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Full-Cycle Recruiting: How to Hire Top Talent With a Holistic Approach

The U.S. labor market has trailed expectations this year. The number of open jobs has been sinking since the beginning of 2024, and it’s getting harder to find a job, applicants say. Job seekers are frustrated not only because there are fewer open roles, but because hiring processes are so poor. LinkedIn is full of users writing about their terrible job-seeking experiences with confusing or unusually protracted hiring processes, fake job postings, and ghosting recruiters.Kim Stevens is the manager of talent acquisition at Lever, an applicant tracking system. She’s spent a decade in talent acquisition, working across industries, and at both B2B and B2C companies. She says it doesn’t have to be this way, and employers have an obligation to do better–by their recruiters and their applicants.“Full-cycle recruiting is a holistic approach,” Stevens said during a From Day One webinar on how full-cycle recruiting can help employers hire top talent. “Instead of passing candidates from one recruiter to the next to move them through the process, there is a single recruiter managing the process from the initial job requisition all the way to how new hires are integrated into the company.”Many companies have already adopted a full-cycle process, but some are still stuck on old models, like a sourcing-led path where one recruiter brings in the talent then candidates are passed among the team; very early on, the hiring experience is interrupted. For job candidates, full-cycle recruiting should be unnoticeable. “Having one person manage all of it does create a more seamless transition for the candidate and one point of contact. If it’s done well, it’s very good as far as the candidate experience goes.”Kim Stevens of Lever by Employ led the webinar (photo courtesy of Stevens)A full-cycle approach is important now because the labor market is so tight, she said. “We have so many [job seekers] in the market, and we can empathize with that and embed that in our thought process when we’re creating processes within our [applicant tracking system] to not only manage the volume, but to focus on all of the different parts of the process. We should ask ‘How can they work for us, and how can they work for the candidate?’ And you really have to do that with automation.”Stevens spent a year on the job market as a candidate herself and saw how brutal the process can be for job seekers. “It made me think about all the times where I could have done my job better; I owed it to candidates to give them a better experience. I needed to reset and really value what my job is and the impact that it can make on people, their lives, and their livelihood.”She also felt the importance of having a single point of contact at the hiring company. “I saw the good and the bad and the ugly when it came to the candidate experience.” Whether it was being passed around among a recruiting team or having to create a username and password for every application (even if it was at the same company).“Being in the job market is stressful enough. If we can mitigate some of those steps and automate and customize, it’s such an important way to create that seamless experience for the company and for the candidate. There are so many different layers within your ATS that you can customize, like candidate communications, ensuring that they’re not only getting followed up with after they apply but that they’re getting updates about where we are in the process.”Full-cycle recruiting teams, juggling multiple activities and multiple candidates at once, have to be really good at time management. New adopters may require training before they’re ready to fly solo. A good applicant tracking system, and maybe even a little artificial intelligence, can help with multitasking, but “technology should be viewed as an enhancement, not a replacement for that human interaction,” Stevens said.For instance, full-cycle can be enhanced by some smart, time-saving changes. “It was ingrained into me by a previous leader of mine, that if you’re having to do something more than once and it’s the same task: Automate it,” she said. “If you’re getting the same questions about–let’s say, benefits–then create something that’s automated, where you can just reply with a signature.”The recruiting process is often the first impression a company will make on job seekers. And if it’s a bad one, the relationship can sour–or solidify–as soon as it begins. A good ATS doesn’t solve all problems. Other factors, like a company’s employer brand will make it easier–or harder–to recruit the workforce you need. Stevens recalled working in university recruiting for a past employer whose employer brand was so strong that when she walked onto the University of Texas at Austin campus, she felt like a celebrity. Students wanted to see what the company would do next, they wanted to talk to recruiters. Of course, recruiting is a huge part of that reputation.Every step of the process is an opportunity for thoughtful interaction with job candidates. It’s a reflection of your company and what the employee experience is like. “There’s so much to say about a full-cycle recruiting process, but also an ATS that enables that process and makes it more streamlined, especially given how many candidates in the market are already stressed. It’s so important as leaders and as companies to keep that in mind. The reality of our market is that we have so many people in it–how can we really make sure that our ATS is working for them too?”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Lever by Employ, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | October 04, 2024

Why Being “Fiercely Authentic” Is Part of a Company’s New Set of Values

Marta Pateiro, head of organizational development, diversity, inclusion and culture at Pernod Ricard, cites her immigrant background as being instrumental in her approach to corporate culture. Her mother arrived in the U.S. from Spain with an infant Marta, just $200 in her pocket, and little understanding of the English language.“That cultural perspective and growing up with a family that struggled early on but did everything they could to live that American dream is what shaped me and how I think about culture – always appreciating people’s perspectives, where they come from, understanding who they are, how they were raised, and what’s important to them,” Pateiro said.Now, Pernod Ricard, a long-established company, is rolling out a new set of values to define its culture, based on employee feedback and its corporate evolution. During a fireside chat at From Day One’s September virtual conference, Pateiro spoke about how inclusion, connection, and a passion for challenge are being woven into the fabric of the organization.Seizing the Current Cultural MomentPateiro has always been drawn to companies that encourage authenticity. “I always think about aligning myself to organizations that give you that opportunity to show up as who you are, and that celebrate differences,” Pateiro said. But pre-pandemic, that was harder to achieve, she says. “We were living in a time where it was a very different mindset,” Pateiro said. During and after Covid, technological advances in corporate communications and connectivity have allowed employees to engage on a deeper level and access services that can be more personalized.Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton of the Denver Post spoke with Marta Pateiro of Pernod Ricard during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)Corporate values are also becoming increasingly important to job candidates, especially younger generations. “We hope that drives more candidates to us,” she said. One way the organization brings its values to life is through videos on its career website to make sure it’s attracting the right talent.Launching Updated Corporate ValuesPernod Ricard recently launched its new set of corporate values, while also reminding the team that some of them are not actually so new, referring to them as “legacy values.” “They’re still tied to things that are important to the business, but they're updated to reflect where we are today in this global economy. It’s an evolution,” she said.Pateiro suggests that most companies review their values every five to ten years, just as Pernod Ricard did. It’s important to ask questions like, “Does this actually match up with what we’re doing today? Is this aligned to our business priorities? Do they align to our people?” she said.For the bottom-up approach, they collected employee feedback in a uniquely personal way. “They asked employees to send videos of a day in the life as a Pernod Ricard employee,” Pateiro said, citing videos that came from the factory floor, corporate offices, and work-from-home set ups. Over 3,000 videos came in, with employees citing how they feel about the company and what is most important to them.For the top-down approach, “the leadership team got together to say, ‘Where do we see ourselves in the next three to five years, from a business strategy standpoint? And so, in order to be successful, what does that look like?’” Pateiro said.After data collection and intense brainstorming and analytics, the company came up with four core values:Grounded in the real. “We are a business that has soul,” Pateiro said. The phrase also cleverly refers to how the liquor company literally makes its products, with plants that come from the ground. Fiercely authentic. “Everyone was proactive in sharing how important it was to feel like they could bring their whole selves to work. That was a key theme that came up in almost every video,” Pateiro said.Connected beyond borders. Employee videos came in from 770 locations around the world. “We are global, and that's important. We need to make sure that we are open to the world and open to understanding the different diversities and perspectives that come with that,” Pateiro said.Passion for challenge. “It is a different time coming out of Covid,” Pateiro said. “There are different socioeconomic changes that impact how we are doing business today.”Becoming “Fiercely Authentic”“What does it mean to be ‘fiercely authentic’ on the job?” asked moderator Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, neighborhoods reporter for The Denver Post. It doesn’t mean workers can just boldly say whatever they are thinking without consequence. Instead,  “it just gives them the permission to feel psychologically safe,” said Pateiro. “We still have our integrity around respect for one another, understanding that we are still colleagues, and we still need to be professional, but making sure that they feel empowered.”The word choice for the values was carefully aligned to the language used by employees in the videos, reflecting the intention and emotion behind their feedback.Measuring the ImpactPateiro said Pernod Ricard is scheduling pulse checks over the next few years to monitor the success of the new value system. After launching the values at a town hall, a survey was immediately sent out to see if employees understood what was happening. “In the coming quarters [we’ll ask], ‘Is this living up to what you were expecting?’ How are you receiving it?’” Then a new category regarding culture will be added to the annual employee survey.Defining, launching, and monitoring values is not a communications department task, Pateiro says, but instead falls into the category of change management. “It’s [about] how you change mindsets and how you change your customers’ perspectives,” she said. “It’s living it through the products, the solutions, the things that you’re offering, as well as how you’re showing up in the marketplace.”Ultimately, Pateiro emphasizes, the values should be driven by the employees – whether you are working with a long-established corporation or a startup. “It’s your workforce that makes your culture,” she said. “The organizations that do the best are the ones that tie that cultural framework to every part of the ecosystem.”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | October 02, 2024

Beyond Birth: How Employers Can Invest in the Postpartum Period

More and more organizations are realizing that providing fertility benefits is essential to support and retain employees who are looking to start their family-building journey. However, a key period may be getting overlooked in the process: postpartum. How are organizations supporting employees after they give birth and return to work?During a From Day One webinar, experts from Ovia Health discussed the pregnancy and postpartum risk factors that can influence long-term health outcomes, as well as the ways employers can invest in meaningful end-to-end digital health solutions that support employees throughout their entire care continuum.Health in the ‘Fourth Trimester’Moderator Sarah Begley, director of member content at Atria, says that the postpartum period is often referred to as “the fourth trimester.” This time can require just as much special care and attention as the months of pregnancy. “The government has expanded [the postpartum period] to 12 months,” said Corrinne Hobbs, general manager and VP, employer market organization at Ovia Health. This is a significant and relatively recent change in thinking.“When we originally thought about postpartum, it was geared toward the six weeks after birth, whether that was vaginal delivery or C-section,” said Leslie Saltzman, chief medical officer at Ovia Health. “At the end of that period, the mother would go back to their OBGYN or their nurse midwife, be cleared and told ‘everything’s fine. You can go back to your normal life.’” In reality, Saltzman says, the first six weeks, when everyone is giving the mother time and attention, is the easy part. It’s what comes next that can be the challenge. “The exhaustion in those periods after can be worse,” she said, as can the complications that appear later after the stress-test of childbirth.“In the U.S., many of us have heard about the high rates of maternal death that we have compared to our peer nations. 65% of those deaths actually happen in the postpartum period,” Saltzman said, noting that fatal complications can arise when mothers are back home and more or less alone. She notes infections, high blood pressure, cardiovascular complications like cardiomyopathy or blood clots, and mental health issues like postpartum depression or psychosis are conditions that need to be monitored and addressed during this period. And complications diagnosed during pregnancy such as preeclampsia or gestational diabetes can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in women for the rest of their lives.What Postpartum Care Looks LikeThe American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology recommends that every person that has a delivery has contact with their provider, whether that's OBGYN or a midwife, within three weeks, with ongoing care as needed up until a final visit at around 12 weeks. “What that’s translating to for most people is a phone call followed by a single visit,” Saltzman said. Only about 60% of people even go to that postpartum visit, Saltzman says. Many people don’t even have 12 weeks off for parental leave, making it even more challenging to attend the appointment. Most daycare centers won’t even accept children until they are at least six weeks old. “You’re still trying to figure out how to feed your baby at that point,” Begley noted. And because we’re living less and less in multigenerational homes, Salztman says, essential knowledge in baby care is not being passed down.Leaders from Ovia Health spoke with Sarah Begley during the From Day One webinar (photo by From Day One)Among those that do attend the checkup: “After you have that visit with your OBGYN and you get clear that your cervix is normal, your incision looks okay, and talk about ongoing needs for birth control… New mothers are then left in the system where it is their responsibility to identify if they have a complication and try to figure out whether that needs care or not. And then have to make the appointments and go,” Saltzman said. “This is where the existing system doesn’t really meet the needs.”How Digital Solutions Can Bridge the GapDigital healthcare programs through an employer can provide structured and personalized access to information on health and baby care at this crucial time in a parent’s life that gives them, Hobbs says. A digital solution can help a person record their symptoms and then provide insight into what might be happening and whether to seek care, potentially saving them the time and expense of a doctor’s visit, Saltzman says.These digital solutions, Hobbs says, should include information on physical recovery and support, postpartum depression screenings, lactation coaching, sleep training, and appointment management for the parent and the baby, including vaccination schedules. “A tool that can help you manage all of that while you're going through this physical, emotional, and mental transition would be tremendously helpful,” Hobbs said.Ovia Health’s Postpartum SolutionIn addition to the digital solutions mentioned above, Hobbs says Ovia Health’s platform also provides information on potential pregnancy complications and associated risk factors, such as atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, which is “one of the most expensive health conditions.” The platform incorporates all potential aspects of life tied to pregnancy. “Our solution addresses reproductive life, planning and contraception, pelvic floor recovery, return to work, social and financial planning, social determinants to health and equity, and navigation of care,” Hobbs said.“Our solution starts with recovery, so we are meeting people where they are in their individualized journey,” Hobbs said. Symptom trackers encourage people to engage with the platform’s dashboard daily to provide checklists and guidance along every step of the way. Behind the tracking are clinical algorithms primed to notice an impending issue. Critical alerts let the person know right away if something is abnormal, with care team members, who are licensed clinical staff, ready to respond and guide the parent through next steps.The platform also encourages a segue back from OBGYN care to primary care and routine screenings since. Mothers often neglect their own basic non-pregnancy related healthcare once children arrive, Saltzman says.Building an Inclusive Postpartum PolicyEmployers, Begley says, should be “shifting their workplace culture to be more inclusive of those returning from maternity leave, parental leave, or being a new parent.” This includes several key factors, as described below.Paid parental leave is crucial to postpartum recovery. “It really helps women to overcome or traverse the physical, emotional, and mental needs of being a parent,” Hobbs said. “Living in the United States, there's not a standard or universal paid parental leave requirement. So, employers are left to decide whether they can and will offer that.” This means women especially are often required to return to work during those first 12 months when they are still physically and mentally recovering. It’s worth noting, Hobbs says, “that women who take paid parental leave have lower rates of postpartum depression. And women of color are more likely to have jobs where paid leave is not offered at all.” Employers looking to cultivate a diverse workforce would do well to invest in paid parental leave whenever possible, for as long as possible.Flexibility and inclusivity in spaces also matters. Physical space for pumping and breastfeeding also builds a welcoming and safe environment for employees who are in-person. Flexible scheduling to allow for childcare, healthcare appointments, and other issues is another way employers can support new parents–without cutting into their sick time.Management training is important to make sure leaders understand parental policies and how to interact with workers in an inclusive manner, regardless of their family situation, can ease the process for the whole team. In turn, employees also need to be trained on how to communicate their needs.Lastly, transition plans should be put in place to allow employees on leave to be able to ensure their continued professional development and assignments. “We're often afraid to step away because we feel like it might set us back. Adjusting the culture to support the employee and having that manager training to create that inclusive environment related to situations like this are critically important,” Hobbs said. “It really improves the workforce culture around [pregnancy] and postpartum.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Ovia Health, for sponsoring this webinar. Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | October 01, 2024

How to Upgrade Company Culture—And Make It Stick

“For years, I had a front row seat for how lack of culture or toxic culture can have an incredibly negative impact on an organization. The seat that I had was defending organizations in the court of law, in front of judges and juries,” said Elaine Becraft, the head of human resources for Siemens Healthineers, a branch of Siemens that makes the machines that carry out a lot of the diagnostic blood and urine testing around the world. She learned that the distance from no culture to toxic culture isn’t very far.Becraft, a lawyer by training, was no longer interested in playing defense as problems materialized, nor did she want to lead the clean-up crew following a culture-related disaster. She wanted to be proactive in creating a motivating and inclusive culture, so she joined HR. “I felt like we could do better.”I interviewed Becraft for a fireside chat during From Day One’s September virtual conference on creating a healthy and durable culture. She told the story of how the company upgraded its company culture, and instituted processes to make it last.How to Rewrite Company Culture–And Make It StickIf Becraft was to avoid playing defense or repeating post-incident disaster relief, she knew that Siemens Healthineers had to upgrade its culture: to state its purpose, name its values, and identify the behaviors that reinforce them. But where to begin?“So often you see companies where it’s top-down: Maybe somebody in the C-suite is in charge of developing culture, or the CEO says, ‘I’ve got this great idea, let’s just run with it.’ We went about it a little bit differently.” Becraft is responsible for 15,000 employees in more than 60 countries; to change the culture, she needed buy-in from more than just the C-suite. So she found high-potential talent much lower in the organization and brought them in to debate the purpose and vision for the company.Ultimately, they needed to arrive at something that people would enthusiastically adopt, that “when somebody says, ‘Why do you work for Siemens Healthineers? Why are you excited to be there?’ is the kind of rallying cry that gets employees really excited.” They arrived at this: Pioneer breakthroughs in healthcare for everyone, everywhere, sustainably. That was step one.Step two was identifying the company’s values: Listen first, win together, learn passionately, step boldly, and own it. They deliberately wrote them in the understood first person–that is, “I” and “we” statements–“so my team can come together and talk about whether we are exhibiting these values. At the end of each year in my performance review, I have to talk about whether I’m exhibiting these values.”It takes more than a memo from the top to spread the culture and its reinforcing behaviors throughout a global organization. To grow culture rhizomes–a live system that perpetuates a healthy culture season after season–find the influencers. “Sometimes the influencers are obvious in the org chart, they’re at the top, but sometimes they’re not as obvious, and you have to get to know who’s going to carry your message because they believe in it too.”Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza interviewed Elaine Becraft of Siemens Healthineers during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)If the company was to reinforce and reward employees who embody the company purpose and values, then they’d have to reinstate formal performance reviews, which had been retired almost a decade ago, long before Becraft arrived.Of course, change management is easier imagined than done. When leaders told her they wanted a formal mechanism to hold their teams accountable to the new values, Becraft assumed they were asking for performance reviews. It was a humbling experience for the new HR head.“I left out of the gates with my team full of gusto to make this happen,” she said. “But a lot of people in the organization resisted the idea of reintroducing performance ratings.” The strongest resistance came from HR teams. “I thought, they just don’t get it. For 30 seconds, I allowed myself that awful thought. Then I realized that I don’t get it. These are the individuals who, eight years prior, had been the face of this radical evolution revolution to get rid of performance ratings, and now I was asking them to do something different that could be perceived as failure.” She had to slow down and convince the HR teams the idea was worthwhile.Despite the good and necessary attitude change, Becraft wishes she hadn’t let the naysayers have so much of her attention. “At one point, a senior leader said to me, ‘Why are you trying to win every single person over with this? You never will.’” At a certain point, you have to decide what you’re going to do, then do it. There will always be someone who refuses to change their mind.“It’s not possible–and it’s not even appropriate–to strive for one culture, especially in a global organization like ours,” she said, reflecting on the enterprise-level change. “But our common language has really helped us to be consistent. We have our purpose. We know why we jump out of bed, or at least why we log in, in the morning. We are there to impact patients in a positive way. We also have the wording, the vernacular, the phraseology that we use in our values. We practice them with each other, and that really helps.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | September 30, 2024

How HR Can Become a Strategic Partner in Annual Business Planning

Poor planning returns poor results. In a company where the workforce is unprepared to meet shifting business needs, organizational performance can drop by as much as 26 percentage points, Gartner found in 2024. Human resources is responsible for delivering a workforce fit to meet the firm’s goals–no matter how fickle–so when business leaders plan poorly, or plan alone, HR teams struggle.John Bernatovicz is the founder of human capital management platform Willory and the author of HR Like a Boss: Your Guide to Amazingly Awesome HR. He believes the buck doesn’t stop with HR or talent acquisition; the business plan is a shared responsibility. “If you don’t feel like your company is effective in annual planning, look no further than your CEO, your board, or other key executives responsible for driving that critical business function,” he said during a From Day One webinar on how to become a strategic HR partner in your global annual business planning. Most executives have a vision for the future of the company, but many fail to consider how their workforce will get them there.Just 32% of talent acquisition leaders feel like strategic partners to their organization, according to 2024 research from the Josh Bersin Co. Business leaders that consider workforce planning immaterial are an acute frustration for TA.Human capital has always been a vital business asset, so why is now the time for HR to insist on having a place in annual planning? According to Sofia Moll, head of global talent management at HiBob, the effects of the pandemic continue to linger over working models, still influencing where and how talent is found. Employee expectations have also shifted, not just regarding compensation and benefits, but also career trajectories and skill development. Further, artificial intelligence is already coloring the skills employees are developing–and setting new standards for productivity.Becoming a Strategic Partner in Annual PlanningEarning a place in annual planning requires human resources people to think like business people, panelists agreed. HR may not think in numbers or spreadsheets, but executives certainly do, Bernatovicz says. Unless talent acquisition learns to link workers to revenue and teach executives to do the same, they won’t prove their relevance. “I see oftentimes that companies look at the bottom of the P&L first, not realizing that profit is an outcome of a number of unique things that are going to happen and run effectively in a strategic manner.”The panelists spoke about "Becoming an HR Strategic Partner in Your Global Business Annual Planning" during the From Day One webinar (photo by From Day One)“They need that data to understand where you’re coming from,” said Lane McFarland, senior director of talent management at data intelligence company Flashpoint. “Maybe the finance team just needs to hear the cost savings initiatives or the vacancy savings during the hiring period. Maybe the CEO just needs to know how many [positions] you’ve fulfilled by department.”Strategic thinkers ask good questions and answer them. Know the short-term and long-term business goals–and whether you have the workforce to achieve them, McFarland said. Inventory the skills of your team and find the gaps. If you don’t have what you need, can you develop those skills, or should you hire from the outside? Consider potential labor market shifts and how they might bump up against those plans. Could overall market swings change the business needs in the coming year? What are the consequences of hiring now versus later? What are the risks of over-hiring? What happens when you overload a manager and it pushes them out the door? If you hire in less expensive markets to save money, can you properly support those employees? What about regulatory requirements? Business leaders rely on their HR partners to inform them on the labor market and advise on how it will help or hinder achieving business goals.It’s not enough to be only a dollars-and-cents business contributor: Trust and influence are ultimately won through relationships. Start with the business leaders you already know, said Moll. That might be the sales director or head of content marketing. “Just get on their calendar for 15 minutes or 20 minutes every other week or every month to talk about what they care about,” she said. “Start learning about their business: What are the metrics that they are looking at? What are the pain points they’re experiencing?”Bernatovicz recommended starting with the finance team in particular. “Develop a relationship with [the finance practitioner] at whatever level you’re at, so if you’re the head of HR, then that’s the CFO. If you’re a manager, then find a manager. Get to know them as individuals, what makes them tick, why they’re working at the company, what they do outside of work.”As you embed yourself with your business counterparts, track the impact of decisions made about the workforce and provide regular updates, Moll advised. Know your time to hire and turnover, the cost of recruiting versus training versus internal moves, the success rate of onboarding, and how long it takes. Then involve business teams in your work, inviting them to work alongside you in investigating turnover rates, pipeline problems, or onboarding results.Be a helper and be a problem-solver, said McFarland. “Even if your team is split up between a people experience side and a talent side, talent acquisition specialists can be the ear for another team member, even if they just need someone to vent to or help them through difficulty or bounce an idea off of.”“They have to first see you as a partner that they can trust,” Moll said. “That takes time, and that means building relationships a little bit at a time, and that means maybe not participating in workforce planning this year, but you’re building to be part of it the next one.” The good news, McFarland noted, is that the relationship between HR and business is already becoming more strategic, and the direction of travel is positive.“Workforce planning is a tool, not a result. It’s not about having the perfect plan. That doesn’t exist,” Moll said. A plan is a guide. When you have a guide, you can adapt when things change. And things will always change.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, HiBob, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | September 30, 2024

Enhancing Employee Support With Technology and Community Building

Talkspace, a company dedicated to offering accessible mental health services, recognizes the importance of mental health and well-being for all employees, from therapists to corporate staff. To support this, they've harnessed technology to foster a community-driven culture, providing the tools employees need to thrive.Andrea Cooper, Talkspace’s chief people officer says that from the time an employee first joins the company, they try their best to meet them where they are and connect them with the technology and services to help them succeed. Cooper spoke in a thought leadership spotlight titled “Enhancing Employee Support and Engagement Through Technology and Community Building,” at From Day One’s August virtual conference.Given the broad range of employees at Talkspace, about 50% are therapists and the other half are on the corporate side, she says it's important not to make assumptions. “Because we have a broad range of employees with a lot of different backgrounds, we shouldn't assume that people are going to be immediately comfortable with the technology that we’re asking them to use. And we shouldn’t assume that they know all the functionality available to them.”The company uses some of the common business tools like Google Suite and Slack, for example, but they try to maximize those platform’s effectiveness by really understanding how to use the technology better.Ahead of 2024, Cooper says her team took some time reflecting on strategic objectives and what OKRs (objectives and key results) they wanted to commit to for the new year. “We spent time reflecting on our people leader experience, and candidly, what we found is that it was inconsistent,” Cooper said.Andrea Cooper of Talkspace led the thought leadership spotlight (company photo)“It wasn’t that it was not there, but it just could be better.” Cooper says they had to acknowledge that people leaders are critical to the experience that employees have. “[They] really often set an important tone for the company.”Being fully remote, Cooper says their people leaders were not always pausing to take care of themselves. They had to self-reflect on what, as a company, they were doing, what they weren’t doing, and what they could do better.Despite being a “Slack company,” they didn’t previously have a channel for people leaders. So, they created a channel just for their people leaders, and used it to communicate with them ahead of company news. “Historically, we would just send [news] out to all employees and leaders at the same time, and [we] didn’t really position them to support their teams effectively. So we use this channel as a way to give advanced communication to people leaders to make their job better and easier.”Cooper says that in addition to giving advance notice of company news, they’ve opened their Slack channel as a safe space to simply ask questions, instead of everything being routed to one team leader. This has opened “the door to a broader support system for people leaders,” which has led to “more interactions and [a] sense of support and community.”Talkspace also offers a drop in session once a month. It’s an informal Q&A format without an obligation to show up. “If you’re someone that enjoys the live discussion, join us. If you're someone who prefers to read and reflect on your own, here are the slides that we talked about,” Cooper said.Finally, to bring it all together and connect the dots, Cooper says they started using tools like JIRA and Confluence to automate various aspects of the employee and people leader experience with their People Resource Center. Building Connection Through Community“I’m sure we all have a clear memory in our mind, if you went to the office four or five days a week, and then that day in March of 2020 [when] many of us just suddenly started working remotely. If you were in HR, you probably also remember how hard it was to build culture and to maintain the sense of community in the absence of going in-person five days a week.”To build community among their nearly 500 mostly remote employees, Cooper says Talkspace does an “all hands” meeting once a month. In July and August of this year, they did a Co-worker Feud, live classes (like cultivating healthy adult friendships), and tips on coping with loneliness, for example.“We’re trying to meet people in all different places. Some people like to go to a live webinar. Some people like to do self-reflection with a worksheet. Some people like to join a game and just have fun and forget about work for 30 minutes,” she said.Cooper points to three things she’s learned in how they’ve used technology to help with creating a sense of community and culture: Little things can have a big impact on employee experience.People leaders need support and a safe space to learn and grow.Investing in people and making time for connections isn’t just a feel good thing, it's essential to collectively succeed and deliver on business results.“I hope that we continue to learn and grow and experiment in a way that helps our employees feel that sense of community and as they continue to be fully remote.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Talkspace, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.

Matthew Koehler | September 25, 2024

Regenerating Your Leaders and Teams With Sustainable Energy

While compensation and benefits are important, they’re not the only factors that influence job satisfaction. Seventy percent of preventable leavers say that if their general work culture had been better, they would have stuck around. In other words, if the energy was better, they’d stay. And engaged employees could save U.S. companies trillions of dollars.Andrew Deutscher, the founder of Regenerate, knows about energy–especially how a work environment that drains you of energy can lead to disengaged employees. After a career in sales, marketing, and media leading to burnout, he learned the value of understanding energy and managing it to create sustainable performance for himself. He started Regenerate to spread this message to other companies, their leaders, and employees to help “develop energy-inspired sustainable practices to transform their workplaces.”Deutscher told me during an interview for From Day One that his goal at Regenerate is to “teach people how to better manage their energy inside of a lot of demands and accelerated burnout in this era of work.” Poor Leadership, Not Bad WorkersDeutscher points to high turnover among leaders because many companies don’t provide proper support, and the high turnover often occurs because leaders are overstretched and their capacity is drained.“Part of the reason that engagement is the core issue for so many people around burnout and turnover, is because leaders are so busy and under the weight of a lot of responsibility. If you’re running a full time job [while] also having to lead, which is a full time job, there’s really going to be a strain,” he said.There’s an opportunity for growth and improvement when teams step up and speak out. Oftentimes, bad leaders stick around because the people around them don’t have the courage to speak up or don’t understand the damage being done to teams and company culture, Deutscher says. When awareness is raised, these challenges can be addressed before “it infests, and those leaders get to stay and [create this] really bad environment.”Employees may not approach their managers to express their feelings of disengagement, which provides leaders with a valuable opportunity to proactively foster open communication and create a supportive environment. It's part of a leader’s role to recognize and address these needs.Deutscher shared a graphic from a 2022 study done by McKinsey showing the primary drivers of disengagement, where uncaring and uninspiring leaders were among the top. The focus on leadership shows up just behind a lack of career development and inadequate compensation. “There are six or seven different things here, but they’re all about energy,” he said. “Energy is the X factor for creating sustainable high performance. Energy is the internal strength and vitality required for sustained physical, emotional and mental activity,” Deutscher wrote for Forbes.Leaders also play an important role in articulating purpose to their workers. Leaders who create a culture around purposeful work cultivate employees who are more engaged because they understand what they’re working for and have a common goal to achieve. “When leaders are moving too fast, they fail to articulate how the work matters and how it's meaningful–both to them individually and to the company.”When leaders effectively manage their teams and employees have a clear understanding of the goals, everyone’s efforts align, creating continuity. This synergy fosters a stronger company culture, where everyone’s collective energy is directed toward shared objectives.Commitment to CollaborationWhen Deutscher gets hired to coach and help leaders restructure their energy for a better work culture, the outcome is a more engaged and cohesive team that values commonality and goal orientation over individual agendas and scarcity. Some of his assignments focus on helping the leader bolster collaboration and teamwork.Leaders who prioritize building strong connections with their teams are better positioned to drive meaningful change, says Deutscher. When companies embrace this approach, they create the conditions for long-term success through healthy leadership.From Day One spoke with Deutscher about energizing the workforce (company photo)Sometimes these businesses have a solid strategy or product, but they can't overcome the human energy aspect needed for success. Deutscher helps leaders create alignment within their teams, so not only do they have a great product, but also a great culture. “[A]t the top end, if we’re customizing content, if you want commitment from people, you need to be aligned. If you want alignment, you have to be really clear on where you’re going.”Deutscher has golden rules for achieving this. “Look people in the eye. Be respectful. Ask questions. Give them a chance to be heard. Be receptive to what they’re saying. Have a good value exchange of candor and receptivity. Speak your mind, but do it respectfully.”Cracking the Code to Energy EngagementFiguring out the energy coefficient on engagement and retention is about getting the fundamentals right and doing the deeper work. “Getting back to the basics is hard for people, teams, and leaders [because] it’s boring.” It takes a long-term commitment to working more sustainably and to building a workplace that prioritizes well-being alongside results.Preparation is key for leaders and companies when thinking about the longer horizon for sustainability. “All we want to do is play the game. We don’t want to prepare to win the game in the workplace. That’s essentially what regenerate means. You have to renew, recover, strategize, plan, spend more time thinking and planning than doing. [That’s how] you prepare to win.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner Regenerate, for supporting this sponsor spotlight. To learn more, tune into Andrew’s workshop at our October virtual conference.Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.

Matthew Koehler | September 25, 2024

Transforming Culture: A Case Study on the Power of ‘Thinking Patterns’

At a critical point in the growth of a publicly traded data company, the company faced significant leadership challenges. Stock prices were down, an activist investor was applying pressure, and the leadership team lacked diversity. To add a bit more stress, the pandemic happened the day Martha Delehanty, chief people officer, started her new position.Having worked with fassforward in the past, Delehanty turned to Rose Fass and team to help executives adopt a new way of thinking. Her goal under the leadership of a new CEO was to help build a leadership team that would make clearer, more confident decisions and cultivate a healthier, more inclusive company culture.Setting the Stage for Cultural TransformationTo understand how Fass and Delehanty began the conversation about reshaping the company culture, it’s important to start with a clear definition of it. “When Rose Fass, founder of fassforward, is asked what culture in the workplace is, she says, ‘It’s the environment we operate in. Simply put, culture is how we do things around here.’ Building a healthy, inclusive, and durable culture goes beyond surface-level changes. It requires a shift in how leaders think and interact.”Rose Fass is the founder and chair of fassforward Consulting Group (company photo)Fass’s partnership with Delehanty spans over two decades, beginning when Delehanty was CHRO at Verizon Wireless. During that time, they worked together to roll out a leadership initiative that transformed how top executives approached leadership. Encouraging leaders to reflect on their thinking patterns and consider how others think opened the door to four critical leadership conversations: Courage, Vision, Reality, and Ethics.Their success at Verizon Wireless laid the groundwork for a broader business rollout. Verizon Wireless’s Realize program helped reshape the company’s leadership approach, thus strengthening the bench. And, when one leadership move at the top created 1,500 downstream opportunities, “we were ready,” Delehanty said. This transformation was then applied to her new role as CHRO of a well-known data company, and the conversation continued.The Four Elements of Leadership ThinkingCourage: Courage drives bold action. Leaders use Courage to determine the ‘when’—setting ambitious deadlines, making tough calls, and taking calculated risks.Vision: Vision focuses on exploring new possibilities. It’s about defining the ‘what,’ inspiring teams to think big, and setting a clear direction for the future.Reality: Reality is rooted in evidence and data. It’s the ‘how’ of leadership, ensuring decisions are grounded in facts and supported by actionable plans.Ethics: Ethics is about valuing people and building trust. It answers the ‘why’ of leadership, focusing on fairness, integrity, and keeping commitments.Tasked with attracting new diverse leaders and aligning the team, she realized that shifting the HR function from merely handling the "hard stuff" to embracing acts of courage was essential for the company's success.Creating a Common Language for LeadershipTo shift from doing hard things to leading with courage, the company needed a common language—and Thinking Patterns became that shared framework. Over time, the company’s leadership evolved, moving beyond silos and reactive decision-making. Bringing in new leaders from different backgrounds changed the conversation and the business. The leadership team embraced different perspectives, encouraged collaboration, and ultimately drove innovation.The tool not only aligned the leadership team but also fostered a more inclusive environment. Leaders began to think beyond immediate pressures, focusing on long-term outcomes and shared goals. This shift, made possible through the adoption of Thinking Patterns, played an important role in transforming the company’s culture and business performance.Fass, who has guided leaders through these transformations for over two decades, often references The Chocolate Conversation—a metaphor for how leaders often talk past each other, misunderstanding the real message. With Thinking Patterns, leaders are able to break through these barriers and engage in meaningful conversations that lead to action and change.Delehanty’s journey underscores the power of a different approach to leadership. Moving from reactive problem-solving to proactive, expansive thinking allowed her to align the team, attract diverse talent, and cultivate a culture where everyone could thrive.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, fassforward, for supporting this sponsor spotlight.

the Editors | September 24, 2024

How to Reap the Rewards of the Increasingly Multigenerational Workforce

The benefits of having a multigenerational workforce are abundant. As an employer, you have a wider variety of opinions, strengths, and ideas to help make your team successful. You create diversity, which can improve both team cohesiveness and financial performance. And workers say they enjoy these workplaces more.Once you have age diversity in your workforce, how do you ensure you continue to reap the benefits of what you have painstakingly grown? In this story, the third installment in a three-part series on age diversity in the workforce—the first one explored myths and realities, and the second one focused on generational allies—we’ll offer practical steps on how to make the most of the multigenerational workforce for both individuals and the business. Among the recommendations we gathered from the experts:Understand ExpectationsMary Abbajay, the CEO of Careerstone Group, an organizational and leadership development consultancy, says recognizing the differences in generations is important. “What Gen Z expects of work-life balance is very different from what Gen X will accept,” she said. While the 100-hour-a-week model of a typical, partner-track lawyer at a big firm was expected by new graduates in the 1980s and ’90s, Gen Z want more from their lives. Abbajay says many of the top-tier firms have trouble getting that new blood in the door. “One told me you can’t find younger people hungry enough to work the hours they want.” Besides putting some limits on work hours, as JPMorgan and Bank of America announced this month, Abbajay says that employers should look more widely for emerging talent. “If you want hungry people, look for those who worked hard to get where they are.” She suggests community-college transfer students, the HBCUs, and smaller state schools where first-generation college grads may have had to pay their own way.To hear much more, tune into From Day One’s one-hour webinar, “Leveraging Generational Diversity: Moving from Ageism to Age Inclusion,” scheduled for Thurs., Oct. 3, at 2 pm ET. You can register here.Part of understanding the differences between age groups is asking the right questions. Old canards like “old people don’t like tech” and “young people are flighty” have been rightly disproved. According to Stephane Francioli, Ph.D., a researcher at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, you shouldn’t base skills training on generations, but rather on age groupings. For example, rather than saying Gen Z or Boomers, focus on age ranges, like workers in their 40s, or the 60+ workforce. Those have proved to be more accurate.That said, some valid research has illuminated differences in work preferences of various generations. A new report from Deloitte about Gen Z and Millennials, based on a survey of 23,000 workers in 44 countries, underscores the notion that the live-to-work philosophy won’t cut it for them. They crave meaning, sustainability, and balance in their lives. A case study by accounting firm Grant Thornton in Ireland concludes that “Gen Z will not compromise their vision to fit into a culture that does not fulfill their expectations.” Rather, “Gen Z will join companies that they feel bring their values to life and align with their own personal principles.” Key values for this generation are diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as well as job flexibility.Consider the Caregivers An estimated one in every six workers is a family caregiver, defined as providing care for an elderly or disabled family member, relative or friend. Typically, this falls to the midlife, “sandwich generation,” juggling both parenthood and family caregiving, who may feel conflicted about bringing attention to their caregiving responsibilities out of fear it could harm career advancement. Many managers view employees leave early for school pick-up or those who take time off to run parents to the doctor as not being all-in at work, regardless of whether they meet their goals.Caregivers have more stress in their life—financial, personal, and professional, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This can lead to a decline in productivity and an increase in absenteeism. But it doesn’t have to. According to a Harvard Business Review report, caregiving can provide skills that are very transferrable to work, and a Harvard Business School survey conducted for the Rutgers Center for Women in Business in 2023 listed many skills acquired through caregiving, including empathy, efficiency, tenacity, collaboration, and project management.Even better, employers can provide support for caregivers in ways that generates a return on investment. In a report outlining Harvard Business School research on caregiving, the authors note that caring for the caregivers on your team doesn’t harm your company, in fact, it helps. Two of the easiest methods to help caregivers, flex time and telecommuting, have a return on investment of $1.70 to $4.34 and $2.46 to $4.45 for each dollar spent on them, respectively.A simple way to help caregivers is to gather and share a list of the benefits you have related to caregiving, says Heather Tinsley-Fix, a senior advisor with AARP, the nonprofit group that advocates for people 50 and over. These may include Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), or assistance programs for finding appropriate back-up care.Give Them What They Want and Tell Them What It CostsDo you know what your total benefit package costs per person? If you don’t, cost it out, Abbajay says. Share it within your organization–transparency about financials is very important to Millennials and Gen Z. When you survey what they are interested in adding, tell them what it will cost and what the tradeoffs would be—maybe you want a four-day workweek, but it might be at the cost of grad-school funding. Some organizations Abbajay has worked with provide a bucket of money for each employee and a buffet of choices they can spend it on.Don’t forget some of the non-benefit elements of work that people value. Abbajay says that younger workers want a company with a clear ethos that engages in philanthropy beyond corporate donations. Some organizations provide time off for volunteering or create team-building events centered around it.Offer opportunities to learn and grow. While older workers are staying longer in the workforce, Abbajay says your organization can create novel paths to advancement. Not everyone wants to be a manager or a leader. Some in tech just want to be masters of coding. Not every lawyer wants the responsibility of partnership. What kind of advancement can you offer to those who prefer mastery of their craft to climbing the leadership ladder?Frugal FixesEverything you do to promote multigenerational satisfaction doesn’t require leadership approval or a big budgetary investments. Some simple trick and twists:Consider offering ergonomic check-ups of people’s workspace. At AARP, Tinsley-Fix says the facilities team is in charge of those requests. However, there are plenty of on-line resources that can be helpful. Mayo Clinic, the National Institutes of Health, and OSHA offer tools that can help. Many consultants can evaluate your entire organization.Stratify data from employee surveys by age group, says Tinsley-Fix. When analyzed this way, you can spot patterns that can help update your workforce management strategies, she says.Leverage the networks of your existing personnel when searching for new staff. “Add a referral reward if someone they recommend for a job is hired,” Tinsley-Fix said. If you don’t know where to source older workers, your existing employees in that age group may be able to refer their peers.Lastly, Tinsley-Fix says all your internal and external communications should be representative of the demographics you aspire to. Whether it’s the stock pictures on your website or the people you profile in internal newsletters, keep diversity in mind. People like to feel seen, and even subtle representation matters.Importantly, if you ask for input and opinions, do something. One Harvard Business Review article reports that one reason employees are loathe to speak up is having sense of futility–that nothing will happen with what they tell you. So find out what they want, Abbajay says. Organize it, says Tinsley-Fix. Then act on the results.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, AARP, for sponsoring this story, the third in a series on how employers can foster age inclusion in the workplace. Interested in assessing how you are doing with age inclusion? Try AARP’s new tool on Managing a Multigenerational Workforce. Just send an email to employerpledge@aarp.org, with the subject line betatest. To hear much more, tune into From Day One’s one-hour webinar, “Leveraging Generational Diversity: Moving from Ageism to Age Inclusion,” scheduled for Thurs., Oct. 3, at 2 pm ET. You can register here.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.(Featured photo by Sanjeri/iStock by Getty Images)

Lisa Jaffe | September 24, 2024

Who Are the Next CHROs? A High-Stakes Recruiting Task Gets Serious Attention

Not long ago, if you’d asked someone what the most conservative part of an organization was, chances are the answer would be the HR department. Well, maybe tied with the general counsel’s office, but the image of the top HR officer as a high-ranking paper-pusher or disciplinarian carried on for decades.No longer. In the information age, when companies are increasingly investing in human capital over physical capital, the chief HR officer plays a pivotal role in a company’s fate. Today’s CHRO is a business leader, operating what Deloitte named “boundaryless HR,” in which “the traditional people discipline itself starts to merge with other related disciplines like decision science, behavioral economics, and academic disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology.”The question now becomes: Where can companies find a person like that for such a high-stakes role? Turns out, CEOs are far more proficient in CHRO selection today than they were a decade ago, says John Bremen, a managing director at consultancy WTW, where his job is to imagine the future of the C-suite. “People issues today are so much more pronounced and so much more prominent than previously.”From Day One spoke with CHROs in the Fortune 1000 and the consultants who recruit them to find out what it takes to be a CHRO at the world’s biggest companies. What do CEOs look for in an HR chief? And who’s next in line for the job? No one single formula emerges, but several key attributes emerge, including previous experience as a CHRO, demonstrated HR savvy plus a law degree, or a proven track record of adaptability across multiple industries.All Eyes on the CHROCHROs are experiencing unprecedented attention, thanks to their inestimable value confirmed by the pandemic, economic swings, social unrest, return to work, and now the global skills shortage. Dan Kaplan has spent 15 years recruiting CHROs at consulting firms like Heidrick & Struggles and Korn Ferry, where he’s currently a senior partner. He told From Day One that private-equity firms, in particular, have homed in on the position as they restructure companies, assessing not just CEOs and CFOs rigorously, but now the CHRO as well. Some PE firms replace the CHRO first, he said, “with a view that that person becomes the catalyst to assess and replace the rest of the leadership team.”Given the scope of the role, executives are appointing fewer first-timers than they have in the past, according to the CHRO Turnover Index by Russell Reynolds Associates. The number of rookie CHROs has been decreasing globally since mid 2022. Among S&P 500 firms, first-time appointments are down 19 percentage points since that year. This is even more true for FTSE 500 companies–the UK’s answer to the S&P 500–where for nearly a year in 2022-23) every incoming CHROs was a veteran of the role.Maral Kazanjian, the CHRO at the credit-rating agency Moody’s (company photo). Featured photo at top: Kate Gebo, CHRO of United Airlines, spoke at From Day One’s Chicago conference this springThere’s also an appetite for highly varied professional experience. The lion’s share of CHROs today are cross-industry hires. Analysts at Heidrick & Struggles examined the 2024 Fortune 1000 companies and found that more than 77% of external CHRO hires were from other industries. With a few exceptions, the CHRO is an “industry agnostic” role, said Kaplan, and HR chiefs tend to glide easily between industries. Among the most coveted qualities in a HR chief is agility, and cross-industry work naturally develops that skill. Now companies recruit CHROs with much of the same criteria they use when recruiting business leaders: experience with mergers and acquisitions and the grunt work of combining workforces, knowledge of a P&L, plus familiarity with thorny issues like labor-union negotiations. “At a company juncture—say, a new CEO comes in and they’re tasked with some turnaround—they often need a different type of CHRO for that phase of the company,” said Jennifer Wilson, co-head of the global HR officers practice at Heidrick & Struggles. “With the amount of M&A and cost-cutting, and then getting back to growth, they want to find somebody who’s been through that cycle.” Why Your Next CHRO May Also Be a JDIf you’re looking for a CHRO with cross-industry experience, plenty of exposure to the C-suite, plus experience with assembling multiple companies and quelling labor disputes, a labor-and-employment lawyer often satisfies the brief. With greater exposure to risk (as a sample: reputational, environmental, technological, privacy, and supply chain) it’s reassuring to know there’s an attorney occupying the seat. “There’s the employee-engagement lens, and there’s the productivity lens, there’s the regulatory lens, and there’s the profitability lens,” said WTW’s Bremen. HR is no longer a static department, now it has to make things happen.Law practice also develops the confrontational confidence CHROs need. “You need to have had the experience of walking into a senior leader’s office, closing the door, giving them feedback, and challenging them on an issue where you think there’s a pretty good chance of getting fired today,” Korn Ferry’s Kaplan said. At times, it’s as diplomatic as managing the CEO’s personality and presenting even the most uncharismatic leaders to the workforce as people who can be trusted, which sounds a lot like what might happen in a courtroom.Before Claudia Toussaint became the chief people officer at the global water-technology company Xylem, she was the company’s general counsel. CHROs can’t afford to be intimidated by hierarchy, she said. They have to be prepared to tell the CEO that they’re out of line, and why it matters. The professional training of an attorney comes in handy too. Lawyers gather evidence, make conclusions, and present a case. “That skillset, I think, is far more valuable today in the HR function than five years ago or ten years ago,” Toussaint said. “I think that’s why people are increasingly saying, ‘These people that have a law degree and have been trained to think systemically, to take data, analyze data, reach conclusions from it, and then drive impact from those conclusions—that’s actually not a bad background for leading HR function.’”HR and the general counsel’s office have a natural relationship. Maral Kazanjian, the CHRO at the credit-rating agency Moody’s, felt she was effectively moonlighting as an HR professional while working as the firm’s attorney, applying the law to all kinds of employment matters. “I was really lucky because Moody’s is a very successful company and also has a really fast-growing information-services business within the traditional ratings agency. Because they were growing so fast, a lot of employment issues arose,” she told From Day One. “We were in different jurisdictions. We had different questions we wanted to answer about ‘How do we do hiring right? How do we handle performance management? How do we maintain a focus on being inclusive? How do we do promotions right?’ There are legal questions, then there are operational and human capital questions.” Kazanjian’s first time leading the people function was at WeWork during the dog days of the pandemic. In February 2022, she returned to Moody’s, where she occupies the chief people officer job today.Jennifer Manchester, the CHRO at Fiserv, is a relatively new arrival to the C-suite, and like Kazanjian, has jumped industries. Manchester first crossed paths with HR at her former employer, the Dow Chemical Co., where she worked in the general counsel’s office on mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate transactions. “I always loved the employment piece and the people side of things the best. That’s where I figured it out: That was really ultimately what I wanted to do.”Manchester moved over to Fiserv in 2015, working closely with HR as a labor attorney, and ascended to the CHRO seat last spring, “I’ve always gravitated toward people issues, trying to solve problems. It’s such a dynamic role.” But about this she was clear: You can’t just pluck any attorney out of the legal department and promote them to the chief position. “You have to have some substantive core expertise in HR or employment. HR is a real science, and I don’t think anyone can just do it.”Deep, Successful Experience in HR Counts TooA background in HR is hardly irrelevant. Among the 10 highest-ranked companies on the Fortune 500, most of their CHROs have spent decades as HR practitioners. Melissa Hagerman, CHRO at insurance firm Genworth, came up through the HR department, and, like many of her peers in the Fortune 500, has worked across industries, including consumer and automotive retail and healthcare. She joined the HR field when it was still known as the personnel department. Being an effective CHRO takes compassion and diplomatic agility, she said. And it can’t be done without a natural curiosity for businesses. “As a CHRO, you have to really genuinely care about what the business is doing and where we’re heading, and you have to care about the people that are on the path to get us there. That is something that I really try to embrace and live by every day.”Hagerman is also a keen scout, continually monitoring what’s going on both inside and outside the organization, “understanding what’s happening politically and socially in the markets so that I can weigh in, whether that’s with our executive team or with our board of directors, or being able to think about how those may impact eventually our workforce.”HR has far more credibility and influence than in the past, Hagerman said, reflecting on her decades in the department. “The world now understands that people resources are really fundamental to the bottom line. Succession planning, development of associates—the focus on those things is far greater now than they ever were. Of course, cybersecurity, protection of data–all of those things–are more in the limelight now than ever.”Yet Your Next CHRO May Not Be Working In HR Right NowA career in HR can win you the seat at the top now, but that may not be true for the next generation of CHROs. Today, businesses seldom want an HR executive who has spent all their time in the department, said Wilson at Heidrick & Struggles. “In the companies we work with, it’s often said that if you can find somebody with a business background who’s either been in management consulting or held either a P&L role or a functional role outside of HR, that’s more interesting to us.”The next crisis is always around the corner, Korn Ferry’s Kaplan told From Day One, and HR has to be there to meet it. He rattled off a list of recent trials, from financial and economic wobbles, political unrest, racial injustice, reproductive rights, return to office, artificial intelligence, and gun crime. “If you are not prepared to put on your dance shoes and figure it out, you can’t do this job. More than academic credentials, intellect, or experience, you have to be able to tap dance.” As a result, people aren’t exactly grappling for the seat, he said. It’s a big job and it’s tough to recruit for. Some people get too close to the sun and opt out; others don’t realize what they’re signing up for before it’s too late.Everyone is looking for agility in the role. Bremen at WTW speculated that consumer-oriented industries–like retail, fast-moving consumer goods, cosmetics, or fashion–may be developing tomorrow’s most coveted CHROs. Tech firms develop great HR talent too because they have to marry operational complexity with consumer demands. Regardless of industry, he believes the most successful future CHROs are schooling themselves in the application of new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, and have analytical capabilities far superior to their predecessors.In case you were thinking of plucking your next CHRO from the Wharton School, however, Kaplan cast doubt on the wisdom of choosing an MBA for the job simply because they’re a whiz at business. “If someone says to me, ‘I’m not an HR person, I’m a business person,’ that is a sign that I’m wasting time. I’ve never heard a CFO say, ‘I’m not a finance person, I’m a business person.’”Disciplines like finance can be taught in school, Kaplan argued, but HR is learned through apprenticeship. Management consultants who spoke to From Day One predicted that the future chiefs who are coming up through the HR department are leading complex functions at the moment, as heads of talent or directors of compensation and benefits.As today’s CHROs consider their potential successors, what are they looking for? At Moody’s, Kazanjian wants someone who is open-minded, bold, and analytical. She imagines that person might be in law, or they might be in management consulting. Toussaint wants someone who deeply understands the company culture at Xylem as well as how the business makes money, someone who’s good at data analysis, and someone who is a “truth teller,” uncowed by hierarchy. Manchester hopes her Fiserv successor has financial acumen and an always-learning attitude. At Genworth, Hagerman wants a values-driven, business-minded leader with deep knowledge of HR and a knack for diplomacy. Someone who is willing to uphold integrity, “above all else.”“Once upon a time, it was possible to be the most senior HR leader in a company and not have a grounding in the business fundamentals,” Bremen said. “That skillset is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition.” Yet business acumen alone isn’t enough without a deep understanding of the CHRO discipline, though he’s seen it happen. “They struggle. Just as you would struggle if you put someone in a chief marketing officer role who did not have a background in marketing. Sometimes leaders take those HR skills for granted.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Business Insider, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | September 24, 2024

Election Stress in the Workplace: How Leaders Can Respond Without Taking Sides

Business leaders don’t need outside research to tell them that anxiety around the coming Presidential election is high–and that the stress can impact employee well-being and productivity, but here are some sobering stats:•73% of U.S. adults say they are anxious about the election, according to the results of the 2024 American Psychiatric Association’s annual mental health poll.•55% of Americans surveyed by Pew Research always or often feel angry about politics.•8 of 10 in the Pew survey used a negative word or phrase to describe how they feel about  politics, with “divisive” being the most used.•Nearly two thirds of workers (65%) surveyed this summer by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) said they have experienced or witnessed incivility in their workplace within the past month. And more than a third of workers (34%) said they believe the November election will trigger additional incivility in the workplace.In fact, psychologists and researchers are now studying a distinct form of anxiety called “political anxiety” and the unique way it harms both physical and mental health. The stress has been building since the 2016 election.The good news: executives, HR teams, and managers can—and should—prepare (now) for the November election. With just a few weeks until workers head to the polls, From Day One reached out to HR experts to learn about their strategies to diffuse stress and political polarization in the office, and, if necessary, address conflicts that may arise. Among the takeaways:Encourage Employees to VoteOne simple and non-controversial step companies can take is to promote voting. While there’s no federal mandate that employers give workers the day off to vote, some states do, and many companies provide flexibility on election day. Encouraging workers to vote is a good way to acknowledge what’s on their minds without taking a political position.If you’re curious about what other organizations are doing or need to back up a recommendation to leadership, check out Time to Vote, a non-partisan business group launched in 2018 that believes “workers shouldn’t have to choose between earning a paycheck and voting.” With more than 2,000 member companies including VISA, P&G, and Target, the organization is attempting to bridge the legislative gap and increase voter turnout. Patagonia, one of the companies that founded Time to Vote, has been giving its employees Election Day off since 2016. This year, the outdoor apparel company will close stores, offices, and warehouses on Oct. 29, national Vote Early Day, to allow workers to vote and volunteer in support of the election.Acknowledge Political Differences, But Don’t Take Sides“Some leaders want to take a stance, but I would caution them not to impose their political views. Your job is to stay neutral,” says Deb Josephs, an HR consultant and executive coach. You can take a stand, without taking a side, she adds, “as long as you support the individual as opposed to an issue.” When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, for example, one of her HR colleagues said their company put out a statement to let employees know that they could come to HR if they needed support for reproductive health. Large employers like JPMorgan Chase and Meta and others announced they would cover travel costs for employees who are seeking legal abortions out of state.   Keep the Focus on Empathy and Employee Support “Organizations need to say it’s a polarizing time, and that could be impacting how you show up at work,” offers Tracy Avin, Founder of TroopHR, a human resources peer group with more than 1,300 members and 15,000 LinkedIn followers. Avin says the topic of how to address the election has come up often in the TroopHR message boards, so much so that she decided to host a fireside chat called “Leading with Empathy in Polarizing Times” with an outside expert this September. One piece of advice from the virtual session: Develop an "Allyship Series" or similar educational program to foster understanding and empathy for different experiences and perspectives within your organization.She advises HR leaders to do what she does for her members: create a supportive environment where all viewpoints are welcome. “It’s an opportunity for managers to know how to respond. It’s not about opinions,” she said. “You can say something like, ‘It seems like you’ve been upset lately,’ so that person can express that they are stressed out. Then you can tell them to take a day off or provide mental health resources as needed.”Additional outlets for employees might include a moderated Slack channel or an employee resource group (ERG). “What’s most important is that employees know where they can go for support,” says Leonora Wiener, an executive leadership coach and former chief operating officer of Consumer Reports. Communicate Early and OftenAt Consumer Reports, Wiener helped lead teams through the 2016 and 2020 elections, the racial-justice reckoning after George Floyd’s murder, as well as the pandemic. She stresses the importance of listening to employee concerns and actually asking your staff what kind of support they are looking for. “Oftentimes organizations aren’t that good at finding out what their ‘internal customers’ need,” she said, adding to make sure any feedback groups are diverse and include representatives from all generations and backgrounds. In terms of communications, her philosophy is lather, rinse, repeat. “People need to hear the same message many times, and it needs to be said through different channels. Not everyone reads Slack or emails, and not every manager delivers the message in the same way.” Start that election communications drumbeat today, she says.Don’t Go It Alone Josephs echoes that sentiment, recalling how much “over communication” was required during the pandemic and other recent events. She also points out the added pressure and increased responsibility borne by HR and people leaders as social and political issues continue to divide the country and tensions spill over into the workplace. Her tips: find support, leverage your professional networks, and share information with your peers. They are likely also engaged in scenario planning and reviewing their employee handbooks to ensure current policies are being followed.   Revisit and Reinforce Your Corporate Values Speaking of employee handbooks, now is the time—not the day before the election—to take a good look at your organization’s values and what employee behaviors are and are not tolerated. “You want to support employees,” said Wiener, “but you also need to be prepared for [how you will respond to] conflict.” Once you review your employee handbook, it’s important to figure out how the company will act if one of those values is violated. “Leadership needs to decide if they have zero tolerance or if they will put an employee on probation, and they need to be consistent.” Get Input From the Legal Department But Don’t OvercorrectShould you involve legal? Yes, says Wiener. “It’s important to be prepared and understand what you can and cannot do.” Scenario planning, she says, is critical. Ask yourself: How will either election outcome affect my products and services (supply chain, tariffs)? What are the risks and mitigants (for any immigrant workers)? How will employees be impacted (job productivity, mental health)? How might you handle immigration issues, or a harassment claim? But don’t go down a legal rabbit hole. Alison Taylor, a clinical professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and author of Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World, weighs in with a word of caution:“The main thing I’m seeing out there is that corporations are overreacting to advice from their legal teams, and dialing back on DEI and ESG because they fear legal retaliation under a Trump presidency,” said Taylor. “But they seem to have forgotten how angry the public and employees were over issues like climate change and racism under the last Trump presidency.” She continued: “A laser focus on legal risk is not a good idea. There needs to be broad scenario planning, certainly caution over sustainability commitments, but also care and restraint about overreacting to rhetoric from either side.”Jenny Sucov is a journalist and editor who focuses on health and well-being. She has worked for companies and publishers including Hinge Health, EverydayHealth.com, Canyon Ranch, Real Simple, and Prevention.(Feature photo by Adamkaz/iStock by Getty Images)

Jenny Sucov | September 23, 2024

What Makes Skills-Based Hiring the Most Effective Approach

Many positions remain vacant in the workforce, even though there are qualified workers available, which is why many companies are removing degree requirements and relying heavily on skills-based hiring. During a From Day One webinar, Dan Miller, solutions architect for SHL discussed how skills-based hiring is transforming the workforce. In a conversation moderated by journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, Miller shared why it's a better approach for companies to acquire new talent.While the resume remains an important tool, the days of gaining job candidate’s qualifications solely from a resume are gone. A skills-based hiring approach provides organizations and workers numerous benefits. Hiring managers can look at applicants’ LinkedIn profiles and other accompanying information to learn more about the worker and make an inference. “[Skills-based hiring] involves inferring someone’s skills based on their previous experiences and what’s been posted,” Miller said. In other words, rather than looking at just the resume, managers can look at the bigger picture before they come to a conclusion. According to Miller, the first step to prioritizing skills is removing educational requirements from job postings, which sets the stage for further changes to the hiring process. To further implement skills-based hiring, organizations should define key skills and competencies for each role, use assessments and testing to determine skill level, utilize AI-powered hiring tools, and train hiring managers on what to look for.Companies struggling to keep workers long-term benefit from a 20% higher retention rate over two years when utilizing skills-based hiring, says Miller. Workers gain access to higher paying  jobs, and receive an average pay increase of 25% without a college degree.  “Given the high costs associated with attrition, skills-based hiring confers business impact  even beyond expanding the size of the eligible talent pool or demonstrating a commitment to social progress,” according to the Harvard Business School. “Skills-based hiring strategies are designed for the roles that fall in between those where degreed and non-degreed workers have long labored together and where the degree is a matter of employer preference and not of necessity.” Dan Miller of SHL spoke during the From Day One webinar (company photo)These benefits demonstrate the positive impact of skills-based hiring on both employees and organizations. Organizations implementing skills-based hiring methods are doing so for three reasons: agility, agency, and equity, says Miller. Agility involves having employees who can fluidly transition to different areas and positions, enabling companies to effectively utilize internal candidates. Agency empowers individuals to shape their own career paths by recognizing and developing measurable skills for future roles. Equity ensures that all qualified candidates are considered for open positions, helping to prevent discrimination in the hiring process.“There’s overarching reasons that skills are becoming important. Part of it is that roles are rapidly evolving,” said Miller. “It is a shift from work-focused to person-focused,” he said.  As companies shift toward skills-based hiring, it's essential to understand the skills necessary for success in each role. Miller said SHL's Global Skills Assessment, which collected data from over 10,000 individuals, identified various skills indicative of success at work. Some companies will need personalized skills to fit their roles and positions. These skills include taking action, striving to achieve, establishing credibility, taking ownership, among others. When skills-based hiring is done right, both companies and applicants experience the benefits. Companies secure capable workers for essential positions, potentially for years to come, while applicants and employees have the opportunity to earn higher wages and develop skills that advance their careers both within the company and beyond.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, SHL, for sponsoring this webinar. Mary Jones is a freelance writer out of Ohio. Her work is featured in several publications including The Dallas Express, NDash, and The Daily Advocate.

Mary Jones | September 18, 2024

How Beacon Health System Launched a Dedicated Substance-Use Management Program for Their Employees

In a typical 10,000-person organization, around 4,000 employees are affected by substance use disorder, yet only 120 receive treatment. This gap is why Yusuf Sherwani founded Pelago, the world’s first technology-enabled digital clinic for substance use management.At a recent From Day One Webinar, Sherwani discussed his new approach to substance abuse treatment that’s been gaining traction among organizations. Eric Long from Beacon Health System, which offers Pelago to its employees, shared how they’ve implemented the program at their organization.Pelago is a single provider offering complete treatment for substance use disorders for adults and teens, from prevention through treatment. Each member receives care from a multidisciplinary team via telehealth, providing counseling, prescriptions, and tools for recovery. “We cover over four and a half million lives across hundreds of large employers,” Sherwani said. “We’re still at the tip of the impact we hope to have.” With 40 million Americans affected by untreated substance use disorder, Pelago aims to break down barriers, starting with stigma and hopefully ending with a patient who is healthier and has an improved quality of life because of treatment.Beating the Stigma of Substance AbuseYusuf Sherwani is the CEO and Co-Founder of Pelago (company photo)Back in medical school, Sherwani witnessed the devastating impact of substance abuse both personally and professionally. “It was completely out of the blue,” he said. At the same time, during an internship at a psychiatric ward, he saw how reactive and limited frontline support was. “We often reach out to people only when the going gets incredibly tough.”Stigma surrounding substance abuse often causes people to stay quiet, especially in the medical industry. As an ambulatory pharmacist at Beacon Health, Long’s patient population includes healthcare providers, a group particularly affected by this stigma. “People say, ‘You know better,’” Long said. “It makes it very difficult to treat properly.”The high stress of healthcare jobs and easier access to substances can lead to disaster. Healthcare workers are 10-15% more likely to misuse substances, Long says, with 14-20% of registered nurses and 10% of physicians affected by substance abuse at some point in their careers. “It’s very difficult to come forward and say that you have a substance use disorder when you’re in healthcare,” Long said. Pelago’s anonymous services make it easier for employees to seek help early, which supports better outcomes.“When I refer Pelago to a patient, I don’t know if they follow through. I just know they have the resource,” Long said. He often gives them a card with a QR code for Pelago as a possible solution for themselves or a loved one. Pelago also sends emails, and word-of-mouth from those in the program has been very effective. Because Pelago is digital, patients can tailor treatment to fit their schedules, a game-changer for healthcare workers who can’t always see a provider during regular hours.Multiple addictions are common among those with substance use disorders, says Long. For example, 70% of workers with alcohol use disorder also struggle with tobacco addiction, and 35% of workers with opioid use disorder are also addicted to alcohol.“Tobacco cessation is the least stigmatized addiction,” Long said, “and often the easiest way to start a conversation.” By addressing tobacco use, healthcare providers can often uncover other addictions and help patients seek broader treatment.Healthcare Costs and SavingsSubstance abuse disorder can lead to increased ER visits, liver issues, safety hazards, and cancer. Early treatment is key to preventing the long-term complications of substance use disorder, and quick intervention means healthier employees and cost savings for the organization.When it’s all said and done, Pelago pays for itself by helping patients get treatment for substance abuse, resulting in better overall health and wellness, says Sherwani. Beyond the numbers, patients have shared testimonials about Pelago’s impact. Helping employees with substance use disorders also improves their overall health. Many people with substance use disorders also have other chronic conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, or osteoarthritis. Once substance abuse enters the picture, these chronic conditions often go unchecked, leading to worsening health outcomes over time.“There’s enormous overlap between mental health, particularly serious mental illness, and substance use disorders,” Sherwani said. Untreated substance use disorders double the number of workdays missed compared to those in treatment. Getting someone into treatment can reverse many negative consequences.Sherwani says that around 95% of Pelago members are seeing a provider for their substance use disorder for the first time. This speaks to the stigma and access problem–people who aren’t seeking care on their own are responding effectively when treatment is made available to them. “They weren’t going to rehab, they weren’t going to help patient care, this wasn’t something that their primary care physician was really treating,” Sherwani said. Once they could get access to treatment through Pelago, they responded well.Pelago also coordinates with Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and mental health programs already in place, addressing the comorbidities often present with substance use disorders. This collaboration revolutionizes access to treatment for the 97% of people with substance use disorders who are not seeking care on their own.As a physician-led organization, Pelago has invested in peer-reviewed studies showing that the outcomes of their digital clinic are at least as good as face-to-face support and more than two and a half times better than traditional addiction treatment. For example, Pelago has achieved a 52% success rate at four weeks for tobacco cessation, with a 44% success rate at 12 months. For opioid use disorder, Pelago has seen a 67% success rate for complete abstinence within 90 days.That’s hopefully just the beginning, Sherwani says. With more organizations working with Pelago, the future looks hopeful—not just for those struggling with substance use disorder, but for the companies that support them. By continuing to break down barriers, tackle stigma, and provide accessible, effective care, Pelago is poised to make a lasting difference in the lives of millions.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Pelago, for sponsoring this webinar.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.

Carrie Snider | September 11, 2024

Formalizing and Incentivizing a Culture of Recognition

In 2024, Gallup argued that employee recognition is the easiest–but most overlooked–strategy for attraction, retention, and productivity. Yet only one in three workers surveyed said they had been recognized for good work in the last week.Though some managers may be naturally inclined to praise their teams, a culture of recognition doesn’t appear on its own. Recognition is a habit that must be formed. At From Day One’s August virtual conference a group of leaders spoke about making recognition a standard part of company culture in an executive panel discussion.There are certain characteristics of companies with a culture of recognition, says Pam Rosslee, who is an HR director at PepsiCo. First, that recognition is leader-led. “Recognition and the culture of celebration takes on its own momentum. It’s being driven and owned by leaders across the organization to the extent that there’s no hard sell from the HR function.”Second, she says, a culture that excels in recognition recognizes its mistakes, and learns from them, as much as it celebrates success. And third, employees at those companies understand that good work is rewarded, and they know how to compete for those rewards.If you don’t already work this way, the good news is that managers and workers can be trained and incentivized to give recognition, panelists said. At workplace social connection platform Campfire, employees attend a session called “The Art of Recognition,” in which participants learn to give tailored feedback. “It’s really important, and really challenging, to know what people’s preferences are, and what matters to them in terms of recognition and engagement,” said Steve Arntz, the company’s co-founder and CEO.At cloud computing company Akamai, the “People Manager Essentials” training brings managers together to discuss current goings on. Michelle Bartlett, Akamai’s senior director for change management, says managers often bring up the challenges of recognition, especially after the company started working remotely. Because it’s talked about, it’s practiced regularly. “The more you make it part of your standard operating manual, that’s when it really takes on a life of its own,” she said.The panelists spoke about "Building Upon Workplace Culture Through Recognition and Engagement" (photo by From Day One)At PepsiCo, the company rewards managers for celebrating success. Rosslee said that reinforcing the behavior keeps recognition muscles strong. “It’s quite a nice, subtle way of building that culture of recognizing individuals and teams,” she said. “We also make sure that there is abundance. There are multiple awards on offer at different levels: at peer level, at departmental level, and at functional level, and there’s a rhythm to it so we know when they’re coming.”PepsiCo employs tens of thousands of workers around the world, but most companies don’t operate with that scale. How does recognition differ for those employers?Kristen McGill is the chief people officer at ZayZoon, an earned wage access platform. When she joined the company, she was the eighth employee. By the end of 2024, headcount will be 200. Recognition does look different along the way, she says, and the company has to be open to keeping practices and programs fresh. “As we were scaling up, we saw that the more that you can create consistency, the more will happen on its own,” McGill said. “How do you enlist your entire team so that praise is going upwards, downwards, and horizontally? At the end of the day, the ‘who’ giving feedback really matters. As you get bigger, it starts to be really meaningful when it’s not simply from your direct manager.”Jacqueline Silvestrov, who leads TD Bank’s formal recognition and workplace experience programs, says the far-reaching effects of a culture that celebrates achievements and contributions, so don’t hesitate to formalize it and measure it. “There’s a strong relationship between recognition, growth, development, and well-being,” she said. “When I first began leading colleague experiences at TD, I saw that there was an opportunity to build defined data points around our spirit and culture by implementing surveys and creating scorecards and reports that can tie each of our program metrics back to the health of our organization.”With this data, Silvestrov has developed a suite of programs, all of them linked, “from daily virtual recognition to team recognition to surprise and delight moments and formal annual award programs.”At Akamai, the company’s intranet provides ample opportunities for colleagues to recognize each other for good work, and managers often chime in to send congratulations. “It feels good to be recognized when they’re not standing in front of that leader,” Bartlett said.Even within formal recognition programs, there is room for creativity, and a need for personalization. Some may want public recognition while others will shrink from the attention. Some need specific praise while others are content with general congratulations. Some may prefer more responsibility and higher visibility to monetary rewards. Campfire’s CEO Arntz came up with a creative way to personalize the praise he gives.“If you want to use AI and assessments together, pull up ChatGPT or your favorite robot and create a conversation about each of the people on your team,” he said. “Then feed to each of those conversations all of the assessments that you have around that person to help the robot get to know them.” When you want to recognize that person, ask your generative AI tool to help you come up with a unique and personal way to do so.If formalizing, incentivizing, and scaling recognition seems intimidating, panelists reminded us that HR isn’t where the buck stops on recognition. It’s up to managers and their teams to carry it out. “HR is responsible for enabling the right training, enabling the managers, providing the right tools, and ensuring that they know how to use them,” McGill said. “But at the end of the day, the responsibility is the managers, and that’s where expectation-setting comes in.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | September 10, 2024

Power Practices to Understand Employee Needs Actively and Equitably

Investing in the employee experience is a sustainable business strategy to boost retention, engagement, and productivity. Authentic feedback from employees is essential to address their needs and ambitions. “People don't just want to be heard, they want impact,” said Shawn Overcast, the chief insights officer at Explorance during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s August virtual conference. “And through transparent action planning and follow through, employees learn that they can speak their minds freely without repercussions,” she said.Evolving technologies and AI are tools that can help amplify the employee voice. They provide engaging methods of gathering personal and organizational feedback from workers without bias or breaching data privacy. The shift from workers just taking surveys to having opportunities to discuss their experiences in survey comments, feedback channels, and social websites generates valuable insight into organizational transformation.Overcast spoke about People Insight solutions, showing how Explorance’s AI voice of employee solution, called MLY, helps their clients compile and organize diverse and unstructured employee feedback.With the summarization and alerting of frequent and in-depth feedback and perspectives, MLY is a tool for managers and employers to reassess their HR strategies, identify the role of leadership, pinpoint retention risks, and create action plans.Shawn Overcast of Explorance led the thought leadership spotlight (company photo)Explorance helps organizations measure employee needs and expectations through scalable automation tools and a continuous feedback-gathering process, revving the insight-to-action cycle. By supporting the employee journey, organizations improve recruitment, engagement, and overall performance.To actively understand employee needs and drive action, Overcast suggests defining a clear strategy and purpose for employee listening, initiating a focused and structured action-planning process, and empowering employees. Actively understanding employee needs involves deliberate engagement and effort to take action.With more opportunities to provide qualitative feedback through discussion forums, survey comments, and social websites, employees can become empowered knowing that their feedback drives organizational change.To fairly understand employees, ensure objectivity using clear and predetermined criteria to make decisions, leverage several listening tools and channels, leverage AI solutions to remove bias, and become more aware of cognitive bias in your listening strategy.“Cognitive biases can lead to unintentional decision-making, and biases can be really tricky,” Overcast said. “They often sit beneath the surface. They’re beyond our conscious thought, and this can impact our ability to analyze data fairly and to take fair and equitable action.”For example, a people analyst in the retail hospitality industry used MLY to go through 10,000 comments sorted into different departments by sending automated relevant insights to managers. Included in the comments were employees’ recommendations to solve specific issues. The people analyst forwarded these to managers.“So often we task the analyst with identifying best practices for responding to the feedback, but the people who know best how to improve employee engagement in your organization are your employees since they’re the ones experiencing it,” Overcast said.Engagement and exit surveys are beneficial for benchmarking, tracking trends over time, and identifying areas of opportunity, Overcast says. However, multiple qualitative insight channels highlight distinct perspectives: respondents express themselves more frequently and constructively across multi-channel listening tools and platforms.The incorporation of AI is a quick solution to the often time-consuming process of HR personnel reading through thousands of comments on any online channel. AI quickly organizes and contextualizes unstructured online feedback into sources of specific and relevant employee experience data without bias. The feedback can guide action to close skill gaps, support upward mobility, and develop managers and people leaders.Using technology and an empathetic approach to surveying employee well-being, Explorance utilizes the employee voice to help clients create solutions that authentically address concerns, says Overcast. The opportunity to influence change is the underlying role of the employee voice: “It’s about the belief that if I have something to share, it will be listened to and it will result in change.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Explorance, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Stephanie Reed is a freelance news, marketing, and content writer. Much of her work features small business owners throughout diverse industries. She is passionate about promoting small, ethical, and eco-conscious businesses.

Stephanie Reed | September 10, 2024

How to Use Skills Data to Power Development and Achieve Business Objectives

The skills required for success are constantly evolving and organizations are struggling to adapt without clear visibility of the strengths and skills gaps in their workforce. This uncertainty leaves talent management and employee development journeys to guesswork, resulting in lost opportunities and strategic missteps. Being armed with skills data and then acting on it is a key strategy to keeping employees happy, loyal, and developing.Organizations that utilize data about their talent's skills, or catalog and organize the skills workers currently possess, as well as identify the skills needed for future roles, are actively preparing their workforce to tackle new challenges as they arise. During a From Day One webinar, leaders discussed how talent skills data can transform your approach to talent management.As a first step, companies must identify which skills are the most relevant to their business’ present and future, the panelists shared. This decision should not be made just by HR, senior leaders, and stakeholders, but by employees at other levels too, says Marquisa Nash, Head of HR, performance materials at BASF. “[There might be a gap between] what leadership thinks is important and what people think is important,” Nash said.Tomislav Vujec, director of learning at Red Hat, says it’s easier for HR to get a buy-in from business leaders when discussing employee skills as opposed to competencies. “We get to be closer to their problems and we open a door to validate what we can actually do, which is develop a skill. As opposed to risking too much by promising a business change, which often does not only depend on the skill being developed, but other factors,” he said.The rapid changes brought about by the pandemic also emphasized the need to focus on skill-building, says Didem Onem, Head of TA operations and programs at Eaton Corporation. “That made us look at our talent and skills availability and ask ‘where are we headed – and are we ready for that?’ It meant bringing a new type of talent into the organization,” she said. For Eaton, this meant an initiative for upskilling in digitization techniques so that employees would be more prepared for a digital way of doing business. Her team mapped out the new skills plan based on manager feedback, honest self-assessments, and forecasted what would be needed down the line.Those self-assessments, though, can be tricky. “Oftentimes people are not terribly good at assessing their own levels of facility with certain things,” said moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company. “Is there a way to make sure that what people are reporting is actually where they are?”The panel of industry leaders spoke about "How to Use Skills Data to Power Development and Achieve Business Objectives" in a session moderated by Lydia Dishman of Fast CompanyLarger companies, especially, must work hard to not lose track of  each individual’s growth. “With 600,000 employees all around the globe, it’s hard to know who can do what and what they are good at,” said Abbe Partee, VP, head of global certified learning at DHL. So DHL created a Career Marketplace, which integrates both its learning and performance system. It includes an individual’s skills data not just from self-assessment but also manager feedback, succession planning meetings, and the combined skill profiles of their current and previous roles.“We want to build a culture of learning and continuous education,” Vujec said. That begins at onboarding and continues throughout an employee’s entire career journey, regardless of their level. It’s also important to recognize, he says, that “the foundational skills of today might not be the foundational skills of tomorrow.” In turn, the onboarding itself should serve as a mindset shift to prepare employees for continuous learning, rather than the expectation that development will stop after a few months on the job.Skills data should be something that is embraced by employees. “We know employees want to grow with the organization, and skills is a great conversation to get that going,” said Lucy Beaumont, solution lead, manager and leader at SHL. The biggest shift she is seeing is that the skills conversation during reviews is less about how employees are succeeding in their current roles, but rather where they want to go in the future. “What is your skills potential, and therefore, what is the right career path for you where can you lean into those strengths? If you do have those gaps, and they're relevant to the job you're doing or the job you want to do, how can we get around that and support that?” she said.Post-pandemic, individuals are more acutely focused on whether they are happy in their current position, so it’s important for employers to facilitate those conversations early and help workers move and grow internally, rather than externally, to boost retention.Beaumont says organizations should not only be measuring skills as they stand, but also tracking how those skills gaps are then bridged over time. While pulse surveys are helpful, they can sometimes have a tough time measuring soft skills, such as leadership. Therefore, the hard data must then be analyzed with a human approach. “We do take broad strokes, but then that aggregate view allows us to prioritize and see what it’s hinting at,” Vujec said. HR can allow the data trends to drive what areas will require a deeper, more complex dive.Nash notes this “human skills” area is, ironically, where emerging technology can be the most useful during employee surveys. “We use AI to go back into the comments to extrapolate, to see what other additional data points we can obtain to understand what skills employees are looking for,” Nash said. Then those themes are linked back to the organization’s business strategy and core values.What skills do the panelists see as most valuable going forward? All of them are tied to transformation. They include data analytics, to boost agility in reacting to needs; digitization, to make business more efficient;  a digital mindset when it comes to problem solving; and an overall change in agility. And lastly, the skill of learning itself is vital. “Re-skilling potential: what does it take to be willing and able to learn new skills,” Beaumont shared, is integral in today’s rapidly evolving workforce.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | September 05, 2024

Delivering the Family-Friendly Benefits Families Need

“It’s shocking to me how few companies actually know how many parents or how many caregivers for elderly parents they have in their workforce,” said Carmi Medoff, founder and CEO of Onsite Kids, which operates on-site childcare facilities for employers. “It’s usually an off-the-cuff, qualitative answer. So, first thing, please start asking and quantifying.”The importance of affordable childcare cannot be overstated and families need help accessing it. The Center for American Progress estimates that more than half of the U.S. population lives in an area where providers are scarce. And families need help affording it: Childcare costs more than rent in some states, according to one 2024 analysis.But there is far more to being a parent or caregiver than the first decade of a child’s life. Families are complex and changing, said Medoff. “Families start and change every day, every week, every month, every year. Life situations change,” and employers have an obligation to consider the complexities of family life.This was the topic of conversation during a panel discussion at From Day One’s July virtual conference on innovative policies that support healthy families and caregivers. Family-friendly benefits are those that support your workers at every stage of life, from conception or adoption to the early years, college applications, financial planning, menopause, eldercare, and retirement planning—in whatever iterations they occur.Rachel Marling, VP of total rewards at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, says an employer’s ability to meet those needs is a reflection of its values. “There are different programs we need to design along that entire continuum, not just to support people, but also to recognize their experience. That’s increasingly important as we think about workplace diversity, acknowledging that people have different journeys, and all of them are of value,” she said.For many employers, this begins with thinking about fertility support, reimagined for all families, including same-sex couples, single parents by choice, and those who opt for an avenue like surrogacy. Well-meaning employers consider primarily the financial components of fertility care, but they miss the adjacent needs of their workers, like the emotional tax incurred by multiple IVF rounds and the need for mental health support, said the panelists.“There’s a reason why we support individuals from preconception all the way through menopause,” said Isha Vij, VP of employer growth at family healthcare platform Maven. The human experience is as varied as it is rich, and every new stage deserves recognition and support.As companies turn their attention to the aging workforce, retaining workers is a growing concern. In some cases, retaining women is a matter of caring for their changing healthcare needs, not only with medical plans, but with in-office support too.Vij helps employers make those considerations. For instance, “think about your in-office accommodations for folks experiencing symptoms of menopause,” she said. “What does your leave policy look like? What does your mental health support look like? All of these things can make a huge difference in keeping individuals in the workforce productive and happy. And, of course, there are reasons on the economic side why it makes sense for employers to do this, like productivity and loyalty.”The panel also urged employers to look out for workers who are caregivers to elderly family members. Marling at NewYork Presbyterian noted how financially and emotionally strenuous the experience can be, and “this is a place where meeting people where they’re at is so critical,” she said. More than just support for regular, face-to-face elder care, NYP offers backup care options and legal support to help with estate planning, wills, and power of attorney.But in the moment of need, employees often need a guiding hand. “We have an eldercare consultant that provides services and caregiver guidance and support with information and referrals, crisis-support counseling, and educational materials and resources,” said Brian Copeland, VP of total rewards at mortgage firm Fannie Mae. “We’ve seen a lot of employees come back with very positive remarks and how they were struggling, they were seeking guidance, and didn’t know where to look. Our eldercare consultant did a wonderful job of bringing that information to them.”The panelists spoke on the topic "Delivering the Family-Friendly Benefits That Working Parents Actually Want"To know what support is needed, simply ask. “For us in HR, it’s very much a listening environment, eliciting opportunities through employee surveys and ongoing touch points to make sure we’re getting a direct line of sight,” Copeland. “And just as important as meeting employees’ needs is ensuring benefits are available consistently. “We make sure to provide the tools and resources so everyone’s on the same playing field, and that it’s not dictated manager-by-manager along the way.”Family benefits are not just a personal matter, but a community matter and a societal one as well. “Offering benefits is a signal to potential employees out in the universe that you support families and signals that your company is forward-thinking,” Medoff said. There is a spill-over effect that benefits the business as well as your reputation as a principled employer. “It shows that your company is taking a stand on social responsibility in the community, particularly for [frontline workers]. Our clients are often one of the largest employers, if not the largest employer, in smaller communities. [Family benefits] demonstrate that you are committed to solving broader societal issues and supporting families.”“The more we acknowledge that each of us has circumstances that exist in our lives that can pull us away from work, or that can physically or mentally detract from the work that we’re doing, and that it’s normal, and that it’s common—the more that we incorporate that into the culture of our organizations,” said Marling of NYP. “That’s a rising tide that lifts all boats.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | September 04, 2024

Crafting an Inclusive Financial Wellness Program to Engage and Empower Employees

Financial wellness programs have become essential for attracting and retaining top talent while fostering an inclusive and engaged workforce. More than 80% of employees want professional help with their finances, says Amy Chou, chief product officer at Addition Wealth, a holistic financial-wellness platform.During a From Day One webinar Chou spoke about leveraging financial wellness programs as an integral component of an inclusive benefits strategy, empowering employees to make smart, informed financial decisions. She shared tips for designing a financial wellness program that effectively addresses the diverse needs and expectations of employees by combining digital tools with human expertise.Why Financial Wellness“Finances are really top of mind for all employees given all the changes in today’s economy,” Chou said. “The stats are really jarring.” According to the company’s research, Chou shares that 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, with credit card debt at an all-time high of $1.13 trillion. “We have the most educated workforce these days,” Chou said, but with that education comes $1.75 trillion in student debt. 27% of U.S. adults have no emergency savings; 64% of adults say that inflation is what is making it hard for them to save for unexpected expenses. And investing and saving options are becoming increasingly complicated, alienating those who might actually be in a position to start saving.These numbers are causing anxiety, with 90% of Americans reporting stress from their finances, and 34% saying it impacts their mental health. Traditional financial solutions are no longer sufficient and leave a gap in knowledge and service for employees.  Financial advisors can be expensive and free tools are often too generic and unable to offer the comprehensive view needed today.Trends Impacting the Financial Benefits ExperienceThe past few years have changed the HR landscape, Chou says. Pay transparency is becoming increasingly important. Market trends have impacted hiring, even though unemployment remains low, headcount reductions have hit certain industries.The economy has changed how employees feel about their finances. Rising healthcare, living, and other costs have impacted employee financial security and demands from their benefits. And in turn, rising costs have impacted the cost of the insurance and benefits themselves, which in turn impact the employer’s bottom line. “This is where we believe financial wellness offerings come in,” Chou said.Evaluating Financial Wellness OfferingsAmy Chou of Addition Wealth led the webinar (company photo)Holistic well-being is increasingly important during turbulent financial times. There are many point solutions and benefits that employees are struggling with how to utilize best, such as inclusion emergency savings accounts, earned wage access, student loan reimbursements, tax benefits, life insurance, and more. “We think that the modern financial wellness program that can benefit an employer and employee alike is really one that stretches across all of these different areas,” Chou said. Wellness programs should be answering key questions like, ‘How do I stretch my income further? And which of these point solutions is best aligned with my personal goals?’The best programs will offer “a solution to help people decide what they should be opting into, how much they should be opting into, or the order by which they need to be doing things,” said Chou. These offerings will benefit employers, also, leading to increased productivity, retention, and more.An Inclusive Employee ExperienceA financial wellness program, Chou says, should be flexible enough to serve employees of all levels, ages, and backgrounds. The best ones on the market should offer the following six components:Holistic offerings that help with all decisions, such as retirement planning and debt management. A high-tech and high-touch model that is user friendly to both employees and employers and integrates easily with your HR systems. Fiduciaries who aren’t pushing specific products in order to make money off of commissions, product sales, kickbacks, referrals and the like may distort their incentives. “Make sure that the financial wellness player is acting in a fiduciary capacity,” Chou said, and only acting in the interests of the employee. One-on-one access to financial experts, such as certified financial planners, certified public accountants, investment advisors, financial fitness coaches and more. “Regardless of age, regardless of demographic, location, etc, if a problem gets too complicated and a person is getting too stressed, oftentimes it can be easier to talk to a person about it and to have that person guide you through and coach you through the situation,” Chou said. “A lot of these decisions are very emotional,” and can’t rely on technology alone. A personal touch may be required. Personalized to your specific company needs, ensuring your employees get individualized and relevant information on your benefits packages, compensation models, and more. “This will drive engagement and better outcomes for employees,” Chou said. Customized to the individual needs of your employees, allowing employees to choose how they want to engage (whether that’s self-service tools, one-on-one meetings, or live large-scale events) and match demographic and educational needs, including paying off student debt and planning for retirement for beginners vs. seasoned investments.The Impact of Financial Wellness Benefits“Once you get an offering that really understands a company, understands a base and understands the employee, you really can make a difference,” Chou said. Many employees appreciate the flexibility of technology-based platforms and the ability to access basic financial education that is unfortunately not really taught in schools, she shares.“You can really make a difference in your employee’s life, but also the families, the dependents, the spouses of these individuals, because oftentimes this employee that gets access to financial education can bring that into their communities and can bring that into their home to really widen the impact of these benefits,” Chou said. “And once people can plan better and manage their finances better, they really get that peace of mind.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Addition Wealth, for sponsoring this webinar. Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | August 29, 2024

Investing in an Environment of Growth and Innovation

As a 55-year-old tech company, Zebra Technologies has been through its share of mergers and acquisitions. Its first acquisitions were in the 1980s, and in the late 1990s and early 2000s the company purchased a string of small technology firms, and continued adding to its portfolio of hardware and software makers in the 2010s. Notably, Zebra acquired the Enterprise business from Motorola Solutions in 2014. It’s been active in the 2020s too, most recently acquiring Matrox Imaging in 2022.Mergers and acquisitions are inherently disruptive to employees, no matter how smooth the financial transaction. Melissa Luff Loizides, Zebra’s VP of talent for the last 10 years, has been deliberate in integrating and consolidating the cultures of the teams that merge. Loizides spoke in a fireside at From Day One’s August virtual conference on gaining better insight into workers needs and ambition.Rather than overriding one culture with another, her goal is to “identify a culture that would really be representative of the Zebra and of the newly acquired entities together,” she said. “That enables us to go on a journey together and think about how we want to show up and operate with one another. We want to succeed as one. We want to assume positive intent. Those are often hard things to do, especially in corporate settings where there are competing priorities, everybody is resource-constrained, and everybody’s trying to get the best results.”Loizides knows first-hand what it’s like to be on the acquired side; she herself was part of a company absorbed by Zebra years ago. She shows up in the earliest days of diligence, getting to know the leadership teams of the company being acquired. People managers were particularly influential in those early days, she pointed out. They set the tone for the company culture. Loizides called them the “north stars” for the rest of the workforce. For better or worse, “the shadow you cast as a leader who is experiencing their own challenges, that can very easily cascade.”Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, left, interviewed Melissa Luff Loizides, Zebra’s VP of talent (photo by From Day One)The company has been able to maintain some cultural momentum throughout years of change. Zebra has been named a Great Place to Work, with 86% of employees saying that the company is a great place to be. Zebra was also named one of Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators in 2023, and it’s a best place to work for people with disabilities, according to the 2024 Disability Equality Index.Loizides credits the company’s employees with these achievements. A significant part of Zebra’s culture-building is built on consistent employee feedback and individual contributions, she said. “Some of those awards, and many others, are received because of the feedback of our employees. And that certainly says a lot about corporate recognition. [Employees] want to be a part of an organization that’s going to recognize them and create a culture where they want to come to work every day.”Having a firmly established culture helped the company through a CEO transition last year. “We felt really grounded in the culture that existed,” Loizides said of the environment at the time. The effects of Covid really challenged the workforce, and the leadership team paid closer attention and commitment of additional resources to employees’ well-being. The leadership team also decided to focus on refreshing the company values. Though innovation, agility, and working as a team have long been a part of Zebra’s values, the company added new ones: thinking and acting customer-first and making a positive impact on the global community and environment. “With those refreshed values, we could re-enhance and reinvigorate while continuing to cherish some of the things that we already identify as part of our culture.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | August 27, 2024

Leveraging New Technology to Gain Insight into Workforce Engagement

Depending on who you ask, AI could either be a threat or a miracle. Regardless of your stance, the reality lies in its application: AI is an evolving tool that, when leveraged effectively, can offer powerful insight into your workforce, ultimately driving decision-making and strategic planning. Patrick Hyland, organizational psychologist and strategic advisor at Remesh, an AI-powered employee listening platform, says there’s potential for real transformation from AI within employee research. However, as savvy as the new tech is, people should have a healthy dose of skepticism to see where the potential pitfalls lie.Hyland and other leaders spoke about AI and innovative technology during an executive panel at From Day One’s August virtual conference. Lydia Dishman of Fast Company moderated the discussion. “I really need to experiment with the technology,” said Hyland. “I need to try it, verify it, and suss out the strengths of the technology, and how that squares up with my traditional methods to figure out where the synergistic point is,” he said. The ultimate test is whether the technology benefits both employees and the organization. If it does, the next step is scaling it. “AI is taking this overwhelming amount of data and turning it into employee-led suggestions for progress,” Hyland said. For this to work, organizations must build trust, ensuring employees know who will see survey results and how the data will be used. “If you don’t have that psychological safety, no one will participate fully.”Turning Automation into ActionTapping into the strengths of AI is key, panelists acknowledged. Chris Coultas, Ph.D., senior director, employee performance and engagement at McKesson, says the organization of more than 50,000 relies on regular surveys to offer insight into how to help employee engagement.AI can handle the vast amount of data, developing survey questions, automating administration, and identifying patterns. “The biggest value is in understanding and acting on the data that you get,” Coultas said. AI can integrate data streams and provide actionable insights, helping leaders take effective actions.“With AI you almost have your own engagement coach,” he said. It can help build an engagement calendar with actionable steps, keeping the momentum going between surveys.The panelists spoke about "Leveraging New Technology to Gain Insight into Workforce Engagement" (photo by From Day One)The data and automation of the AI tool is only truly leveraged effectively if those actions are indeed taken, but communicating this is part of the equation. “You should be going back to your team and saying, ‘This is what I think you’re saying. This is what I’m hearing so far. Did I get that right?’” Then you can work together to develop those actionable steps together, he says. Taking a Customized ApproachAnother key to leveraging AI to increase engagement is customizing content, says Rebecca Warren, director of talent centered transformation at Eightfold. “When we use tech to understand what people want, [like] where they’re at and what they need, we’re developing that culture of continuous learning. So it becomes proactive instead of reactive. We’re not serving things up to people and saying, ‘take this training.’” This kind of customization helps meet each individual where they are and elevates them, making employees feel seen and increasing engagement.AI can also help potential hires be seen. It can detect bias, write more inclusive job descriptions, and help recruiters look more at skills. “Tech can also help open up that pipeline, making that a wider reach, getting the information out to more people, and also helping people share it more easily,” said Warren. AI can then be used to collect and analyze data on the diversity of the pipeline. “So, it’s using tech to collect and analyze that data and then help organizations identify areas where they may need or want to improve,” she said. Ethical AI UseFrom data collection, to analysis, to implementation, organizations should be cautious and ensure they’re using AI and new technology ethically. “We have to be cautious to not weaponize the feedback or allow leaders who might not agree with the feedback to become frustrated,” said panelist Sarah Waltman, VP, global talent management and organizational development at Dentsply Sirona.Something AI can’t do for leaders is show empathy and understanding, even if they don’t agree with it. Along with that is transparency. Leaders should share the purpose of new tech and tie it to business priorities to ensure employee buy-in.“You have to share with your organization ‘the what and the why’ of the new tech way before it actually shows up and tie it to business priorities,” she said. Establishing clear ROI expectations and maintaining an open conversation about new tech are crucial.  “I am 100% for tech. But I think that the human loop needs to stay connected for that context, for that continuity, for the folks to feel like it’s ethically done. So that human loop and letting people feel listened to and heard, to me, kind of puts that cherry on the top,” said Waltman.  By effectively leveraging AI while maintaining a human-centered approach, organizations can enhance workforce engagement and drive meaningful progress.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.

Carrie Snider | August 26, 2024