adjacent workers “try to fill the gaps” that are opened up when a worker leaves, the report said. Of course, that has occurred en masse over the last two years. “A lot of folks were really missing that connection and that sense of purpose in their day-to-day,” St. Omer observed while reflecting on the Great Resignation, which partly inspired the Benevity study. “They were really thinking about how their values aligned with the employers they were working with and, coming out of Covid, how much being true to yourself and your values really matters.”Boosting Involvement in Purpose ProgramsGiven all the potential impact that purpose programs can have on newer employees, it’s alarming that, according to the Benevity study, those lesser-tenured workers engage in such programs at a lower rate than others who’ve been with their companies longer. Employees who have been with the same company for less than two years have a purpose-program participation rate of just 6%, compared to 20% for employees who have been with their company across a longer period. Reasons for this disparity, Benevity’s report said, include the possibility that newer workers have fewer social connections than longer-tenured ones, so they might not simply be aware that the company’s purpose programs exist. The recent rise in remote work could also be to blame.“With Benevity data showing that 40% of employees in our client community have been at their company for one year or less, or they’re newly enrolled in their corporate purpose program, it’s clear companies must shift their approach to these programs to deliver on what new employees are looking for,” Benevity said in its report. “Simply having a program isn’t enough.”The Benevity study arrives from inside its company incubator and resource hub, Impact Labs. The study’s leaders analyzed data from more than 10.6 million users of the Benevity platform at more than 400 companies that have maintained their accounts for a minimum of 14 months. The companies allowed each user to participate in giving, volunteering and/or micro-actions (also called “Missions”) for a full one-year cycle. Benevity also examined employees with varying levels of tenure and completed its analysis in August 2022.Benevity Impact Labs was formed as a “social innovation lab to help more companies around the world accelerate their impact and inclusion through data insights, innovation and community,” said Sona Khosla, Benevity’s chief impact officer. “Our hope is that this will catalyze an even bigger global movement of purpose-driven businesses to act on solving the world’s biggest challenges in a way that engages employees more meaningfully in their work.”In terms of the Benevity report specifically, Khosla says she hopes conscientious companies who read it will “raise purpose on the investment list for HR executives.” “There are few programs and investments that have the potential to deliver such high returns,” she added. “Considering how many companies have a significant portion of their workforce who are new to the company in the last two years, it shows the power of purpose in helping to retain new talent and building a culture that will be more resonant for an increasingly purpose-driven talent market.”Practical Advice for Infusing Purpose From the BeginningThe Benevity report does go beyond facts, figures and research, providing steps that organizations can take to integrate the company’s sense of purpose into its workplace culture. “Infuse your purpose into your employee onboarding,” St. Omer said, summarizing the first step outlined in the report. “Don’t just mention it. Seek to provide donation currency or a link to your site where they can make a donation, or encourage a volunteer opportunity out of the gate. Give them a real sense that giving back is part of the company culture and invite them to participate so that it becomes part of their employee experience.”Organizations shouldn’t be shy about sharing the details of their impact. There’s a way to openly express pride in philanthropic work without making it sound too self-congratulatory. Doing so effectively will help inspire workers to participate. Sona Khosla, Benevity’s chief impact officer (Company photo) “Communicate your company’s contribution and your commitment,” St. Omer said. “Always letting your employees know, either through storytelling or at all-hands meetings or any of your written communication–internal or external–demonstrates that your leaders and your company values purpose. There should be advocates of the purpose programming.”Benevity also suggests “activating middle managers” to “champion social impact activities.” Not only should newer employees be targeted with such messaging, but also younger ones. Millennials and Gen Zers care more about purpose than other generations do, the Benevity study pointed out, and “they are quick to move on when they don’t find it in their workplace.” The data is quite convincing of this: More than half of Gen Zers say it’s very important for their work to have meaning, and 71% in one study said they would even take a pay cut to “do more meaningful work.” In considering the long-term sustainability of a workforce already in place, a sense of purpose, so coveted by young workers, has to be cultivated among them. Organizational leaders should also, according to the report, “tap into and support affinity groups,” or ERGs, which “are a powerful driver for connection, as many people who join a new workplace want to find ‘their people’ and get involved.” Showcasing and amplifying the work those groups do will give those employees a better sense of belonging, which will help build a sense of community and impact. It will also go a long way in supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). “If you have your LGBTQ+ employees getting involved in other organizations that support that community, or your Hispanic employee network finding ways to support their community through volunteering or working at nonprofits or mentoring programs, that will help connect your ERGs to your DEI programming as well,” St. Omer said.This communication should be done year round, Benevity advised in the report, and technology can help. An online hub for all of these groups will make connectivity, messaging and amplification easier. More broadly, companies should ensure they’re including remote workers in the programming by building a mobile app, or even a mobile computer station for device-less employees, to reach them.The most eager of companies that want to nurture employee sense of purpose can go one step further. Benevity said in its report that organizations should even engage workers in corporate grant-giving. According to additional company research on stakeholder philanthropy, employees want to have a say in how their company directs corporate funds and grants. The formation of employee selection committees to help in that area is an effective way to create a channel through which they can provide their guidance.“People are looking for companies to do good, to make an impact and to show up in moments that matter,” St. Omer said. “They’re also looking for companies to inspire them to get them to contribute as well.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Benevity, who supported this sponsor 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.

Krista Sherer | March 19, 2023

Building the Values of Inclusivity and Collaboration Into a Tech Brand

“We were building a plane and flying it at the same time, with the hope that we were not going to crash and burn but soar to new heights,” said Aruna Ravichandran, chief marketing officer for Webex by Cisco, the conferencing and communications platform, about the company’s rebranding in the middle of the pandemic. In a fireside chat at From Day One’s recent Silicon Valley conference, Ravichandran said that tools for collaboration and video conferencing were suddenly in huge demand, democratizing the hybrid workforce. “We had to do something in a hurry to send the message to the world that we are not just about video conferencing, we are about the entire collaboration portfolio.”Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco Systems, along with the company’s board, invested in an immediate brand transformation, creating an entire marketing team from scratch and ran with remodeling their identity in the spring of 2020, Ravichandran said. This metamorphosis resulted in changing a video-meeting product into a collaboration portfolio as a $5.5 billion business.“Webex is no longer just about video conferencing; it’s a single app for everything to do with collaboration,” Ravichandran said. “So from the same app, you can do video meetings, you can do chat, you can do voice, you can do polling, you can even run event webinars.”Ravichandran led the transformation not only with speed, but with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as core values for the production. Collaboration and inclusivity are about breaking down silos across geography, individual work arrangements, and socio-economic groups, as well as building this promise into the brand and its purpose, she said. “We influenced the engineering teams to create inclusive features,” Ravichandran said, “so you can speak in English and translate what you are saying into 108 languages in real time.”Additionally, the company wanted to give equal voice to different personality types, including both introverts and extroverts, creating innovative solutions for people to express themselves in their own ways. “We had to make sure that this was not just a marketing rebrand, but that there was inclusivity in the underlying technology,” she said.Multigenerational diversity was a consideration too, with four generations currently active in the workforce. Ravichandran said they wanted to ensure they were thoughtful and authentic to their customers and employees. “It helped internally and externally to set the stage for what Webex is,” she said. At the conference, Ravichandran was interviewed by From Day One co-founder Steve Koepp Even with a video collaboration tool as her business, Ravichandran has been vocal about face-to-face meetings being vital to Cisco’s culture. Moderator Steve Koepp, From Day One’s head of content, asked how they manage the tension, and two seemingly clashing forces, of people wanting flexible work hours while working from home and businesses wanting employees to return to the office. “How do you make bringing back people into the office a magnet and not a mandate?” she said. “It’s a very tough problem to tackle.” Ravichandran said the answer is also a combination of culture and technological transformation and that offices built before the pandemic aren’t suitable for the changes that have happened with employees or the innovative technological advances over the last three years. “More and more, facilities, leaders, and chief innovative officers are starting to think about how they have to transform their offices,” she said.HR professionals are central to finding solutions to this challenge. “They have to give the flexibility while simultaneously allowing employees to innovate,” she said.Building this kind of culture will take a great deal of transformation and the code still needs to be cracked, Ravichandran said. However, she believes that this change will likely happen in a couple of years and that diversity is at the heart of the strategy for talent acquisition and HR leaders. “One of the beautiful elements many of us in the tech world learned is that talent is global. So every geography has something to bring to the table,” she said. “When increasing your innovation in an organization, diversity is very important.”As for marketing in the future, Ravichandran said that artificial intelligence (AI) and the latest chatbot, ChatGPT, will be game changers. There is a caveat to how it is used, though. “You have to give ChatGPT the right input to get the right output,” she said. “It will help make you more productive. It’s not going to eliminate jobs; it is going to make your job much more productive so that it will free you up to think about additional things.”Ravichandran added that sustainability is critical for all tech companies and is currently on every CEO’s charter. “Technology innovation is going to be a part of sustainability,” Ravichandran said. “And the HR community’s input will be important.” Krista Sherer is a strategic communications consultant with a background in journalism and corporate communications. She resides in Sebastopol, Calif.

Samantha Campos | March 19, 2023

To Find New Talent, ‘Change the Way You Go to Market’

If employers want to do a better job of hiring, especially when it comes to finding diverse talent, they need to change their approach. “If you think about it kind of like sales, your candidates are what you’re going to market for, and finding new channels for those candidates means that you’re taking a risk,” said Albrey Brown, VP of strategy at Joonko, a diversity recruiting service. “You’re not going back to the same schools or programs that you typically would go to if you’re diversifying.”Business leaders now need to look for labor in wider pools and consider reskilling or investing in education for their employees. Brown spoke on a panel of experts discussing ways to boost recruitment in a panel entitled, “Improving the Talent Pipeline, From End to End,” which took place at From Day One’s recent Silicon Valley conference. The panel was moderated by Megan Cassidy, a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle.Flexibility and learning are not only important to the current workforce but are also vital for hiring teams. Staying nimble and aware of employee needs allows companies to flex with the demands of a changing labor market. In talking about the shifting tides of recruitment, the speakers cited the “Blue Ocean Strategy,” a marketing concept originated by INSEAD professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.“This ‘blue ocean’ concept is about finding untapped markets for candidates,” said Kristin Major, the chief talent officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, “finding places where you're not competing against all the other big fish in the sea, trying to recruit. ‘Red ocean’ is where there are lots of different companies competing for the same group.”“You have to change the way that you go to market,” said Pamela Rodas, global senior director of talent acquisition at the tech company TELUS International. “As recruiters, it’s not only focusing on the skills and competencies you need to recruit for and convince the candidate, but the strategy has to be different every year.”Albrey Brown of Joonko, left, and Pamela Rodas of TELUS International, who said, “Never stop thinking on how we’re going to differentiate” Rodas advised giving prospective employees the “right message” to ensure that they know why they should be working for your company. To that end, she created a “global innovation center,” which involves a series of project managers with differing expertise who focus on how they’re going to attract talent in a variety of ways.“Never stop thinking on how we’re going to differentiate,” said Rodas. “Not just compete on overpaying, spending three months looking for that talent, when you can recruit within three weeks if you build the right strategy with the hiring manager and explain the added value of the type of candidates that you’re offering.”“The things that we’ve been doing are probably not what we need going forward if we’re going to find this sort of ‘blue ocean’ of new talent,” said HPE’s Major. “We’re going to get a better candidate, we’re going to have a more inclusive company, we’re going to achieve our goals around what we want in terms of a diverse workforce. It requires a fair amount of courage to do that.”Joonko’s Brown suggested adopting a “build, measure, learn” mindset to overcome fears and obstacles to pioneering collaborations. “These new channels that you’re starting to invest in [will never] produce the same type of talent at the same volume [or] quality as the ones you’ve been investing in for 10, 20 years,” said Brown. “You have to incubate these new channels in a way that allows you to grow these partnerships over time so that they can mature.”Recruiters will likely need to make other adjustments to open up the hiring process. “Taking away the bachelor’s-degree requirement is a way to allow folks who may not have had the chance to get a degree but have the skills, mindset, and character to apply for your roles,” Brown said.“We invest a lot on long-term strategies [for] developing our talent from the beginning,” said Rodas. TELUS International operates an onsite continuing-education program where team members are taught sales skills, customer service, coding, AI, and data science, “even if they’ve only been a business analyst.”Hiring teams can partner with training teams in the organization so that companies have a solid strategy–short-term and long-term–to develop talent. “As a recruiter, you need to ensure you’re providing data all the time to the business on why that's important,” Rodas said. “Do they want to overpay for talent that’s going to leave in two years, because they’re already overqualified for the position?”Rodas said hiring managers often want to recruit candidates with higher qualifications than the ones they need, which she feels is a mistake. Instead, her team gathers data and assessments based on competencies and skills. They then constantly assess the profiles of their hires on who performed best after the first 90 days, six months, and a year.“More often than not, it was the ones that didn’t have experience,” Rodas said. “It takes time and persistence. But as recruiters, we are salespeople, so there’s nothing better we can do than continue insisting that [talent development] is the way to go.”Rather than trying to find the prospective employee who fulfills all requirements of a position, developing an existing workforce may be more cost-effective and encourages retention in the long term. Rodas calls the potential candidates who want to build a career with the company “priceless.”“Skills leveling-up is not expensive,” Rodas said. “We can look for startups that want that opportunity and partner with companies to enhance skills fast. And that way, we focus on building pipelines externally from candidates that have the willingness to learn. We can assess that through specialized assessments, vs. just looking for that ‘unicorn’ candidate.”Megan Cassidy, a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle moderated the panelMegan Cassidy, a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, moderated the panel“The social-impact program is where we really think about how we engage communities,” said Leslie Lai, director of social impact for Roku, “especially high-school students from underrepresented backgrounds or other resource communities at an early age—and provide them access to resources and exposure to our industry.”Roku’s Change Makers program involves partnering with a nonprofit to mentor about 250 students across the US, teaching them how to make short documentaries over six weeks. Students are told to highlight someone in their community who’s making positive change.“It’s a great way, not just for students to get access to a very traditionally opaque industry,” said Lai, “but just see the work come alive in a real place and get credit for it.”Similarly, Joonko matches underrepresented candidates with roles at companies that are similar to where they recently interviewed. The process uses AI, which Brown cautions can be biased when it comes to recruiting. Hiring leaders must consider where these technologies are being used in the process to make sure they’re being used ethically. “As much as it is about how you build the algorithm,” said Brown, “it’s about where you place the algorithm. So we use natural language processing only when it comes to skills matching, understanding what keywords someone uses to describe the role they’re going for, what keywords they use to describe their accomplishments at a company.” Those keywords are then matched with keywords that other companies might use.“Typically, companies hire about one out of eight of the candidates that we refer,” said Brown, “which is a very good application-to-hire.”At TELUS, Rodas utilized technology by building the whole recruiting experience in a virtual environment. The project started as a way to overcome screen-centric boredom during the pandemic lockdown and engage her team. “What I didn't realize is we made it a more inclusive experience,” said Rodas. “When they build their avatar, they show us who they really are. All types of generations–Centennials, Millennials, Generation X–were having fun, you could see they were laughing, and it relaxed them. It was fun. And it actually showed why they wanted to apply, what’s in it for them.” Samantha Campos is a freelance journalist who’s written for regional publications in California and Hawaii, with forays into medical cannabis and food-justice nonprofits. She currently resides in Oakland, Calif.

Michael Stahl | March 16, 2023

How Basketball’s Mental-Health Awakening Sets an Example for Business

During their respective NBA playing careers, both Dennis Rodman and Ron Artest were known for emotional outbursts that sometimes turned violent. Most famously, Rodman once kicked a sideline photographer during a 1997 game and, in 2004, Artest jumped into the stands of a Detroit arena, helping to spark a wild brawl between players and fans. But in the years since, Rodman and Artest (who now goes by Metta Sandiford-Artest) have also become outspoken advocates for mental health, openly discussing their own emotional issues and neurological disorders. After current NBA superstar Ja Morant engaged in troubling behavior, some episodes of which involved firearms, he stepped away from basketball to seek counseling. That outcome probably wouldn’t have been possible without Rodman and Sandiford-Artest’s willingness to publicly disclose their struggles and the ways in which they each dealt with them. These examples and others have put the NBA at the forefront of athlete mental health fitness, something that’s been widely discussed in the media in recent years, with top-flight stars like Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles exiting high-stakes competitions to address their respective emotional issues. Leaders of the National Basketball Players Association, the NBA players’ union, have developed mental health programming to help its members live healthy lives off the court and perform at their best while on it. One of the ways the organization’s mental health counselors do this is by helping the players develop and maintain a sense of purpose, which is what William Parham, Ph.D., director of the NBPA’s Mental Health & Wellness Department, discussed with Sean Gregory, senior editor at Time magazine, during a fireside chat at From Day One’s March virtual conference focusing on strengthening employee purpose within companies. Ultimately, the NBA is a corporation not unlike many others around the globe, whether they’re in tech, consumer goods or other industries. Like those groups, the league has a product to sell–the sport of basketball–and workers who produce it: the players. “We’re not here for no reason. We have a purpose, a design, a place that we need to go, and it can be a struggle getting there,” said Parham. “But once we really feel it in our spirit, that we know what we’re here to do, and we are laser-focused on that North Star goal, everything else becomes secondary.” Without naming him, Parham recalled one player from about 20 years ago who was performing at a particularly outstanding level. Fans and fellow NBA personnel were in awe. But the player was only devoting so much time and effort to his craft as a means to avoid personal struggles. Parham believed that if the player were able to unburden himself of his “emotional baggage,” that maybe he would achieve even greater heights. “We would see an exponential increase in his own individual talent, an exponential increase in team chemistry, and team-against-team competition, an increase in excitement of the fan base who’d purchase paraphernalia,” Parham said. “In other words, everybody wins when you invest in the health and wellness of athletes.” Thus, a mantra at the Players Association, he said, is “Your mental health is your mental wealth.” That kind of encouragement, to prioritize mental health and not feel shame over openly discussing potential struggles, can lead to a breakdown of cultural stigma. It’s what helped other NBA players, like Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozen, also speak out about mental health issues. “It is important, always, for HR folk and for others to really acknowledge that you’re looking at a human being, that all that glitters isn’t gold, and that there’s something hidden that you aren’t seeing that, nonetheless, is camouflaged by the brilliant expression of their talents,” Parham said. “So knowing that, putting resources together for them to take advantage of when they’re ready, is one of the important things to do.” When people understand their purpose–oftentimes closely associated with their work–they emerge better equipped to communicate with confidence their outlooks and perspectives, contributing to a team with more impact and helping generate discourse and connectivity between its members. But interpersonal relationships are also always two-way streets. Parham observed that if one were to switch around the letters of “listen,” the word “silent” can also be spelled. “When you are silent, you then position your sensory, visual, your hearing everything to come alive and you really absorb both the direct and indirect messaging [from others], but it takes intention,” Parham said. “Put aside your biases and assumptions and really want to know what the other person is asking of you. Because at the end of the day, you’re building trust—allowing them to know that this is confidential, that it’s safe, that you really see them, that you’re invested in making them visible, and that you’re here for the long run, not just for the short term. I think that is important messaging.” And when a person is struggling with challenges, particularly connected to emotional well-being, that struggle could be a signal of good health. It means that they are at the very least in touch with their bodies and minds. But, Parham noted, they still must be addressed. “Stars don’t come out at night,” Parham said. “It’s the darkness that illuminates the stars.” 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.

Valerie Schloredt | March 10, 2023

Inclusion on Purpose: Making Workplaces Where Everyone Can Belong

Ruchika Tulshyan lives in Seattle, where people often tell her that the challenge of bias and discrimination is not an issue in this liberal part of the country. But after working as a business reporter in different countries and cities, Tulshyan moved to the Seattle area to work in tech, where discrimination and bias are “writ large” in the industry, she said.Her experience got her thinking about defining what makes certain workplaces better than others for people of historically underestimated identities. Now, as CEO and founder of inclusion-strategy practice Candour, Tulshyan is a noted speaker on what it takes to create workplaces where everyone can belong. She describes those practices and behaviors in her book Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work.At From Day One’s Seattle conference, Tulshyan talked with journalist Naomi Ishisaka, assistant managing editor for diversity, inclusion, and staff development at the Seattle Times, as well as a columnist there on race, culture, equity and social justice.Ishisaka began by pointing out that the inclusion may be widely accepted as a cultural value in places like the Seattle conference, but “we struggle turning that value into action.” Tulshyan talked with journalist Naomi Ishisaka of the Seattle TimesThe biggest barrier to change, said Tulshyan, which she addresses in her book, is when people rely too much on their self-image of being a good person with good intentions. Instead, we should allow ourselves to experience discomfort, asking ourselves questions like, “Who do I hire on my team? Who am I promoting into those who get to speak in meetings, whose ideas carry weight and influence and power?”“I think we forget that in every moment, it's a very active process,” said Tulshyan. She frequently coaches organizational leaders to move past the barrier of their self-image to put diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into practice on a daily basis. One way to begin to engage with the work, she says, is to start consuming media, like Ishisaka’s column, that presents a wider focus.Tulshyan and Ishisaka agreed that the burden of driving cultural and organizational change should not be on the people who have experienced marginalization, exclusion, and bias. For example, much of the narrative around women’s leadership emphasizes individual performance and strategies, urging women to “lean in,” negotiate better, and shake off the lack of confidence and self-doubt described as “imposter syndrome.” Instead, a social-justice lens sees how workplace discrimination is systemic. Tulshyan offered an example, saying she had recently heard similar anecdotes from friends involved in the hiring process in four different organizations. In each case, when someone involved in hiring expressed preference for a job candidate “because they could imagine going out for a drink with them,” that candidate matched the speaker’s racial identity, and in many cases, their gender identity as well.“Intersectionality,” the term coined by author and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, describes how people of more than one marginalized identity can face discrimination multiplied. Tulshyan found her experience as a woman of color in the tech industry differed from that reported by her colleagues who were white women. “I started noticing when I was in the tech industry that I would get left out of invitations, social invitations to connect after work. That kind of thing had a material impact on my career.”Part of the solution is to put the role of ally into practice. “I talk about allies not as a noun, but really as a verb,” said Tulshyan, who prompts colleagues and leaders to ask themselves, “What does it look like to practice allyship in every moment?” What could make leaders care more about putting DEI values into action? Tulshyan mentioned the McKinsey data showing that companies with diversity in leadership teams outperform their peers. Centering people of color and marginalized people makes good business sense, “but honestly, at the core of it, it’s the right thing to do.”Valerie Schloredt is a writer and editor living in Seattle. She is the former books editor for YES! magazine.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | March 06, 2023

How Can You Manage Human Capital If You’re Not Developing It First?

Eighty-three percent of HR leaders say that lacking the right tech tools makes their job challenging, according to the Society of Human Resource Management. Many HR professionals are looking for quality over quantity in their tech stacks, but they’re getting only the latter. At From Day One’s conference in Atlanta, Kristy McCann Flynn, the CEO and co-founder of SkillCycle, an employee-development platform, gave a presentation in which she urged employers to take inventory of their HR tech tools and identify what’s helpful and what’s not, and with that newly freed budget, reinvest it into the workforce. The systems we have in place today to manage our people were built the wrong way, slowly over time, and have become unmanageable, she asserted. Flynn, who has spent two decades working in HR, sympathized with professionals who feel overwhelmed by the tools they’re expected to use, often a clumsy mix of applicant tracking systems, survey tools, learning and development platforms, benefits engines, and engagement software. In fact, HR can find a tool for just about anything it needs to get done, but those tools don’t always connect, and switching channels constantly is draining. Flynn believes corporate priorities need an adjustment. “We’ve been incentivizing work-life success backward for decades, leading with the end goal of performance management and not with data and development to drive performance outcomes. To fix this mess, we must address the root cause and develop talent before managing it. We must prioritize human capital development to truly manage human capital,” she said. Information Overload Kristy McCann Flynn, CEO and co-founder of SkillCycle (Company photo) Every HR tool is designed to collect information about a company’s workforce, or even its potential workforce, but much of it goes unused. Employees may participate in engagement surveys or give feedback when asked, but then they never see anything change, or they don’t get the help they need. “Why would you give somebody feedback and collect all this data and then essentially do nothing with that?” said Flynn. HR and people operations have the information they need, according to Flynn, they just lack the capability to reinvest in their workers and “[bring] it to our people to give them the skills and the ability to do their jobs.” She advised putting the data to good use for employee enrichment in the form of personalized development programs “to solve the skill issues so HR and organizations are playing offense instead of defense.” By cleaning house and consolidating tools, Flynn said, money that was previously tied up in unhelpful HR tools can then be reinvested into developing the workforce. She recommended “[putting] all the talent and development and learning together in one epicenter to be able to drive the outcomes that you need for your organization.” And with fewer tools, HR can spend more time on the human-centric work of the job. “Tech is not a replacement. Tech is an enablement,” said Flynn. “We need to keep that human-centric component because our entire job revolves around people, and unless we all get botted-up, there’s always going to be people. It’s about playing offense and being proactive and taking data and development and bringing it together in a core for people to get the outcomes that they need.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SkillCycle, who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a From Day One contributing editor and freelance reporter who covers 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, and Digiday’s Worklife, among others.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | March 05, 2023

The Present and Future of the Chief Diversity Officer’s Role

“When we talk about inclusion, we’re not trying to change who you are,” said Derek Gordon, chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at Colgate-Palmolive. Gordon pointed out that he sees individuals resist inclusion in the workplace because they assume it means inclusion for all, except them. But that’s not the way effective inclusion works. “We’re offering a very big tent for everybody to see themselves benefiting from a world in which there are no barriers beyond the capability that you bring to the work and the impact that you can bring to the company,” Gordon said. “We want you to be successful within the organization.” During a fireside chat titled “The Present and Future of the Chief Diversity Officer’s Role” during From Day One’s February virtual conference on measuring and accounting for progress in DEI, Gordon shared his vision for inclusive leadership. He was joined by Fortune senior editor Ellen McGirt, who guided the conversation. The Three Qualities of an Inclusive Leader Inclusive leaders share three qualities, said Gordon. The first is that they can cultivate trust within their teams. This means creating a setting in which employees are “unafraid of speaking openly about opportunities” and are confident that their leader is willing to listen and “set aside their own perspective to understand what other people on the team are recommending,” he said. The second is that they have to be coaches and understand the importance of investing in collective growth. Gordon believes that inclusive leaders are courageous. Courageous in the results they aim for and courageous in their willingness to recognize people for bringing progress to the table. Speaking on inclusive leadership, from left: moderator Ellen McGirt of Fortune and Derek Gordon of Colgate-Palmolive (Image by From Day One) “I’ve always believed that leaders inspire others to accomplish something that they would not otherwise do,” he said. “They have to have this vision for the future.” The third characteristic of an inclusive leader is one that can affect business outcomes. DEI isn’t only about doing good–though it is that–it’s about doing right by the business, said Gordon. Without that in mind, some leaders just won’t bite. “It’s not just about doing the right thing, because, let’s face it, in the DEI space, we’ve been talking about doing the right thing for 50 years, and there’s been no change. Ultimately, then, you have to make sure that people understand that diversity and inclusion delivers better business results,” he said. To Gordon, influencing the business means “not chasing a bunch of small things,” but working at the scale of the whole company. For instance, Gordon noted the importance of employee resource groups, or ERGs. Employees who participate can benefit by building community and a sense of belonging in their workplace. In tandem, the company can benefit from the ERGs by asking for specific groups to weigh in on advertising campaigns to ensure they’re inclusive of their demographic. ERGs are also useful for recruiting, “particularly at more senior levels of the organization,” said Gordon, and for building diverse interview panels. Inclusive Leadership Cannot Be a Trend And to make inclusion meaningful for everyone in the business–from leadership to the rank and file–they need to be able to see inclusion at work at all levels of the organization. “That means this kind of change is not an initiative,” he added. Everyone in the organization has to see, feel, and believe that inclusion is not just a trend or a “flavor of the day.” To underline the point, Colgate has baked DEI metrics into its ESG strategy and employee bonuses. It publishes a diversity report on progress at least once a year. “You need to measure the results that you’re trying to get to,” Gordon said. “And you have to hold people accountable for delivering against that.” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance reporter who covers 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, and Digiday’s Worklife, among others.

Emily Nonko | March 05, 2023

Finding the Future Leaders Who’ll Drive Your Company’s Growth

As much as companies might hope to avoid attrition, it’s an inevitability that leaders should expect. “Retention should be a part of your overall strategy knowing that you will lose employees –and you’ll want to be intentional, not reactive,” said Gary Blinth, a recruiter with 20 years of experience and head of executive search for Humana. To Blinth, talent leaders need to look past the economic downturn to identify the next generation, as well as invest holistically in their current workforce. He shared his insight with Shana Lebowitz Gaynor, a correspondent for Insider, and author of Don’t Call It Quits: Turn the Job You Have Into the Job You Love, during a fireside chat at From Day One’s January virtual conference on talent acquisition during uncertain times. Blinth stressed that companies won’t attract new talent without investing in their current workforce. “A company with a strong culture over time tends to experience less attrition and has less issues with losing talent,” he said. “How strong is your culture? Is it an inclusive environment? Do employees feel part of the organization?” He suggested different strategies to strengthen the internal culture: offering recognition to employees–from bonuses to shout-outs across the company–as well as providing different routes for internal mobility, acting on employee feedback through surveys, and taking a human approach across the board. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) investments are also an important component. “It should be embedded and operationalized in what we do,” is a quote from a colleague that stuck with Blinth. He added: “It’s not just for HR. It’s across operations so every person understands it’s a part of who we are as an organization.” Moderator Shana Lebowitz Gaynor, journalist and author, left, and Gary Blinth Humana's head of executive recruiting (Image by From Day One) If a company is anticipating attrition, they can also pay more attention to the reasons employees leave and understand what the company can proactively address. “It’s not always about the money,” Blinth pointed out. He shared an example of a potential employee who had prioritized maternity benefits. “It comes back to the voice of the customer: both the folks we are looking to hire and the folks we are looking to retain.” As companies bring on new employees, they should actively transfer and disseminate skills, knowledge and expertise broadly across the organization. “A key part of the strategy has to be understanding, as an organization, your enterprise goals and key initiatives–the key skills that will be required to execute that, and identifying where these skills reside.” From there, companies can facilitate programs like shadowing and mentorship between employees with institutional knowledge and newer employees, as well as education offered by leadership. “There are a number of ways it can be done, it just has to be intentional and something that companies are looking to do long-term,” Blinth said. “And that can also be part of your retention strategy.” Emily Nonko is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to writing for From Day One, her work has been published in Next City, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian and other publications.

Riley Kaminer | March 04, 2023

How Well-Being Fosters a Resilient and Equitable Workplace

What would be possible for your organization if everyone showed up as the best version of themselves? This is the bold question fueling Shannon Hopkins’ work as regional VP at BetterUp, an online coaching platform. Hopkins is laser-focused on empowering employers with the tools necessary to improve their workers’ well-being. “Unlocking peak performance from your employees starts with building a healthy, resilient mind,” she told attendees of From Day One’s February virtual conference. However, Hopkins asserted that achieving this resilience has never been more challenging. A Harvard Business Review survey indicated that 85% of workers believe their well-being has declined since 2020. There has also been a 25% increase in the global prevalence of anxiety and depression since 2020. Meanwhile, the average lifestyle of a skill, and how long a skill is relevant, has shrunk from five years to just 18 months over the course of the last decade and a half. And with today’s global macroeconomic uncertainty, there is increasing pressure for employees to do more with less. Well-Being Drives Performance, Especially in Times of Uncertainty Well-being can be the key to successfully navigating turbulent times. It is a major driver of resilience: the ability to bounce back in times of change. Resilience helps increase the competitiveness and profitability of an organization, even under highly disruptive conditions. In an analysis of 16,000 BetterUp members, the company identified a 35% difference in resilience between those who score low on well-being and those who score high. There is also a strong link between well-being and productivity, noted Hopkins. “Well-being actually can drive an increase in performance, or productivity in times of change–not just maintain it.” Shannon Hopkins, regional VP at BetterUp (Company photo) In an attempt to understand the complex interplay between productivity and well-being, BetterUp studied a group of 1,000 people. They tracked how these participants’ productivity changed before the pandemic compared to immediately after. “The results were surprising,” Hopkins said. “We had expected to see that all participants would experience some decline in their productivity, given the extreme circumstances of that period. But what we saw was those that received coaching actually saw an increase in their productivity. So people that were actively working on their well-being during this period scored higher than those that didn't.” A partnership with Salesforce provided more data to back up this story. Employees that used BetterUp’s well-being solutions increased their productivity by 25%, were 56% less likely to miss work due to health reasons, and were five times more likely to be rated as a top performer. Having high well-being is also closely correlated to increased cognitive agility, or the ability to make the right choices in moments of uncertainty. The good news? “This is highly coachable,” said Hopkins. “We need to make improving our cognitive agility a proactive daily practice and invest in it over time, and in advance as well.” How Can You Enhance Well-being in Your Organization? Hopkins believes that most employers still lack the right solutions to support the majority of their workforce–moving beyond training sessions, digital health tools, and employee–assistance programs (EAPs). “What we need now more than ever is a new, comprehensive well-being solution,” she said, advocating for an approach that builds employees’ mental strength and enables their peak performance. “Ultimately, that creates organizations that employees seek out and where they want to remain, which is super important for today’s times.” In Hopkins’ estimation, these programs should have measurable outcomes, be culturally and globally relevant, and be integrated in the normal flow of everyday work. “What would be possible for your organization if everyone showed up as their best self?” Hopkins asked the virtual audience. “And what would that look like for your people, your team’s diversity and inclusion efforts, and ultimately for your organization? And more importantly, how would it feel to work there for the employees?” These are difficult questions. But as Hopkins explained, keeping well-being top of mind is an excellent first step towards a productive, fulfilled, and equitable workforce. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, BetterUp, who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight. Riley Kaminer is a Miami-based journalist, researcher, and content strategist. As a freelance tech writer and researcher, he has profiled more than 400 of the world’s top entrepreneurs and investors. His work has been featured in publications including Forbes, the Times (UK), the Economist, and LatAm Investor.

Lisa Jaffe | February 27, 2023

Three Ways to Make Your DEI Efforts Stick

Some time ago, a recruiter pulled aside Christina Tymony to ask her why recruiting from top universities was so problematic in terms of diversity goals. Tymony is the senior manager of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) at SeekOut, an HR company that helps clients find, nurture, and retain talent, with an emphasis on finding diverse candidates. “He said that if we say we want the best, we should go where the best are. I had to walk them through things related to access, cost, legacy students, being able to afford to move across states or countries, and nepotism that allows some people to get into those universities not based on merit, but on those other factors.” It wasn’t an easy conversation, Tymony said, but in the end, that recruiter became a diversity champion. The day that recruiter left the company, they thanked Tymony for taking the time to have those difficult conversations. “They said they could take that wherever they would go. And that’s what we are trying to do–to create change agents that amplify the work we do,” she said. Often, in conversations about DEI, the focus is on tactics or strategies, but seldom on creating system-level change that lasts. In a presentation at From Day One’s November virtual conference on workforce diversity, Tymony explained key reasons why some programs never gain traction. Among them: lack of commitment at the leadership level; efforts driven by only one part of an organization or even a single person; having unrealistic goals that are either unattainable or unsustainable; and a lack of consistent action over time. The last is often driven by a lack of support, reprioritization or lack of prioritization, or frustration from a lack of goal attainment. Have the Difficult Conversations Everyone comes to the conversation with different experiences and understanding about racism, sexism, and other forms of systemic repression that underrepresented communities face, she said. We have each had our own experience at home, in school, and in the wider community that impacts our belief system. “We need to spend time to educate our people. It’s not enough to say that these groups are underrepresented. We need to dig in and ensure our people understand the ‘why’ behind the work that we’re doing, how these groups became marginalized, and how they became underserved today,” Tymony said. That understanding alone increases the likelihood they will connect with the work and develop a level of empathy for others’ experience and perspective. “Don’t shy away from emotions. Things like vulnerability, transparency, and even tears tap into how we feel, and help demonstrate how imperative and how personal this work is.” Christina Tymony, senior manager of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at SeekOut (Company photo) Some people will fail to have that empathy because of the schools they went to, the town they grew up in, their parents’ beliefs, or even search algorithms that are generally curated by who you know and where you live, she said. People in your organization will have biases, both conscious and unconscious. They come to Tymony saying they don’t get it, and share the stories of the belief systems they grew up with. “Those moments, as difficult as they are, are teachable moments. That means driving them to a new way of thinking by unraveling the bias together–what it is rooted in, how it's harmful, how it’s incorrect.” There may be people who will still not understand or value DEI efforts. That’s why the next key is so important, she said. Bake DEI Into Your DNA This can’t just be about some data point in your annual report, she said. You have to care about the results. No single program, department, team or person can be the entirety of DEI. Rather, it must be part of the company’s values and the entire employee experience. “It needs to be about how you think about your organization,” Tymony said. Some organizations interview potential employees to see how they align with company values. Tymony asked listeners to consider: Are you including DEI in your values questions? Are you screening potential employees for inclusive behavior? At the manager and leadership level, she asked whether leadership is evaluated for their ability to create, develop, and retain diverse teams. Are they asked to enumerate how they create inclusive and safe teams? From a data perspective, do you know how the various diversity demographics advance? Are the rates equitable? “You can bring in diverse candidates, but are you growing and retaining them afterwards?” she asked. Is the company welcoming? Is the work of DEI rewarded and amplified? Do you recognize the DEI champions in your organization? You can’t view DEI as some extracurricular activity, but a hard business objective, Tymony said. “Maybe you have created detailed reports and deployed all the tools you have available. But if no one in leadership is invested in this, it may be viewed as interesting, but not actionable. Leadership should be tied into the process, not just voicing the vision and message of DEI.” DEI isn’t often included as an evaluation point for leaders, yet it should be woven into the responsibility of every function. “That means leaders need to be active participants, must be engaged, and must be measured. Without that, you end up with just lip service.” Tymony said that DEI professionals don’t own much in most organizations. “You may be responsible for diverse recruiting, but you don’t own recruiting. You may be judged based on developing underrepresented talent, but you don’t own talent management. The job becomes lobbying other executives about why DEI is important. What works is when those who own profit and loss are also responsibility for DEI.” To Ensure Success, Measure Outcomes Tymony said that a lot of organizations will measure processes–the number of diverse candidates, for example–but not outcomes. Whether candidates convert into employees, whether those employees stay on and develop into effective talent and progress in their careers is just as important as trying to source those candidates, if not more so. She outlined several data points in two areas–recruiting and talent management–that you should aspire to measure. Recruiting: •Funnel data: pipeline representation, recruiter-screen to onsite–visit ratio, and passthrough parity •Candidate sourcing data: demographics and success rates by source, time and cost-per-hire by source •Candidate feedback scores: score by demographic, demographic by organization team and level Talent Management: •Engagement: engagement survey scores by demographic, ERG satisfaction and success rates •Growth and development: promotion rates and parity, mentorship, sponsorship and professional-development-program success rates (individually) •Retention: attrition rates by demographic, exit surveys by demographic, management and peer feedback Not all of this may be applicable to everyone. “Not everyone has a mentorship program, or the ability to collect all of this data right now,” Tymony said, but all of this could be aspirational. Lastly, she warned that goals for the metrics you choose have to be realistic. “If you are in Seattle it’s unrealistic for you to want your talent to be beyond what is represented in that metropolitan area. What is achievable where you are? That’s the conversation you need to have with hiring managers and leaders.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SeekOut, who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight. Lisa Jaffe is a freelance writer who lives in Seattle with her son and a very needy rescue dog named Ellie Bee. She enjoys reading, long walks on the beach, and trying to get better at ceramics.

Webinar Recap

Empathic Benefits to Support Your Workforce: Why They Matter Today

The desire to have a family is a deeply personal one, and whatever a person’s fertility journey might be, stressors might exist even before they get to see a doctor or consult with a traditional medical touchpoint. “The responsibility of a child is a personal discussion, with awkward conversations concerning leave,” Brian Levine, M.D., founding partner of the fertility clinic CCRM New York said in a From Day One webinar on inclusive and empathic employee benefits. “For individuals who go through ERT, IVF, or anything else, all that requires appointments. There's missed time from work. People have to understand there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t include doctors visits that causes distraction. If an employer makes a move saying we support you, then they need to invest in transparency from the beginning.” Levine was making a case for empathic benefits to support the modern workforce, and why they now matter more than ever. With women’s workforce participation historic lows, and burnout rates not dwindling, professional organizations are restructuring their offerings surrounding family planning. The main problem with the definition of empathy, though, is that it’s subject to a wide range of interpretations. “Empathic benefits is about putting yourself in your workers’ shoes, even when the needs are not the same as yours,” says Mamta Elias, VP of strategy at the women’s health platform Ovia. When it comes to platforms, it’s also about having an approach and “recognizing,” explained Carol McBride, VP of benefits at the home-mortgage platform Mr. Cooper. “They’re not just a name and a Social Security number; they’re real human beings seeking our support,” McBride said. Idealism aside, though, empathic benefits are key to attracting and retaining talent. In the past decade, we’ve seen that 90% of parents would leave their job for a similar position with more family-friendly benefits. “Companies are now using their benefits to compete for talent,” said Elias. Educating Employees It starts with educating the workforce through the use of as many communication channels as possible, “leveraging them over and over, finding ways to embed benefits, a one-stop shop,” said Melissa Reeves, the system director of well-being and benefits at CommonSpirit Health, a not-for-profit health system. Crucial questions include: how can we use technology to create an Amazon-like experience where you know what you need before you need it? How do we make sure leaders understand benefits before they’re available? How can we harmonize it? Jessica Muhlenberg, responsible for global benefits at the apparel company VF Corp., vouches for newsletters and content. “Storytelling is important. I think that talking about benefits, trying to come up with ways to have associates understand that this is something that people are using, that they’re taking advantage of, that they’re not just programs, is really important.” VF published a newsletter story about an employee taking advantage of the company’s benefits for her fertility journey with her own daughter. “That kind of messaging is really important to getting people to really connect the boring benefit with the actual impact it has on lives.” It’s also about peer support. Reeves’s company embraces Code Lavender, a kind of psychological first aid provided by a group of employees who understand all the support that’s available. If communication channels are to be used as an educational tool, they can’t just mention benefits during open enrollment. It needs to be a day-to-day conversation. “There’s more than one pipeline to go to individuals,” said McBride. “How do we make sure we are communicating all programs that are available, so that when time comes they don’t solely have to rely on tech?” She praises the role of employee resource groups (ERGs), which can be a safe space for workers to have more in-depth conversations on the matters that concern them. Leading With Empathy Of course leaders have a huge role to play with regards to empathy and for HR leaders generally, the core is the way to communicate the value of empathic benefits. We already established that benefits play a key role in hiring and retaining talent. In addition, “Companies with women on their executive teams perform better but, on the other hand, the women’s participation in the workforce is at a 30-year low,” said Elias. “Leaders have to be intentional about bringing them in” The webinar panelists, top row from left: Mamta Elias of Ovia Health, Jessica Muhlenberg of VF Corp., and moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company. Bottom row: Melissa Reeves of CommonSpirit Health, Brian Levine, M.D., of CCRM Fertility New York, and Carol McBride of Mr. Cooper (Image by From Day One) Reeves agrees. “From a leadership perspective, it starts with the hiring process, making sure they can lead in the way the organization needs them to lead. It’s about living your values every single day, not just through the lens of checking the box or a performance evaluation.” That said, there needs to be acceptance of leaders who may be not as comfortable to have, say, mental-health check-ins and conversations. The key is extending grace to the situation and making them feel more confident in such situations through education. Flexibility Beyond Hybrid Schedules When it comes to flexibility, the first thing that comes to mind is the hybrid schedule. “There are as many ways to do hybrid work as there are employees,” said Muhlenberg, who considers flexibility to be critical to her company’s well-being approach. “For our leaders, it was really important to ensure we were focusing on what employees need but also what the business needs.” In particular, that revolved around making sure that the emphasis on the importance of spending some time in the office translated into meaningful work being done there. “We want to use that day to make sure we’re not staring at zoom screens.” They’re also trying to encourage core hours to put some boundaries on the length of the workday. While the main focus of this conversation was on family life, employees working with vendors on different time zones and those with elder-care responsibilities might benefit from them too. Flexibility, however, also means making sure that empathic benefits can account for each unique situation, with fertility journeys a prime example. “When it comes to being a member of the LBGTQ community, the gender matters, because the ingredients are different depending on the cake,” said Levine, acknowledging the difficulty of the topic. A single woman or two women, for example, might just need to buy sperm and get inseminated, which costs $2,000. A single man, or a gay couple, may might think about purchasing eggs, finding a donor, then finding a carrier. “Over the last five years [surrogacy cost] went from $75,000 to $250,000,” he said. “Because of employer-based benefits, more people can create embryos, but we never thought about that when we deploy benefits for someone to create embryos, we need to have the conversation of, Are we covering them to actually use them? If you don’t help them put that embryo in, then what's the point?” In IVF, for example, a same-sex couple may need only one cycle of IVF, so why can’t they use the saved money to cover surrogacy? And what about a woman who can’t carry because of a past cancer diagnosis–what are her options? Predicted Levine: “Surrogacy is going to be the hot topic of 2023.” Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Boston and Milan.

Angelica Frey | February 26, 2023

Michael Stahl | February 26, 2023

Embracing Virtual Primary Care Benefits for Employee Wellness

It’s no secret that when businesses offer health care benefits, their employees are more productive, better engaged and are more likely to remain with the company. Because such outcomes help bottom lines, and even company performance on the stock market, more business leaders today view health care benefits as an investment in human capital as opposed to merely a burdensome cost. With the normalizing of virtual health care technology—out of necessity, its engagement rose significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic—wellness benefits are now more accessible to employees and less expensive for companies to provide. Combining these advantages, employers’ top priority in health care this past year was to implement more virtual solutions. However, some patients who engage with virtual health care feel as though their experience with the provider on the other side of their smartphone, tablet or personal computer was impersonal and transactional. Other issues for users include an inability to see the same doctor on a repeat basis, which discourages the development of a strong doctor-patient relationship. Yet Accolade, a virtual primary-care provider, believes it has developed a platform that addresses these limitations. Its advanced primary-care model encourages a relationship with a provider across preventative, urgent and chronic care, with the convenience of a virtual setting. Moreover, Accolade has integrated mental health care into its system, with an Accolade care team and medical and mental health providers all connected to patient cases. This is an important feature for companies given that 80% of workers looking for jobs say that the way their prospective employers support their employees’ mental health will be a top consideration in their searches. “We believe that health care is a human experience and that’s why we’ve been really intentional in creating Accolade Care, to have a strong, human-centered component,” said Jessie Donaho, senior director of solutions management at Accolade. “As part of this, we don’t separate physical well-being from emotional well-being. Instead, we see how they inform each other.” Jessie Donaho, senior director of solutions management at Accolade (Company photo) Donaho joined Accolade team members for a From Day One webinar, “Embracing Virtual Primary Care Benefits for Employee Wellness,” where she offered these remarks. Donaho said that in Accolade’s interactions with businesses, it became clear that employers “don’t just want the digital system that we’re all familiar with in the brick-and-mortar environment,” but one that offers equitable access, quality and affordability. Accolade’s solution combines primary care, featuring a dedicated relationship with a provider across an array of health care services, with targeted outreach for personalized care and coordinated support from a multidisciplinary care team that includes health coaches, nurses, and other personnel. Accolade pulls this off by allowing patients to choose a specific physician as their primary-care provider, view available benefits during a clinical encounter, and request mental health services with a single click. With this model in place, Accolade says 40% of members select a primary care provider after their first visit and 48% have repeat visits. Accolade members take advantage of the easy access to mental health care services: more than a fifth of all virtual visits with doctors address mental health concerns. Anupam Goel, M.D., Accolade’s senior medical director, shared details of an Accolade patient journey with the From Day One audience, that of a woman who lives with lupus. Her condition was so dire that she was experiencing delusions, but with the convenience and access of the virtual setting, the woman was able to engage with a series of care providers, including a primary physician, psychiatrist and therapist. The woman was able to develop some stress-reduction techniques and coping mechanisms to help her manage her lupus symptoms. “She was thrilled [with her care],” said Goel. “I think she avoided multiple ER visits and a potential mental health hospitalization by managing her conditions at home, with frequent check-ins by different members of the care team.” Anupam Goel, M.D., Accolade’s senior medical director (Company photo) Cases like these highlight the potential time away from work that is saved with access to health care, especially the kind that employees feel comfortable exploring, with provider familiarity and easy access. And when employees take a proactive approach to their health—something Accolade works to promote with what the company calls its “wraparound” approach to care—they spend less money on specialists. Accolade reports such savings have reached 33% on average for the platform’s users. If better, more holistic and cost-effective health care for an increased number of workers is the goal for mindful employers responding to talent demands in a volatile market, advanced telehealth services provided by companies such as Accolade are winning solutions. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner Accolade for sponsoring this webinar. 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.

Gail Gonzales | February 26, 2023

‘Get Your Managers to Be Your Partners’

HR and organizational-development professionals may soon feel the sting of a tighter economy in 2023, combined with “the worst productivity ratings on record since 1947,” according to national economists. Only about 32% of employees are actively engaged with their work, according to a Gallup poll, with a particular decline among project managers. And what happens when management is lacking? Your teams spend “one-third of their time cleaning up managers’ messes,” said Jon Greenawalt, SVP of customer transformation at the performance-management platform 15Five, speaking at From Day One’s Austin conference. Yet there is hope. To turn things around you “have to get your managers to be your partners–make them an extension of your team. That’s a mindset we all need to develop going forward,” said Greenawalt. Why Middle Management Is So Important Greenawalt asserts that manager training, coaching, progressive HR technology, and people science will create the modern managers we need. “Managers are the linchpin” and “middle managers are often left to their own devices, yet they have the most influence and impact on employees,” he said. Middle managers can make the biggest difference in innovation, growth, and performance for organizations. In fact, 91% of quiet quitters say that they could be more motivated to work harder, he said. And they would work harder if they had better managers. What Do Workers Want? With a possible recession looming, Mary Daly, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, said, “workers are going to stay put, ask for raises, and may go out of their way to let you know they’re satisfied.” They may only quit in their mind. Employees want to feel valued and respected, have meaningful work and know their ideas are heard. They need acknowledgment and rewards, especially when it comes to taking on extra work. Since the pandemic, employers must include flexibility, autonomy, and remote work into the benefits mix. Most of all, employees want “leaders and companies to actually care about them as a whole person. Forty percent want managers to have honest conversations about their work–and one in three say their manager can’t even lead a team,” according to Greenawalt. Workers also want to be intrinsically motivated by a shared purpose and mission. Everyone needs their “why.” “The sting of a rebuke lasts longer than the joy of praise,” said Greenawalt, citing management guru Adam Grant Who Is This Modern Manager? The best leaders are self-aware and self-reflective. Managers who don’t pretend or claim to have all the answers and are committed to their own growth earn the respect of their staff. They cultivate relationships and help people feel seen and supported. Finally, modern managers create a team mindset of high performance by aligning values with the strategic goals of the organization for a powerful shared context. Greenawalt went on to outline five key areas and tips for putting that mindset into action: 1.) Cultivate psychological safety. Start all your meetings with a check-in that has nothing to do with work. Connect as humans. Making sure people have clear roles as your business evolves is essential including defining expectations, objectives, and behaviors. “It’s like a job description on steroids,” he said. Fear-based management styles are no longer acceptable. 2.) Know and understand the strengths of your staff. Put people in positions on teams where they can shine and share what they’re best at. Blend people’s strengths and leverage them and be willing to listen and shift someone who feels they are not in the right role. Staff also “need to be free to have conversations with their leader about career growth, even if it means them leaving the company. People will leave anyways,” he said. Managers should be initiating career-growth conversations as well. 3.) Project positivity. We’re all sponges for people’s energy. Every manager should do whatever they have to do to come to work with their A game–meditate, workout–because good energy creates a ripple effect. Greenawalt added, “in addition to positive feedback, you’ve got to give constructive feedback and share it as an observation and not a judgment. Communicate: What did I see, hear, and notice?” If we approach an employee with anger, we immediately put them on the defensive. 4.) Create Intrinsic Motivation. “The sting of a rebuke lasts longer than the joy of praise,” said Greenawalt, quoting management guru Adam Grant. Pour on the praise to bring out the best in people. Make sure staff are doing work more often that truly energizes them. 5.) Challenge employees to have a growth mindset. Even those who seem very confident may never set a goal they think they can’t reach, but this is what creates true transformation. Just like climbing Kilimanjaro or running a marathon forces you to grow exponentially, managers need to be great at helping staff come up with goals they’re passionate about. At 15Five, Greenawalt has developed an experiential software training solution for managers incorporating all these ideas. “You can’t send people off and fire-hose them for three days and hope they’re going to come back and put that into practice–one-and-done is over,” Greenawalt said. Managers need more than coaching and theory. They need skill training and applied practice. The idea is to learn, practice, and apply over and over together in cohorts getting feedback and measurement. This new manager will offer your organization significant lift and productivity as well as happy employees. And happy employees mean a happy HR team. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner 15Five for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Gail Gonzales is a writer, brand strategist and designer based in Austin. Her boutique agency, Evolve Your Brand, helps business owners who care about the positive evolution of people or the planet amplify their message.

Angelica Frey | February 26, 2023

‘People Need to Continuously Come in and out of Learning’

In the past three years, workers relished having more learning opportunities, in skills both hard and soft. Sheila Jagannathan, the global head of digital learning and capacity building at the World Bank, says she coupled her interest in deepening her knowledge of data science with learning to be more deliberate and less reactive in most of her actions–and she also managed to publish a book. Haley Harbaugh, EdD, the talent-development leader at DaVita Kidney Care, says she learned how to zone-in on her own behavior when it’s counter-productive. Mary Vinette, the global head of learning and development at Technicolor Creative Studios, has been actively learning French following a work transfer. Shivani Dhir, assistant dean of digital learning at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, has been trying to de-program her own biases while also adapting to a task-management system. These opportunities were not just incidental, but due to how the pandemic disrupted the way a workday is structured and for the larger chunks of time available for us to cultivate our own erudition. A panel of learning-and-development experts cited their personal experiences in a conversation titled, “Anticipating the Job Skills of the Future,” part of From Day One’s October virtual conference on corporate learning and development. There is a tangible business case for upskilling. The 2022 Workplace Learning Report by Linkedin Learning relayed that companies that develop their people and give them opportunities for internal mobility retain them for an average of 5.4 years, as opposed to 2.9 for companies that don’t. Given the mutable the nature of jobs, companies are now learning to anticipate what new skills the employees are going to need while providing a foundation of a culture of continuous learning. After all, some jobs that are common today didn’t even exist 10 years ago. A Learning Mindset Market demands are always shifting. “Two million cybersecurity jobs in 2022 are going to go unfilled,” Dhir said. “We’re collaborating with, obviously, our academic research faculty, to think about what those those skill gaps might be, we’re talking to industry advisory councils that we built, and we’re also thinking about what pathways could we create for non-traditional workforce [candidates] that could enter this field to quickly meet the the internet-industry need.” On the other hand, “45% of the jobs will be lost to tech,” Jagannathan said. Thus, the illiterate person of the 21st century is not the one who can’t read or write, but the one unable or unwilling to learn. “These will be low-level skills, but new ones will emerge.” The expert panelists, top row from left: moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company, Shivani Dhir of NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and Mary Vinette of Technicolor Creative Studios. Bottom row: Jonathan Reyes of Reejig, Sheila Jagannathan of the World Bank, and Haley Harbaugh of DaVita (Image by From Day One) Climate change will create new demand for new skills. Sustainability goals need to be met by 2030, an unprecedented number of new graduates in developing countries is entering the workforce, and climate change will upend the traditional livelihoods of many. “[New workers] will be confronted with fewer job opportunities unless there’s an ecosystem of continuously upskilling,” says Jagannathan. “The old model of studying for the first 20 years of your life no longer exists. People need to continuously come in and out of learning, so we are not left for 50 years [of work] with the knowledge we acquire in school.” The Power of Reframing Jonathan Reyes, VP of North America and talent advisor for the workforceintelligence platform Reejig, believes that tech has changed everything around us. “I think technology is helping us reframe what the skill might be and helping organizations accelerate that,” he said. “There is a new language that we need to learn together, but I believe tech will need to accelerate that.” This calls for a powerful act of creativity. “There’s a sense of play,” echoed Vinette. “I have a nine-year-old niece and this kid can do anything,” she said, referring to her niece’s problem-solving skills coming from a a sense of play. “Whatever it is, it’s going to change and every individual will have their own way to approach the newness.” Turning High Performers Into Leaders Still, upskilling someone from mere worker to manager is its own set of challenges. “There is that professional-development gap that so many folks talked about, where employees will become managers, because of their individual performance,” said Dhir. Yet they lack skills like scenario planning, crisis communication, and people management. “That’s where corporate learning and executive programs are the solutions that we’ve worked on with organizations that are facing those problems to address them in real time with more agility.” On that note, Harbaugh recalled that a mentor once told her that, upon her being promoted to managerial level, she would now have somebody else’s career in her hands. “I really never thought about it; I had direct eyesight into navigating somebody else’s career,” she said. “We have high expectations of how we expect leaders to perform and engage their teammates. It’s important to really think and dig into more social relationships and understand how to navigate those. For me, I had to do some legwork–how to manage conflicts, how to bridge gaps between how I was managed and how I wanted to be as a leader.” At DeVita, she has been particularly keen on promoting and fostering leadership skills to technicians. “A lot of time, people think they’re not at the nursing level,” she said. Yet, “they’re literally the people hooking the patient to the machine!” And while soft skills are, of course, a key component in the reskilling market, employees should not sleep on some core competencies. Said Jagannathan: “In the toolkit of any employee, you need to have the creativity of design thinking, but along with that you need some basic tech foundation: data science, visuals.” STEM learning is not just for K-12 students anymore. Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Boston and Milan.

Lauren Castro | February 26, 2023

Creating a Culture of Belonging in a Tech-Based Workplace

“We have to continue to move forward, and at Dell, we think about work as an outcome. It’s not a particular time or place anymore,” said Vanice Hayes, Dell’s chief of culture, diversity and inclusion, referring to the typical 9-to-5. “So it’s important for leaders to think differently about how work gets done, and be supportive, and make sure they're flexible.” Hayes provided insight into the secrets of being purposeful in a remote, ever-changing workplace alongside moderator Dan Goodgame, editor-in-chief of Texas Monthly. As the world continues to play catch up, intentionality and sense of belonging has become more important than ever. Goodgame and Hayes discussed “Creating a Culture of Belonging in a Tech-Based Workplace,” a fireside chat during From Day One’s Austin conference, touching on ways to foster inclusion without losing productivity. Hayes, former math teacher in San Marcos, is armed with the idea that leaders should meet their peers and employees where they are–a sentiment she has taken from the classroom. As more and more companies move into a more hybrid-friendly space, the idea of intentionality paired with the new waves of flexibility has opened doors for those underrepresented and unheard. Hayes shared the story of a recent new hire who had the chance to go virtually anywhere, but chose Dell due to the fluidity of remote work that ultimately eliminates relocation worries. Furthermore, the decision to be more open to remote work sets an important precedent in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. “Enabling that choice is really, really important not only to people of color, but we’re finding it’s true for our team members that are part of the LGBTQIA+ community or team members with disabilities,” Hayes said. “Being hybrid has really helped us to attract people that we might not have ever been able to meet before.” Hayes was interviewed by Dan Goodgame, editor-in-chief of Texas Monthly Creating the space for organic interruptions, virtual check-ins, and collaboration is how Hayes suggests keeping up with the company culture in a more tech-forward environment. Asking crucial questions such as ‘How are you doing?’ and ‘How can I help?’ opens the flow of communication between all ranks of employees, and can be the difference between a positive or negative experience. “Now that we all are equal squares on a page, you’re starting to hear more and more from these folks that may have historically been quiet,” Hayes said. “Now, they’re speaking up and kind of sharing ideas and best practices on how to get work done.” A common misconception Goodgame identified is most managers and leaders believe productivity must have dropped due to leniency in location. However, Hayes said that there has been no meaningful difference and instead, the hours of work have shifted. In an effort to further diversify their roster, Hayes shared that Dell’s 2030 goals have had a great start as about 34% of its workforce and 28% of global leaders identify as female, and roughly 15% of U.S. employees hail from underrepresented groups. A major contributing factor to “casting a wider net” has been consolidating energy at the source–young people in school. “We have a program called the Student TechCrew with a local high school here where we train students to be the tech support for their schools,” she said. “It’s huge because we’re getting them interested in STEM, we’re getting them that hands-on experience, and while they may never end up working at Dell, we’re doing what we can to contribute to building those skills and getting people interested.” Goodgame added that for Texas Monthly, opening hybrid positions was the difference between 30 people applying versus roughly 300. At the end of the conversation, Hayes instilled the idea that inclusion has become more widely found at companies like Google because of the hybrid model allowing access to a whole new set of benefits, including constant innovative advances. Barriers that often halt other talented individuals have disappeared and have opened a world of opportunities for corporate America. Lauren Castro is the social media editor at Texas Monthly, whose writing has appeared in other publications including Flaunt Magazine and Alcalde. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin.