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Being Mindful of Menopause to Create a Truly Inclusive Benefits Strategy

Since menopause is a natural biological process that affects every woman in midlife, why is it rarely discussed in the context of workplace inclusion? Because, declared Harvard Business Review, “menopause is one of the strongest and most discriminatory taboos still existing in the workplace. The mental and physical symptoms and their negative effects on women’s productivity are needlessly exacerbated by poor policies and persistent, outdated, gender- and age-related assumptions.” For some, the symptoms of menopause are mild. But for others, daily routines are disrupted as changing hormone levels take a toll, bringing a range of symptoms, from hot flashes, night sweats, fatigue, and trouble concentrating to heart palpitations and urinary incontinence as pelvic muscles weaken. What’s more, symptoms typically last about seven years but can linger for as long as 14 years. About 20% of the workforce is affected by menopause at any given time, Brooke Bartholomay Quinn, chief customer officer for Carrot Fertility, said in a recent From Day One webinar focusing on the role of menopause in the workplace. Yet the issue is seldom on the radar screen of employers. Further complicating matters is a lack of dedicated medical providers who specialize in treating the condition, limited training on menopause care in residency programs for OB-GYN doctors, and conflicting research on the value of hormone therapy. Yet the situation could be changing. “As a society, we really are at a very critical juncture. People are starting to talk about this. Medical researchers are conducting long-term trials across multiple specialties. And women are pushing and advocating for better care and recognition of the symptoms in the workplace,” she said. Because the effects of menopause on both physical and mental health can reduce worker productivity and lead to increased turnover, creating an inclusive environment for those struggling with the impact of menopause can help ensure valued employees stay well and on the job, Bartholomay Quinn said. Carrot’s own survey of 1,000 women affected by menopause found most felt they went into the life stage unprepared, and symptoms interfered with their work. Just 8% said they received significant support from their employer. Nearly half considered changing jobs to find remote work so they could better manage symptoms, while 22% thought about retiring early. “Imagine having trouble sleeping for a year and how that would impact your daily energy levels and your overall mood, and for that matter your level of productivity,” said Bartholomay Quinn. Brooke Bartholomay Quinn, chief customer officer for Carrot Fertility (Company photo) For the average woman, the transition to menopause, known as perimenopause, begins between ages 45 and 55. The average age at which women enter menopause, defined as 12 consecutive months without a menstrual period, is around 51. Many women are senior leaders at their companies duing these years, noted Bartholomay Quinn. In one of the more surprising findings of the Carrot survey, 46% of respondents said their 50s have been the most difficult time of their careers, well ahead of the second-ranked 20s chosen by 25%. “This statistic alone shocked me,” Bartholomay Quinn said. A larger number of women also described menopause as a more challenging time in life than starting a new job, starting a family or getting a promotion. To better manage symptoms, many respondents said they took time off from work, often concealing the reason for doing so. Of those who took time off, 71% lost more than 40 hours of work and 30% lost over a month–an “astounding” figure, Bartholomay Quinn said. The Lack of Significant Support “You can see right away that the lack of conversation that exists around menopause means that individuals do not know what to expect or where to turn when the process starts,” said Bartholomay Quinn. “As someone who‘s been navigating this journey personally for the last several years, I can tell you firsthand that it has been an incredibly frustrating journey. I struggled to understand the symptoms and the impact of menopause on my mind, my body and relationships, and attempting to find adequate medical guidance for dealing with the symptoms and their long-term impacts, for me, has been the most challenging.” Nearly 60% of those in the Carrot survey reported their employer offered no significant support for menopause. A majority of the women said they did not feel comfortable talking to their employers or HR department about the issue. Of the 21% whose employers offered some support for menopause, flexible scheduling was the most common accommodation. How to Do Better Bartholomay Quinn offered several suggestions for employers to consider to improve the environment for their staff members experiencing menopause symptoms, while also boosting productivity and reducing turnover. They include providing education resources, a database of menopause care experts, and access to those providers through telehealth. Menopause mentors or support groups and private wellness rooms at workplaces are additional options. Respondents in Carrot’s survey expressed interest in the ability to work from home, flexible scheduling, time off, and access to medical care and support to manage symptoms. And with egg freezing now mainstream, fertility health care can be a part of the benefits program that can help people going through early onset menopause, Bartholomay Quinn said. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this webinar, Carrot Fertility. Susan Kelly is a Chicago-based business journalist.

Susan Kelly | December 08, 2022

How to Unlock Talent: Orchestrate Your Company’s Skill Development

HR leaders understand that developing employees’ skills is necessary to prepare a company for the future. What few understand yet is how to operationalize the development of those skills. Begin by reimagining learning and looking for the many places skills are acquired. “Organizations historically have been tracking skills based on the job someone’s doing for the organization, but people develop skills in a variety of ways, through projects, activities, and learning opportunities,” said Jason Cerrato, the senior director of product marketing at Eightfold, an AI-powered talent intelligence platform. “By giving better visibility to the skills that are required and the skills that people have, skills-based organization can be more nimble, adaptable, and responsive, especially as business needs change and fluctuate very quickly.” During From Day One’s recent virtual conference on reskilling, upskilling, and building a culture of continuous learning, Cerrato and his colleague, Eightfold’s director of customer experience Carly Ackerman, gave a brief, astute presentation, titled “Understand Skills, Unlock Talent,” on how HR leaders can operationalize skill development and propel their companies into a successful future. Cerrato and Ackerman talked about four external forces pressing organizations to reexamine their talent strategies–organizational complexity, the expanded role of the leader, organization as a safety net, and the war to fill skill gaps–and how these can be turned into opportunities for entrenching skill development in company operations. Organizational Complexity Organizations increasingly comprise full-time employees, as well as contractors, freelancers, part-timers, and temp workers. A variety of employee types requires a variety of skill-building methods. According to a report from the MIT Sloan Management Review, titled “Orchestrating Workforce Ecosystems,” 93% of managers view some external workers as part of their company’s workforce, but just 30% say their organization is sufficiently prepared to manage a workforce that relies on external contributors. Jason Cerrato, the senior director of product marketing at Eightfold (Photos courtesy of Eightfold) “We’re seeing much wider use of contingent workers and broader adoption of hybrid workforce practices,” said Ackerman. “We’re even seeing some fully remote workforce designs. What we’re not seeing are organizations preparing their managers to support and nurture workers in this totally new environment.” Nimble companies aren’t waiting for a unicorn candidate to fill a role, noted Cerrato, but are deconstructing specific jobs into their component skills, and hiring a combination of people to meet those needs. When a single person doesn’t own and control all the skills required for a role, it creates the need for more people to learn those skills, spreading the knowledge around. “It allows organizations to respond to needs more quickly. It also allows for the development of teams more broadly, as well as greater exposure for who’s already on the team and could potentially be upskilled or reskilled and redeployed into other areas,” Cerrato said. The Expanded Role of the Leader Many companies are under-planning for succession. Eightfold ran a survey of 260 HR leaders and 1,000 employees and found that although respondents believe that identifying high-performing talent for promotion is a priority, 64% said succession planning is focused on only the top jobs, and 44% said they’re succession planning only once per year. This is short-sighted and can cause a company to fall behind. “If you aren’t going deep enough into the organization with your succession planning, or with your skills and analysis, you’re likely missing the emerging skills that you should be tracking,” Cerrato said. “If you’re only engaging in planning once a year, and jobs are changing so fast that in less than five years they will look very different, you only have two or three cycles to identify, plan, and get it right before the profile may change completely.” The Organization as a Safety Net “Workers want to feel that they can trust their leaders and organizations with their well-being, and that means both in the workplace as well as out of the workplace,” said Ackerman, describing the dramatic shift in the employee-employer relationship that has taken place over the last two years. Carly Ackerman, Eightfold’s director of customer experience Employees now expect their employers to prepare them to adapt to and excel in the quickly changing job market. Skill development increases “transparency and understanding of how people can grow their careers, what’s expected of them, how they’re measured, and maybe even how managers and leaders view and evaluate talent,” Cerrato said. “Help people create aspirations, but manage expectations.” When employees know what skills they need and the proficiency they need to achieve for promotion, it helps them plan for the future and “reduces the feeling that they are spinning their wheels when they think they’re doing everything they should, and they’re not getting these opportunities. That creates frustration.” Putting the Skills to Good Use Once a company helps employees map and gain the skills they need, those employees should see their hard work applied, or they may bounce. According to LinkedIn’s 2022 Workplace Learning Report, employees who feel their skills are not being put to good use are ten times more likely to be looking for a new job than are those who feel their skills are being put to good use. To reinforce learning and give employees the chance to flex their newly developed muscles, Ackerman and Cerrato recommended “democratizing skills” so that employees have a say in their development, by way of tools like skill marketplaces. “Give workers the keys to their own careers,” said Ackerman And finally, cultivate enthusiasm for skill-building across the organization, not just among HR, so that company culture rewards upskilling. “It’s imperative that organizations embed skills throughout the entire talent lifecycle all the way from hire to retire,” said Ackerman. “Skills can and will become the fabric of an organization, tying the work, the culture, the value, everything, together.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this Thought Leadership Spotlight, Eightfold. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Va. She writes about the workplace, DEI, hiring, and issues faced by women. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | December 02, 2022

The Evolving Role of Primary Care in Supporting Mental Health

Mike is a 58 year old with Type 2 diabetes. His kids are adults and, after losing his wife a couple months ago, he now lives alone. He tends toward the stoic and doesn’t talk a lot about his emotions. But he has noticed his blood sugar control isn’t great, and, at his annual physical, he tells his provider this. What the provider does next could have a huge impact on Mike’s physical and mental health. Mike is a fictional case, but his situation is common. The experience of the pandemic has made clear that mental and physical health don’t exist in silos, but act on each other as a continuous feedback loop. Maybe Mike’s doctor will suggest therapy, but even if Mike is open to it, there is a shortage of mental health care providers. More likely, the provider won’t screen for depression and will just admonish Mike to be more careful with his diet. Maybe he will be scheduled for a follow-up appointment in three to six months. There is a better way, and it is one that the primary-care provider One Medical is using to provide more comprehensive care that looks at the well-being of mind and body. It focuses on the primary-care provider as the person best placed to be guardian of both, said Andrew Bertagnolli, PhD, a clinical psychologist and One Medical’s national director of virtual behavioral health. Imagine a young woman, just launching her career after college. We’ll call her Sharon. She has some residual anxiety and depression related to the lockdown and finishing her education virtually, without her peers. In many cases, if she were to go to her primary-care physician, she wouldn’t be asked about any mood disorders. There wouldn’t be a screen, Bertagnolli said. If her mental health were discussed, the provider would probably suggest medication. If Sharon didn’t want to go on meds, her provider might suggest she find a therapist. But for someone with depression or anxiety, that can be an overwhelming task, especially when she would have to sort through dozens of professionals that accept her insurance coverage, determine who is taking new patients, and find one she feels comfortable with who can see her in a relatively short time. “Here, when someone comes for a visit, we screen for anxiety, depression, and substance use regularly,” Bertagnolli explained. The provider would ask Sharon about lifestyle situations like her new job and any stress she feels because of it, whether she is sleeping well, and how much caffeine she is having every day. “Many primary-care providers feel their main option is to recommend a medicine. Our folks may do that, or they may offer other types of interventions that have equal amounts of evidence but are often not used.” Options for Sharon may include behavioral activation: doing things once or twice a day that she enjoys and that give her sense of accomplishment or mastery. The provider may suggest practicing mindfulness or meditation or relaxation therapy–another mode of care that One Medical providers are trained to provide coaching for. Sharon might benefit from therapy, and Bertagnolli said they have specific, virtual group therapy for anxiety. If Sharon is a person of color and would like to be in a group with people like her, there are separate groups she can join. If indicated, there are brief, virtual therapy interventions available, and providers have access to psychiatric consultants to help providers better understand medications and manage cases where there are multiple conditions or multiple prescriptions. “We want the primary care provider at the center of the Sharon’s care,” he said. Screening for Long-Term Follow-Up Andrew Bertagnolli, PhD, a clinical psychologist and national director of virtual behavioral health for One Medical Faith is a stressed-out mom. She has come in for her annual wellness exam, and she completes a nine-question depression screen. Her provider is concerned about the results. Faith has been on medication for her depression for a couple of years, and the screen helps the provider figure out whether or not her current treatment is working. She likes the medication method of treatment because she just doesn’t have time for therapy. Faith’s provider would counsel her on other proven methods to battle her depression, and might tweak her medication by dosage or type. The One Medical system would cue the provider to send another depression screen to the patient in a month to see if there has been any notable change in her mood. Faith gets the screening questionnaire through her One Medical app, which allows her to complete it quickly right on her phone. “The happy path is that Faith is feeling better, and her symptoms are stable, or even reduced,” Bertagnolli said. Faith is asked through the app to report any medication side effects and how she is feeling in general. Virtual and in-person follow up options are also available. But if Faith’s second screen doesn’t show improvement, or if it indicates she is having thoughts of harming herself or suicide, the provider is alerted, and a therapist will reach out to do an immediate safety check and assess the risks in a more in-depth manner. In Case of Crisis One Medical has a behavioral-health crisis line that’s available 24 hours a day. Calls are logged, and providers follow up with patients to determine the best path forward. The health care worker on the line addresses most problems in real time, but sends some people to the ER, or the worker will contact 911. “We aren’t crisis care, but we will get a patient that care when needed.” The regular screening for problems is designed to prevent crises and deal with issues when they are relatively small and easy to treat. Bertagnolli lauds national efforts like the 988 crisis line that just launched. But providers aren’t notified when a patient uses it. If a patient ends up in the ER or a psychiatric unit, a provider may eventually find out, but the closed loop of the One Medical number ensures primary care providers are alerted to a crisis and are prompted to get in touch with a patient to develop a plan. Not everyone who scores high on a depression or anxiety screening app has a mental health disorder, Bertagnolli said. Some physical ailments can cause symptoms. A thyroid disorder, for example, can cause depression or a racing heart. Situational depression can happen when a family member dies. “We ensure our primary care providers are trained to discern if something is a clinical disorder, or if it’s due to something else. Either way, we always follow up.” Managing Chronic Illness  Chronic illness can affect mental health, and mental health can affect chronic illness. The case of 58-year-old Mike is a good example of that, and One Medical staff are trained to notice the interaction of mental and physical health, Bertagnolli said. “We train our providers to know that moving from well-controlled illness to poorly controlled illness is a warning sign of other things. We train them to lean in to ask what else is going on,” Bertagnolli said. “The provider might ask Mike how he is doing emotionally in the months since his wife died. We strive to create an environment where he can share.” “We see emotional well-being as the same as physical well-being,” said Bertagnolli Mike’s provider will make suggestions to him using a tool kit that includes plentiful local information and access to care managers who can help him find options beyond medication, like group or individual therapy, or even a local grief-support group. They discuss the options, and if Mike is reluctant to do in-person therapy, he will be directed to virtual options. The electronic health record will remind his provider to send Mike a follow-up questionnaire. One Medical’s model is something Bertagnolli thinks other providers should emulate, going beyond the traditional model of primary care. “We do preventive care for strokes and heart attacks, but not for mental health. We wait until there is a crisis. We are trying to address things earlier to prevent severe disruption in patient lives and stress on the medical system.” The impact is not just on patients and their well-being, but on employers and society at large. People with poorly managed mental health incur four times the health care cost of those whose mental health is well-managed. Mental health is a continuum, just like physical health, he said. Sometimes it’s better than others. Stressors will impact either or both. In the old-school medical system, mental health is in a silo separate from physical health. “We try to take that away and see emotional well-being as the same as physical well-being. The head, after all, is attached to the body.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this story, One Medical. 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.

Lisa Jaffe | December 01, 2022

Focusing on Skills, Rather Than Jobs, to Meet Future Workforce Needs

As a 22-year-old man who’d just completed his college degree, Shashank Bhushan believed at the time that he understood everything he would need to thrive in his professional life. “I thought, ‘I’ve studied it all and I know it all,’” said the chief talent development architect and VP of HR at BMC Software. “I never realized that learning is a process that really never ends.” Bhushan, who later saw the light, made his observation as part of a From Day One panel discussion, “Focusing on Skills, Rather Than Jobs, to Meet Future Workforce Needs.” When applied to talent management today, an outlook on long-term learning such as his can be a key driver of employee retention. According to a September 2022 study from LinkedIn, companies that provide professional-development opportunities and optimize internal-talent mobility retain employees for an average of 5.4 years, which is nearly double the rate of companies that struggle in this area.  Learning, particularly in the form of upskilling or reskilling, keeps employees engaged, the study notes. But perhaps even more vitally, learning also prepares organizations for prospective shifts in production requirements and desired outcomes. “The work is just changing so rapidly,” said Carly Ackerman, director of customer experience for VIP accounts and partnerships at Eightfold, an AI-driven workforce growth platform. “It’s becoming increasingly important for us to be able to evaluate the likelihood of an individual with the skills of today to be able to rescale or upskill successfully and apply those skills that they have today to a new context tomorrow.” Added Bhushan: “In today’s world, where the evolution of work is happening much more rapidly than before, the skills become obsolete that much faster. The goalposts will keep on moving as time progresses.” But how can employers anticipate those skills and then align employees with opportunities for upskilling and reskilling? What are the best ways to anticipate future roles, so that career paths and succession plans can be put into place? The four expert panelists, in conversation moderated by Lydia Dishman, senior editor at Fast Company, outlined some strategies. A few important takeaways: Fall Back on Your Company Mission Keeping in mind a given organization’s primary goals can help ground its learning and development (L&D) programming. “It’s important that you look at: Why are you there? Why does your organization or company exist? What’s the mission? What is the vision?” said Carmen Canales, chief people and belonging officer for Novant Health, a North Carolina-based health care system. “For us, it’s quite simple: We are here to serve the patients–and that really gives us clarity around what are the things that are key.” Canales said in the case of Novant Health workers, speed is oftentimes critical in making sure patients and their families have what they need.  Ensure Workers Produce at the ‘Top of Their License’ A worker’s rate of productivity can be optimized by bringing greater efficiency to their daily responsibilities. Canales said at Novant Health they have examined duties carried out by registered nurses, for example, and figured out how some of them can be “supplemented” by other staffers.  “Things as simple as taking out the garbage from the room takes time from the clinically talented person,” Canales observed. “It’s really using people in what we call at the ‘top of their license.’ In our brand, it’s registered nurses doing registered-nurse things, and us looking at what other roles are still fulfilling and exciting and important that don’t quite require that level of education or experience.” Identify ‘Adjacent’ And ‘Timeless’ Skills Having workers stay in their lanes and leverage their current skills will boost daily productivity. But in strategizing for more long-term workforce sustainability–a necessity considering  the talent shortage in many industries–a broader approach is required.  A company’s employee management team wants to “certainly understand the most top, in-demand skills of today, but make sure you’re prepared to understand those skills’ adjacencies,” said Ackerman, “so that you can really help yourself and your people be prepared for whatever the next set of top skills might be.” An expert panel on skills of the future, top row from left: Jed Davis of NCH Corp. and moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company. Bottom row: Carly Ackerman of Eightfold, Shashank Bhushan of BMC Software, and Carmen Canales of Novant Health (Image by From Day One) Jed Davis, VP of organizational development and learning at NCH Corp., a Texas-based global provider of industrial-maintenance solutions, observed that, in service to customers, businesses can easily get “stuck in a loop where you’re reacting instead of anticipating.” Too often, companies develop tools and training programs to fix the problems of today, but just as they’re being rolled out, they may not be as relevant anymore. “So one of the things that we’ve been focused on is trying to really zero in on some of the timeless skills, those things that we feel like will help us regardless of the occasion over the next five to 10 years,” Davis said. “In doing so, that creates the space and also the credibility and the trust to talk about what’s on the horizon and do a better job partnering with our businesses.” As Ackerman noted, these “adjacent skills” and “timeless skills” can vary in terms of desirability, as they’re dependent upon many factors, such as the type of industry in which a company operates. But one area that can be a focus for talent managers are the soft skills their workers and potential candidates may bring to the proverbial table. Soft skills are “extremely transferable” and “potentially predictive of success,” Dishman observed, while noting they are more difficult to teach. “Technology skills can be learned, and [oftentimes] they die off or migrate into some other alternative skills rather quickly today,” Bhushan said. However, “if the person has the ability to adapt, there is resilience, there is the ability to persevere,” he added, that worker is probably going to prove adaptable and be someone who can remain on a team through inevitable changes in a given industry’s landscape and job expectations.  Leverage Technology  There is technology that can help companies identify needed skills of the future. Ackerman discussed how Eightfold has been able to harness the power of AI to do so. “It’s really incredible the amount of data that we’ve been sharing, capturing, aggregating across so many different resources,” she said. “We can scrape publicly available data and start to understand the shape of where there are some real skills penetration within different industries. Ten years ago, we certainly wouldn’t have had a study hitting your inbox on a random Tuesday telling you what the top skills are.”  At Novant Health, Canales said they are using AI technology to “supplement people, not replace people,” as part of an effort to “get really creative” in the face of a talent shortage. One way this initiative has manifested is in the use of tablet-based, language-translation apps in lieu of real-person interpreters on the job. “We also are taking advantage of predictive tools so that we can be a little bit more precise about staffing and understanding where our peaks are likely to be,” Canales said.  And with the normalizing of remote-work tools throughout the pandemic, Canales said the current technological landscape provides “an opportunity to even think beyond our borders, to consider international hiring, to understand what is the work involved in operating in a different footprint that you may have operated in because there’s a whole wealth of talent out there in the world beyond where you may currently be operating.” Reexamine Job Descriptions Repositioning hiring officers to seek out skill sets as opposed to job experience starts with a reexamination of job descriptions in help-wanted ads.  “What usually happens is, when the hiring managers are filling up these descriptions, they’re looking at the skills they already have in the [talent] groups,” said Bhushan. “So we do not have a very sound methodology of forecasting and saying, ‘What are the evolution of the skills that we are really looking for?’” When a company loses an employee and is looking to backfill the position, Bhutan said, they should ask: “Do I really need to backfill that position with the same set of skills that we had in the past, or do we need to look in the future and say, ‘This is what I really need.’ And that’s a constant struggle.” Reformatting job descriptions in such a way that compels candidates to apply based on their skills as opposed to past experience will prove valuable and widen the pool of options. “We’re going to see more organizations thinking more deeply about the work that needs to get done,” said Ackerman, “and the outcomes that the organization is trying to drive, because that is what’s going to help you create your roadmap for where you are today and where you need to get to from a skills perspective to drive those outcomes and to deliver that value that you want to drive.” Make the Time for Learning If a company is going to dedicate itself to upskilling and reskilling, it must recognize that the learning won’t manifest spontaneously. At a foundational level, it will take time and resources that, on the surface, might not seem available with employees already maxed out with responsibilities. But that shouldn’t stop the process. “You need to revisit the current workload, you’ve got to make space,” said Canales. “This shouldn’t feel like a burdensome, extra thing [for workers].” Removing tasks from workers dedicated to learning is a must if they’re going to get the upskilling and reskilling they want and may be required. “​​We find time to watch Netflix, right?” added Bhushan. “Why wouldn’t we find time for learning? If learning and building your skills for the future are the fuels for your own career, you find time for it.” Michael Stahl is a New York City-based freelance journalist, writer, and editor. You can read more of his work at MichaelStahlWrites.com, follow him on Twitter @MichaelRStahl, and order his first book, the autobiography of Major League Baseball pitcher Bartolo Colón, at Abrams Books.

Michael Stahl | December 01, 2022

In Pursuit of Talent, ‘Everyone in Your Company Is Evangelizing for You’

The American Dream promises “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement and not birth or wealth.” In introducing a panel discussion at From Day One’s Austin conference, Sayar Lonial, associate dean of communications and public affairs at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, cited the phrase coined by NYU Tandon alum James Truslow Adams as inspiration for creating opportunity for workers who might otherwise be overlooked. The panel of five expert speakers discussed “Improving the Talent Pipeline, From End to End,” moderated by Austin Business Journal Managing Editor Will Anderson, identifying ways to expand their talent searches to be more inclusive and innovative.   To start with, laying the foundation of an honest and transparent public image will make a company better able to attract and retain skilled talent, said Lynn Marie Finn, president and CEO of the talent-management platform Broadleaf. Indeed, an inclusive company culture has become increasingly important in the new, hybrid workplace, whether you’re a big company like Google or a fast-growing startup like the news organization Axios.  Standing Out From the Corporate Crowd Israel Gutierrez, VP of talent acquisition at Axios, said that for an emerging employer, showing up at job fairs and other events that are aimed to expand diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is a great way to stand out and prove your company is taking that extra step. “We were the only ones who were at every single one of the five underrepresented conferences, which spoke heavily to our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but also around how we want to get our name out there,” he said. “We’re only five years old, but growing rapidly, so it’s important to get our name out there in front of candidates at every single possible opportunity.” From niche strategy to broad goals, Google Cloud’s executive recruiting practice leader Melissa Santarcangelo made the assertion that talent starts with instilling shared values in recruiters. “It just takes people who are willing to have these conversations internally to create consistency and how we’re having those conversations with candidates,” she said. Whether it be social responsibility or a cause important to the company, every level of employment should be on the same page.  In a 2016 study cited by Broadleaf’s Finn, 64% of millennials polled said they would not take a position at a socially irresponsible company. “You need to make sure that you are encapsulating your culture as you”re putting that brand out there in all of the different areas: your website, job platforms, all kinds of recruiting tools, as your authentic self. And again, what’s in it for them?” Sayar Lonial, an associate dean at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, introduced the session Moderator Anderson noted, however, that most potential hires create an opinion of the company before anyone reaches out to them. Just as companies seek information about potential new hires through multiple avenues, interested candidates do the same with the company they’re applying to, Finn said.  Jeremy Schiff, CEO of  the recruiting platform RecruitBot, shared his perspective on the backend of recruiting: reaching out to potential hires, choosing the right language, and following through with DEI efforts. “Everyone in your company is ultimately evangelizing for you,” Schiff said. “[Employers should make sure] that you’re having conversations across everyone and balancing, having a consistent message with one that’s authentic to the person.” Broadening the Funnel Schiff asserted that when trying to meet DEI efforts, a company cannot forget that this starts with confronting biases and steering clear from tokenism. In order to do this, any identifiable demographic traits would be cleared before the recruitment process began. “You can literally, with a toggle switch, get rid of names, which can really mitigate a lot of the bias. We also use machine learning that will automatically find people who are similar to what you’re looking for, but it’s all focused on the position,” he said. “I've literally spoken to people that are like, ‘Can you add photos? I know what a person who looks smart looks like.’ Those sorts of statements terrify me, so no, you can’t do that on our platform. We make that really difficult on purpose.” For all these leaders and companies, a major part of their mission is to reach their diversity goals. Jeanine Steele, head of global talent acquisition for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), said their team achieved better results in the past year after becoming more purposeful in their outreach.  Added Broadleaf’s Finn: “If you don’t have a very strong DEI and B initiatives in your company–B being belonging–you’re not going to get the right talent pipeline, it just won’t happen. The way you develop that is you have to do it with your staff.” Leading With Humanity Google’s Santarcangelo stressed that in the recruitment process, honesty is a crucial factor in ridging the gap between recruiter and potential candidate, as well as an effective way of boosting employee retention, positive company culture, and most importantly, belonging.  The speakers after their session, from left: Gutierrez, Santarcangelo, Steele, Schiff, Finn, and Anderson (Photo by From Day One) “It was honesty and human forwardness,” Santarcangelo said. When hiring at Google slowed during its recent hiring “reprioritization,” leaders were encouraged to be transparent in order to bring a more humanistic approach to the process. Maintaining an open dialogue with candidates can help with keeping a good reputation as an employer, and eventually, reaching out to the candidate when space allows it. “But it’s really, truly just being human and respecting people’s intelligence.”  A company is only as good as its staff, and according to Santarcangelo, spending large amounts of money isn’t the only way to entice and retain good working relationships within the company.  “You don't need a lot of training, you don’t need extra budget. You need a little bit of extra time and people who care to do it,” she said. “There’s nothing more authentic than to have somebody who’s doing that job, say why they’re there, or why they believe in what they’re doing.” The speakers stressed how important it is for HR leaders to study the data from their DEI initiatives in order to identify deficiencies, while also celebrating the successes. “Having that data about the entire pipeline will help those DEI initiatives across the board,” Gutierrez said.  Lauren Castro is a freelance writer and photographer with work in Texas Monthly, Flaunt magazine, Alcalde, and other publications.

Lauren Castro | November 25, 2022

Including Workers in the Back-and-Forth About Returning to the Office

Employees and executives don’t agree on whether we should “return to work.” This difference of opinion is negatively affecting employee satisfaction and engagement, and it’s driving flexibility-seeking workers to look for jobs elsewhere. But it’s not too late to get on the same page, said Kun Gu and Matt Orozco of people-management platform Workday. Data from a Future Forum Pulse survey report says that 75% of executives who work remotely want to return to the office three to five days a week while only 34% of employees feel the same way. The same report says that 66% of executives are designing post-pandemic policies with little or no input from employees. If employers want to get on the same page and hold onto their employees, employees must be included in decision-making about the return to work. “I do see a point in organizations wanting to bring people back, because I have noticed in my own personal experience, and some of the anecdotal evidence from my colleagues, that there’s been breakdowns in communication,” said Orozco, Workday’s senior manager of mindset and retention programs. But he’s also not convinced that returning to the office is the right move, especially for entire organizations. I interviewed Orozco and his colleague, Kun Gu, who leads people analytics at Workday, for webinar hosted by From Day One titled “Including Workers in a Dialogue About Returning to the Office.” We discussed ways companies can use employee sentiment to come up with a return-to-work plan that balances productivity and social interaction while prioritizing psychological safety. Giving Workers a Reason to Return to the Workplace I asked them: Should employers incentivize, or even require, employees to return to the office? Compulsion won’t work, nor will covert coercion. “I don’t think you actually need to run a propaganda campaign to get people back,” said Orozco. “I think what you really need is just to make the decision really simple for [employees] to make themselves.” Orozco and Gu emphasized that if you want employees to come back, then you must provide a workplace they want to return to: a safe environment where it's easy to both be productive and satisfy social needs. “The way employees are going to utilize the office is probably going to be very different compared to the pre-pandemic,” said Gu. Workers need an office designed for private concentration and community collaboration, as well as facilities equipped with the tech they need to work with both remote and in-person colleagues. For example, hot desks were popular a handful of years ago, but that kind of set up might mean employees don’t get a desk with the equipment they need or that it is tough to concentrate in a distracting environment. The new workplace should offer the same productivity that can be achieved at home—plus the ability to easily work with colleagues, no matter where they are. Speaking about the return to office, clockwise from upper right: Kun Gu of Workday, moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, and Matt Orozco of Workday (Image by From Day One) Consider also that some employees may not want to return to the unhealthy or unsafe workplace they left behind in 2020. “What if you got harassed at work? Why would you want to come back to that?” said Orozco. “In order to make your office more appealing to folks, regardless of where they come from, you have to make sure you’re addressing concerns that people don’t want to come.” Gu pointed out the important role managers will play in creating an inviting environment. “When it comes to a return to the office, the trust between employees and the managers and their team is really important,” she said. Talking openly about when and where work will get done, Gu says, allows a team to stay productive and meet individual employee needs. Understanding Employee Sentiment To include workers in the conversation, employers must ask for employee feedback. Gu said that collecting sentiment data from staff accomplishes three things: understanding how free employees feel to decide how to do their work, assessing whether employees have received enough guidance on return to work policies–in other words, does the company need a better internal communications plan?–and identifying ways to make the office experience a positive one. In fact, she recommended taking very short pulse surveys regularly. “Gathering weekly feedback is essential to get on top of small issues before they become big problems,” Gu said. Making better business decisions is hard if you’re gauging employee sentiment only once a quarter. The panelists emphasized the importance of collecting demographic data, and asking employees to provide this information voluntarily rather than mandating it. For example, Workday uses its own employee sentiment tool, Peakon, to pair employee demographic data with employee sentiment data. Rich demographic data enables employers to address very specific needs that may get in the way of return to work. “If you find that you have a large percentage of your workforce that has caregiving and parenting responsibilities, or has mental health concerns that can influence their decisions to come back to an office, then simply just knowing that can make you more proactive rather than reactive,” said Orozco. Workday’s recent Employee Expectations Report, powered by Peakon data, notes that one in four comments were related to caregiving duties. Sixty-two percent of those concerns were raised by women and 38% by men. Better understanding of caregiving responsibilities has “unleashed an opportunity for organizations to meet a need that maybe they weren’t meeting before,” Gu said. If you have a particularly small organization or one without a lot of diversity, skip the demographic data, which can violate employees’ privacy and compromise their ability to be honest. “It may not be as important as the overall sentiment and the feedback you’re getting,” said Orozco. The project of returning workers to the office affords employers the opportunity to create a better work environment for all and to reinforce company values in tandem with staff needs. Gu and Orozco said this is an ideal time to reaffirm commitments to the employee experience. “There is this opportunity to reinstall the purpose of the team and how we interact with each other because so many people have onboarded in the pandemic, where they don’t get that chance for organic relationship building that happens in an office,” Orozco said. “And in turn, we have to really refocus on how we create those connections.” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Va. She writes about the workplace, DEI, hiring, and women’s experiences at work. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 21, 2022

Elevating Your Social-Impact Reporting to Meet Stakeholder Expectations

It’s not enough for companies to invest in social impact–they need to be accountable for it too. In a survey of corporate leaders, 80% said they plan on investing more resources into social impact collection and reporting compared to last year; what’s more, a similar percentage said that their companies place a lot of importance on doing such reporting. Therefore, it’s not hard to see how “Corporate Social Responsibility” and “Social Impact Reporting” have become corporate watchwords. “If you are public, you have specific requirements,” said Brittany Hill, founder and CEO of the CSR partnership platform Accelerist. “Otherwise, they ask for more quantitative data: having a purpose-driven climate within a brand is mission-critical.” Hill outlined Accelerist’s own method to streamline impact measurement, in order to focus on the fact that while collecting and curating social-impact data is a good place to start, what matters the most is reporting it efficiently, preferably through a data-driven approach that can help companies identify the issues that they stand for as brands, how to measure them consistently, how to vet appropriate organizations to build partnership with and invest funds in, and measure the impact being made. Accelerist’s stance is in line with the contents of a Harvard Business Review article titled “A Reckoning Is Coming,” in which writers Michael O'Leary and Warren Valdmanis outline strategies to avoid social-impact reporting being merely a buzzword. These include public reporting on social and environmental impact with clearly defined criteria and metrics, holding companies accountable; and considering becoming public-benefit corporations, namely “a new breed of companies is explicitly balancing profit with a stated public benefit.” The Importance of Definitions In the first place, Hill reports that 80% of CSR executives want to invest more resources in initiatives related to environmental, social, and governance issues, or ESG. Environmental accountability focuses on sustainable products, renewable energies, and carbon emissions, which calls for sophistication “in tracking and measuring the activity and impact,” said Hill. As for governance, “over the last few years, we’ve seen how important governance can be. Companies in leadership and shareholders can be tuned in to that,” said Hill. The social part of ESG, Hill said, is what Hill refers to as “The Wild West.” When we look at the workforce, she explained, we look at loyalty and job satisfaction. “There’s definite categories,” she continued. “What are we doing to support workers and their safety? Do we have paid family leave? Work-life balance? Unlimited PTO? Workplace training?” She suggests dividing social considerations into three main categories: workers, customers, and communities. Customers are, in fact, stakeholders, and communication and engagement with them is paramount. As for community, that involves job creation, human rights, community development, and community outreach. Brittany Hill, founder and CEO of Accelerist (Company photo) That does present a series of market challenges. “If we have to greenlight more investments, technology, or people, there must be an impact tied back to financial health,” said Hill. Fortunately, that is entirely possible. In 2019, General Mills reported $4.8 million in savings and reduced its carbon footprint by 6,000 metric tons by implementing more than 60 energy-reduction projects. In terms of brand awareness, 92% of consumers say they would buy from a company with an excellent CSR program. When it comes to profitability, high-purpose brands are able to double their market value more than four times faster than low-purpose brands, while also creating higher levels of total shareholder returns. Of course, There Are Challenges Common challenges to reporting on CSR initiatives include not having enough worker capacity for it (43%), the absence of right tools (43%), no officially designated CSR team (35%), and no champion in leadership (31%) “We want a 360-degree view in order to report in this way,” Hill said. “We, as the people doing the work, have to understand in a 360-degree view, what that CSR or ESG measurement is for our constituents for societal impact for brand and bottom-line impact, so widening your lens and widening our colleagues’ lenses to the impact of one department or metrics is really an important part of internal education, to bring all of those stakeholders together, so that you can report in that comprehensive way.” Another crucial aspect is collaborative reporting for ESG. “We’ve heard from a lot of companies where you might have a philanthropic report that you’re publishing, you might have a sustainability report that you’re publishing over here, and they sit in two different areas: nobody sees it, and there’s no floating all boats effect.” Also, it’s unadvisable to focus on, say, 120 metrics. Hill suggests a more manageable number: E: Sustainable products and services S: Communication, charitable recipients and giving to community, workforce charitable engagement and workforce volunteerism G: Diversity and opportunity policy, accountability to stakeholders, human-rights reporting, local-sourcing policy, board and gender diversity (Graphic courtesy of Accelerist) Examples of Successful Combinations Companies did see a 128% growth in revenue with correlated CSR traits, including at least one charitable recipient, where the company disclosed the organization to which it contributed in the past year as well as the amount. This must be distinct and disaggregated from employee efforts and and contributions. The company also has to have a diversity and opportunity program, in which the company publicly discloses the policy meant to support it. Also, a company needs to have a local-sourcing policy, outlining whether the company discloses a policy, a commitment, and an effort to hire from the local talent pool. Gender diversity is also included in this, along with board-of-directors diversity. Similarly, companies saw an average of 82% increase in profit margins with correlated CSR traits such as PTO for volunteering, a program to match employee giving (a program that discloses how to match employee donations and their giving preference), and accountability to stakeholders, in which the board of directors holds executives accountable to the interest of workers, customers, communities, and the environment. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Accelerist, or sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Milan and Boston.

Angelica Frey | November 21, 2022

Conscious Coaching: Guiding and Recognizing Talent With a Holistic Approach

In the 20th century workplace, coaches were dispatched to aid mid-level managers with high potential, who may have had some “issues” with staff and co-workers, but were too valuable to the organization to lose. Last century’s coaches set goals, provided learning modules, and monitored progress. But that coaching model is neither acceptable nor applicable in the 21st century workplace. “Where do you see coaches? They’re on the sidelines for each and every game for the entire game,” said Eileen Cooke, VP of enterprise learning, development, and performance for CVS Health. “They also aren’t there to coach one individual. They are there for every member of the team.” Rachel Lipson, co-founder and director of the Project on Workforce at Harvard University’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, echoed that sentiment. “During the pandemic we all heard about record quit rates, and the so-called Great Resignation. [Conscious coaching] is an opportunity to move beyond ‘churn and burn’ and instead make the investment in junior- level employees by being clear regarding promotion opportunities and providing education subsidies,” Lipson said. Cooke and Lipson participated in a panel discussion with several other expert speakers at From Day One’s Boston conference earlier this year. For decades, a holistic approach to recognize employee talents and bolster shortcomings has already been part of many enlightened organizations’ HR and people-management functions. But the Covid-19 pandemic spotlighted the fact that employees have families, the makeup of those families is often multi-generational, and caregiving responsibilities–for both the elderly and the young–fall predominantly on women. A Washington Post story from July 2020, at the height of the pandemic, reported that one in four women quit their jobs during the pandemic because of school closures and inadequate or unaffordable child care options. “Doesn’t it seem that we’ve been talking about inclusion forever?” asked Erin Hicks, senior director of HR for Applied Materials, a semiconductor and display-equipment company. She asserted that the concept of work-life balance must continue to expand to incorporate the realities of these structural barriers, which are baked into our economy. “Do you have flexible work hours? Do you have a commitment to pay equity? We must look beyond skills and education and hold leaders accountable to having family-friendly policies which reflect all kinds of families,” Hicks said, “because I guarantee you the younger workforce is looking for and demanding it.” “The primary message of holistic coaching is trust,” said Alyssa Johnson, VP of account management at Blueboard, an employee-recognition platform. Managers build trust when they recognize and embrace the whole individual, which then benefits the whole organization. “It’s important for us to pay more attention to developing that personal connection, which then allows us to coach our team members more effectively in the areas where they can make a broader impact on their team and the rest of the organization,” Johnson said. Ben Colvin, a partner and leadership coach at Coaching Works NYC, stressed two other aspects of the conscious coaching process. “Too often the [direct-line] manager isn’t involved. However, coaching conversation must go further than goals and action plans. The conversations must continue before, during, and after," said Colvin. Twenty-first century coaching programs must continue to morph, develop, and apply at all levels of the organization, in a variety of workplace contexts, and within ecosystems where employees come from a diverse range of cultures and backgrounds. “I challenge us, as people who have the really important job of taking care of the precious people within our organizations," said Cooke, “to think about coaching as something for everyone within our organizations. But not coach in the same way for every individual in the organization.” Angie Chatman is a freelance writer who covers business, technology, education and social justice. She earned her MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.  

Angie Chatman | November 20, 2022

Reimagining Employee Recognition: Finding Balance and New Opportunities for Engagement

Every Tuesday at 9 a.m., the employee recognition-and-engagement platform AwardCo hosts a meeting known as RTG, “Recognize The Good.” This year, these meetings have been well attended, and not just because people are starting to return to the office following a hybrid-work culture or because of what AwardCo does per se. “A lot of people come to [the RTG meeting] because we focus on the good and it really drives our purpose," said Steve Sonnenberg, co-founder and CEO of AwardCo. “We actually announced something called goodness grants, to recognize people in the community doing good things and we want to reward them with a monetary gift and let them spend it on themselves.” Purpose-driven organizations tend to outperform those that are not. And when people leave organizations, it’s typically not because of compensation issues, but lack of purpose. Sonnenberg and his colleague Sam Stroman, VP of marketing, discussed how organizations can become more purpose-driven in a thought leadership spotlight they presented at From Day One’s Boston conference earlier this year. Highlights: Applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to the Workplace People have needs. In Maslow’s hierarchy, the gist is that human beings have needs that must be met before the desire to fulfill the next level of needs sets in. In the first place, we need air, water, food, shelter, and safety. “It's hard to tackle whether you belong in the tribe when we’re being chased by mammoths,” said Stroman. When you satisfy the most basic needs, you can start focusing on others: safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization. In business, compensation, which hopefully meets the standard of a living wage, exists to satisfy basic needs. Our human needs are tied to powerful psychological and biological processes in our brains; the survival instinct is fueled by adrenaline. Psychological needs are tied to neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine. “We want to piggyback on those chemicals with our recognition programs to create the meaning that we're looking for,” said Stroman. Understanding the Value Cycle As with hormones, the pattern of recognition and rewards works in a cyclical manner. When an employee demonstrates a value, they are recognized by a manager peer and the employee feels rewarded. “Values are reinforced within the value cycle; purpose drives values; recognizing values drives behavior, behavior builds culture,” said Sonnenberg. These values need to be recognized on a daily basis, the speakers said. Said Sonnenberg: “You need to take those values and provide a way to recognize them on a daily basis so those values can come alive” Part one: Demonstrate! To demonstrate values, employees must know the values, which, ideally, rest at the intersection of aspirational and realistic. To that end, you must communicate those values effectively. They have to be more than words on a wall or part of an onboarding package. “You need to take those values and provide a way to recognize them on a daily basis so those values can come alive,” said Sonnenberg. “Team leaders and managers are those who have to embody them and demonstrate them to their teams.” Part Two: Recognize! Because the “how” needs to match the “who,” there are different recognition personas that need attention. “I am pretty shy, I am someone who goes on Facebook and removes my birthday,” said Sonnenberg. His persona would be what AwardCo dubs Shy Sharon, someone who dislikes public hoopla, favoring private notes and encouragement instead. By contrast, Sam is a Heartfelt Hannah. “My wife makes fun of me all the time that I am the softie. I love just a couple of words of encouragement.” The key is that you have to know your employees. Part Three: Reward! Humans are not entirely fueled by money. People don’t leave organizations because of money, they leave because they don’t feel connected. That’s why it’s important to reward them with true value. At AwardCo, that means “choice.” Historically, organizations favored one-size-fits-all approaches. To encourage wellness, for example, one organization might dole out gym memberships to all employees. Yet a sizable segment of the workforce won’t use that benefit not because they don’t believe in health and wellness but because they prefer exercising in other ways, such as doing yoga at home or hiking. Feeling value comes from receiving actual value, in words, deeds, and rewards. How a Well-Aligned Organization Works In a well-aligned organization, you can match the values with the needs, following Maslow’s model. If you value teamwork, you want people to feel a sense of belonging: this means celebrating everyone regardless of status. Many people miss out on recognizing the sense of belonging that comes from the onboarding program. Inspirational messages, service anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays constitute examples of simple ways you can recognize employees and create a sense belonging. Innovation, hard work, and problem solving are achievement-based values; they cannot be given, they have to be earned. So recognize your high performers: this drives value adoption, incentivizes team players, and rewards results. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, AwardCo, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Milan and Boston.

Angelica Frey | November 20, 2022

How Zapier Scaled the New-Hire Experience for Explosive Growth: a Case Study

Employees begin to form their first real impressions of an organization during the hiring and onboarding process. A troubled onboarding system is one that provides an inconsistent or overwhelming experience for new hires. Other problems include too much time spent on manual tasks, poor hiring-manager engagement and participation, and lack of visibility within the system to capture real time impact. On the other end of the spectrum, Enboarder uses an experience-driven onboarding platform to help customers like McDonald’s, Verizon, Shopify, and Zapier, an automation platform. Zapier, for example, has a workforce that is 100% remote, and has employees in 30 different countries. This complicates hiring and onboarding new team members. Zapier used Enboarder to scale onboarding during a period of explosive growth. “They’ve been hailed as that $7 billion Netflix of productivity because of their incredible business growth in the no- code productivity space,” said Matt Frank, enterprise customer-success manager for Enboarder, during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Boston conference earlier this year.  Zapier’s product is a tool that helps to automate repetitive tasks accomplished with two or more applications. With Zapier, your Facebook post will also appear on a specified Slack channel and will be sent via Mailchimp and/or Gmail via a Zap. When you send a job offer letter, Zapier then triggers an onboarding workflow. However, Zapier’s own onboarding system was misaligned. “Everything happening behind the scenes in HR was a nightmare,” said Frank. “Our open API enabled them to use Zapier, their own product, with their other HR systems and automate nearly all their onboarding tasks with an emphasis on employee experience woven into all the platform’s features.” Here’s what Zapier's onboarding process looks like now: The hiring manager is involved in the pre-boarding and onboarding experience. As soon as a new hire accepts the job, the hiring manager is then prompted to send them a congratulatory welcome text message, which can be done from within Enboarder. With that welcome message, the new hire is also prompted to complete a survey about their interests and hobbies, as well as pertinent operations information such as their address, emergency contact, and so on. This information is, again automatically, sent to the HR management system platform. In addition, two weeks before the new hire’s start date, Enboarder sends a reminder nudge to the hiring manager to create a 90-day work plan for that new hire. Matt Frank of Enboarder, center, and a colleague speak with an attendee at From Day One’s Boston conference Research on onboarding best practices has shown that having a “buddy program” in place increases retention. A “buddy” helps new hires become acquainted with essential information and unstructured knowledge about workplace culture, company policies, perks, and benefits, among other things. “A new-hire buddy program can also be incorporated into the program,” said Frank. “At Zapier, ‘buddies’ are called Zap Pals, and with Enboarder, they too are notified via Slack with instructions on how to be a great Zap Pal.” With the power of Enboarder’s automation platform, Zapier has saved its team more than 206,000 minutes otherwise spent on manual onboarding tasks. If your schedule is a traditional 9-to-5, five-day work week, that’s the equivalent of 86 work weeks saved. Zapier used that time to rethink what makes new hires successful. They defined their onboarding pillars based on internal and external research to be setting expectations, creating access to resources, building relationships and interpersonal connections, and communicating effectively across the business. Zapier also reported a 10% increase in hiring-manager participation with onboarding initiatives. “This is a huge win,” Frank said, “because the hiring manager is critical to the onboarding experience of a new hire.” New employees at Zapier are now 2.5 times more likely to check ‘strongly agree’ on the survey item asking whether their onboarding was exceptional when their manager has an active role. Moreover, there was a 70% decrease in employee turnover within the first three months of employment, a 65% increase in productivity, a 10% to 15% increase in sales appointments, and an impressive 93 out of 100 employee net promoter score (eNPS), a metric used to measure employee satisfaction and loyalty to the organization. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Enboarder, who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight. Angie Chatman is a freelance writer who covers business, technology, education and social justice. She earned her MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.  

Angie Chatman | November 20, 2022

The Workforce Is Aging. How Employers Can Respond by Supporting Older Employees

Demographic trends, including an aging population, migration, immigration, and population growth will reshape the workplace and the nature of work, asserts Vijay Swaminathan, co-founder and CEO of Draup, a sales and talent intelligence solutions provider. The average age of the world’s population is on the rise. People aged 65 and older represented 16% of the population in 2018 and will grow to nearly 22% of the population by 2030. The 85-and-older population will double, to 14.4 million, by 2040. Making the transition to new work environments requires employers to embrace the realities of age and an aging workforce. Organizations can leverage the advantages of an aging workforce, a remote and hybrid workplace, and an emerging metaverse where workers will visualize and solve problems in 3-D independent of hardware and space restrictions. Swaminathan addressed the growing importance of older workers during a Thought Leadership Spotlight about “The Impact of the Aging Working Population and What HR Should Do About It” at From Day One's Chicago conference earlier this year. Age is a vital but often neglected component of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The parameters of DEI must expand beyond ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and religion to embrace age and aging. “Organizations must look beyond a number or age range to an individual’s knowledge, skills, experience, and emotional intelligence,” said Swaminathan. Acknowledge Under-the-Radar Strengths of Older Workers While organizations typically pursue millennials and members of Gen Z as future workers, factors like empathy usually increase with age–particularly after age 40. Older workers are also more adept at problem-solving, according to 59% of employers in a survey. They’re more reliable, less vulnerable to turnover, and make better business decisions within diverse teams, Swaminathan said. Older Workers Have Jumped on the Tech Bandwagon The tech gap between the oldest and youngest adults has narrowed in the last decade. Social media use by Americans 65 and older has grown fourfold since 2010, and YouTube has gained traction among older adults. But technology acceptance doesn’t necessarily reflect proficiency. Just 24% of people in a recent survey report being involved in digital-skills training, Swaminathan said. While 17% consider themselves advanced in digital skills, 49% see themselves as beginners. The takeaway, says Swaminathan, is that every age group may need advanced workplace digital-skills training or reskilling. His Recommended Action Steps Employers have the power to identify, recruit, hire, develop and retain older workers. Swaminathan offered the following specific recommendations: Offer flexible work arrangements. Employers can employ retirees to complete short-term projects, offer full-time employees part-time hours for several years, or allow semi-retired individuals to work part-time jobs. Stay in close touch with retirees. Older adults could become boomerang employees who return to the workforce in digitally-enabled roles. Employers should prepare to offer digital skills updates and reskilling. Re-imagine job descriptions. Avoid jargon and tech-speak that might deter older workers from applying for available positions. Older adults may not understand terms like digitization, datafication, metaverse, RAM, or VPN, even though they may be capable of performing the work required of the role. Re-examine digital workload. Evaluate how automation, process re-engineering, and digital innovation could accelerate digital transformation and ease the workloads of older workers. Avoid viewing the aging population as a monolith. While some older adults are inching toward retirement, others may have retired, downshifted, or changed careers. Still, others may be newly minted entrepreneurs or gig workers who seek fresh opportunities. The bottom line: Older workers are skilled and experienced. They tend to have a strong work ethic and stay in jobs longer than their younger counterparts. They maintain an organization’s knowledge and networks and play a critical role in training the next generation. They offer customers and clients consistency, empathy, and attention, and confirm that top-performing teams are often multigenerational. “Organizations should recruit and hire older workers because they deliver experience, reliability, and confidence,” said Swaminathan. “Having a diverse workforce and a welcoming work environment reflects positively on any brand.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Draup, who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight. Joyce Flory, PhD, is a Chicago-based freelance writer with decades of experiences in public relations, marketing, and thought leadership with a focus on the health care industry.

Joyce Flory | November 20, 2022

How to Build a Resilient, Inclusive Organization

Building a sustainable culture of inclusion calls for integrating culturally competent mindsets with optimized, inclusive HR systems. The result: An enhanced workplace experience and more equitable employee outcomes, says Chuck Adams, CEO and managing principal of Language and Culture Worldwide (LCW), which advises employers on building inclusive organizations. Many companies aspire to be best in class or the employer of record, but fail to embrace the synergy between mindset and systems. The result, says Adams, is inconsistent, irregular talent-management outcomes. Adams presented a Thought Leadership Spotlight about “Building Resilient, Inclusive Organizations” during From Day One’s Chicago conference earlier this year. His model for a sustainably inclusive organization integrates the mindset development of leaders, managers, and frontline contributors with mature systems of tools, processes, policies, and technologies to support the talent-management agenda. Mindsets evolve from emerging to developing to proficient, said Adams. Emerging mindsets generate instability and exclusion because leaders may minimize or pin negative labels on cultural differences. Developing mindsets generate vulnerability and inconsistency but slowly become more functional. Nevertheless, leaders at this stage still tend to perceive cultural differences as obstacles rather than opportunities. Proficient mindsets move from vulnerability and aspirational status to become more functional, stable, robust, and resilient. Leaders acknowledge and leverage cultural differences to drive performance, while employees experience feelings of safety, belonging, and engagement. Organizations should be eager to move toward a position of resilience where optimized systems meet proficient mindsets. “An organization’s legacy of inclusion, skill-building, cross-cultural competence, and system optimization will help it weather disruptions in leadership, markets, and process,” said Adams. Systems must complement mindsets. Organizations need policies, processes, tools, and technologies that minimize bias and value cultural differences. Systems should guide every stage of talent management, from talent identification, recruitment, and hiring, to talent development, inclusion, and promotion. “Only then does an organization know it can hire, promote, and retain diverse, high-performing talent,” Adams said. Like mindsets, systems reside on a continuum from unstructured to highly defined. Organizations often confuse system “islands of excellence” with systems that permeate every phase of talent management. “Systems must be well-known and understood, applied consistently, and optimized,” said Adams. “They need to be pressure tested, updated, and incrementally improved.” LCW’s work brought Boston Scientific, a multinational, biotech engineering and manufacturing firm, to a position of enhanced engagement, innovation, and high performance, he said. The company won the 2022 Catalyst Award, which honors diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that drive representation and inclusion for women. Adams outlined steps in a seven-year process of “dedicated and intentional work” and “programmatic change”: Roadmap: Develop a roadmap for where an organization hopes to go on DEI and sustainable inclusion. Bias Training: Deliver tools and training on unconscious bias. Inventories:  Tap into tools like the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) to assess capacity for managing cultural differences. Learning: Invest in cross-cultural inquiry and learning. Ask HR leaders and DEI team members to explore scenarios and case studies with the goal of sharing why they see the world differently. Survey: Conduct an engagement survey to surface perceptions of workplace opportunity, including the disconnect between employee experience and leaders’ perceptions. Audit: Implement a talent audit to build out metrics that enhance talent management systems. For instance, Boston Scientific created a 10, 20, 40 campaign that focused on becoming a top-ten inclusive workplace, with 20% of management from diverse groups and 40% of management and leadership roles filled by women.  Systems: Reimagine talent systems, including talent acquisition, talent development, promotions, and talent review. “Interrogate and test systems to ensure bias was mitigated or eliminated,” said Adams. Mindset Revisited: Be willing to revisit mindset. “Well-intentioned people who lack cultural competence may try to get around the systems,” said Adams. Bootcamps: Expand training. Boston Scientific conducted boot camps on building a culture of inclusion and managing talent acquisition so recruiters could recognize the roots of their bias. Reinforcements: Push out content that reinforces DEI messages via e-learning, guides, and toolkits in a variety of languages. Goal-Setting: Revisit DEI campaign goals. For example, Boston Scientific raised the bar on becoming an employer of choice, recruiting diverse employees, and bringing women into management and leadership roles. “Policies are no substitute for lived experience,” said Adams. “Attention to mindset will prime managers and leaders to accept the cultural realities and truths of the workplace.” But avoid examining mindset on its own, he said. “As you develop insights on mindset, examine the systems that will move the organization to a position of resilience,” Adams said. “If you work on mindset alone, managers and leaders may engage in disruption and refuse to see the bias.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Language and Culture Worldwide, who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight. Joyce Flory, PhD, is a Chicago-based freelance writer with decades of experiences in public relations, marketing, and thought leadership with a focus on the health care industry.

Joyce Flory | November 20, 2022

How Managers Can Acknowledge Both Accomplishments and Challenges

“I think it comes down to some individuals feeling like, ‘If I acknowledge your problem, I might have to do something about it,’” said Kelly Butler, the SVP of global HR services at cloud- computing company Rackspace, who was not shy about acknowledging the problem at hand: Why don’t employers want to talk about challenges in the workplace? All of us would rather talk about accomplishments than problems, of course, but any healthy workplace must be able to handle both—and be prepared to do something about them. Butler was part of a From Day One webinar titled “How Managers Can Acknowledge Both Accomplishments and Challenges.” The conversation, which I moderated, was not only about why employers struggle to talk about the tough stuff, but how they can get better at it, and how they can get better at recognizing accomplishments too. Panelists said a good place to start is training managers and rank-and-file staff on the importance of empathy, ways to talk about challenges, and why doing so is beneficial for the entire team. “I think that many times, they’re just uncomfortable,” said Amy Segura, assistant VP and HR advisor at reinsurance provider Swiss Re, about why managers avoid challenges. “It’s not that they’re not empathetic, but they don’t know how to respond, or they’re worried about the emotions that go along with it.” Segura said managers need to understand “how the emotional side and the emotional safety contributes to the success of the organization, because if you quash the creativity and no one wants to speak up, then that’s going to affect the bottom line of the business and eventually your turnover.” Sometimes workers need new ways to talk about what’s not working in order to feel comfortable doing so. Butler said they train employees on the “I Wish” framework: Rather than saying, “I hate it when we spend 10 minutes at the beginning of the meeting, chit-chatting about whatever, and we don’t get to the issues log,” employees are coached to rephrase in a way that identifies the problem and proposes a solution: “When we have these meetings, I wish we could just get to it so we can talk about the issues log.” The webinar’s expert speakers, top row from left: Mel Goodrich of Sentara Healthcare and moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza. Bottom row: Stephen Williamston, Jr., of Stanley Black & Decker, Amy Segura of Swiss Re, and Kelly Butler of Rackspace (Image by From Day One) How and where accomplishments and challenges are talked about in the workplace matters. Panelists described many formats for collecting and encouraging feedback, and the consensus was that there should be a variety of means in any given workplace. This is especially important for companies with hybrid workforces, where some employees work remotely, and others work at a physical location. Stephen Williamston, Jr., a leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for the outdoor division at Stanley Black & Decker, said that for those who work in the company’s plants and distribution centers, QR codes have been an effective way to distribute surveys and collect feedback at a high level. Sentara Healthcare’s regional VP of human resources Mel Goodrich uses QR codes to gather feedback and recognize accomplishments too, specifically for nursing staff. “[Nurses] are on the floor, they can’t step away, they’re not right there at a computer, they can easily scan it with their phone. You can link videos, you can link surveys, you can link a lot of things to the QRs–and you can do them in postcard size with some little treats or things that make it easier for them to take the card from you.” For some, privacy or even anonymity is a prerequisite for raising certain questions or concerns. Swiss Re has adopted a way for employees to give feedback anonymously, and “it made a huge difference,” Segura said. Additionally, the company uses a feedback tool that lets workers request feedback (positive or negative) from anyone, and the feedback remains confidential to the recipient; neither HR nor the requestor’s manager has access. For others, public forums work well. Sentara Healthcare hosts both “Town Halls” and “Safe Spaces.” The former is an in-person meeting where staff can raise questions and bring up problems, and the latter is an online forum, more suitable for those who aren’t comfortable bringing their concern to such a public meeting. “It really was an opportunity for employees to directly come into that safe space, provide information of what they would like to see and how they might be struggling,” said Goodrich. “And some of them were very vulnerable in that space. We were able to take separate chats to different rooms and talk to them in different virtual rooms and connect with them.” Butler said Rackspace encourages teams and those working on cross-functional projects to hold “Fail Fast Friday” conversations, in which problems are discussed. To balance this, the company also has a digital peer-to-peer recognition forum that gives staff plenty of opportunities to root for their colleagues. “We don’t want people to be covering up mistakes or thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh, I did something wrong, I can never recover from this.’ We all make mistakes all the time, the more we talk about them and learn from them, the better we get, and the less often we collectively are going to make the same mistakes.” Don’t forget to balance all of this with recognition of good work. Williamston encouraged employers to recognize good work publicly: “If you have a situation where you have an employee who has done a great job, then why not recognize them in front of the entire team? Or if it’s something that spans across the organization, acknowledge them at that higher level.” The methods for communication vary because workplaces, teams, and individuals vary, so employers shouldn’t feel restricted. “I don’ think that there is one particular right or wrong way in which to communicate. I think that it is incumbent upon all leaders to communicate in a way that will reach their employees,” said Williamston. What’s important is “acknowledging each other’s humanity, giving each other grace, and being upfront about what is happening in real time.” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Va. She writes about the workplace, DEI, hiring, and issues faced by women. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 20, 2022

Improving the Talent Pipeline, from End to End

Despite layoffs in the technology sector, the labor market remains tight. Organizations that prioritize the experience of the candidate throughout the onboarding process stand the greatest chance both of improving the talent-acquisition pipeline and hanging on to talent. As the head of talent acquisition and university relations at BASF, the world’s largest chemical producer, Crystal Lannaman was faced a unique set of challenges over the last two years, as phrases like “the war for talent” and “the Great Resignation” became common parlance. “The pressure comes from the manufacturing side,” she said during a recent From Day One webinar titled “Improving the Talent Pipeline From End to End.” “How do we make and increase awareness of the lifestyle of the manufacturing environment?” she continued, noting that it’s not something that candidates and job seekers see as a traditional path to a six-figure salary. The difference lies in the values beneath, and in ensuring the value proposition matches the candidate, so that they receive what they expect. “It’s talking about the purpose,” echoed Deb Hallmark, the senior director of talent acquisition at CEC Entertainment, which includes brands like Chuck E. Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza. “Not a lot of people think they’ll have a career in hospitality,” Hallmark said.  “When you think about the emotional connection, we’re memory makers [through the experiences offered at Chuck E. Cheese]. They see it, we call it out.” Organizations Are Steadily Xhanging the Paradigm  TIAA, a financial-services company, is trying to find a balance between the brand’s ethos and how to appeal across demographics. Angie Wesley, TIAA’s SVP and chief global talent acquisition and workforce strategies officer, singles out women, early talent, and people wanting to return to work after a forced or voluntary hiatus in the past two years. “As we think of how we can appeal to different audiences, we’re thinking of media strategy and think of how we can push info to people,” she said. “The candidate experience is paramount.” Digital technology and data play a leading role. “If we think of what we do in HR in general, we have to change what we do in talent acquisition as well: we have to live in this hybrid world,” said Karla Samdahl, the VP of global talent acquisition at Cisco. “We’re digitizing our platform even more; the candidate experience has changed. Interviews are on video, and how we look at assessments, how we interview, and related conversations are different. Now that we’re offering online platforms, we're providing opportunities in different ways.” At CEC Entertainment, Hallmark described the last 14 months as being spent in focus groups, both internally and with candidates, studying what was working and what was broken. “We also studied data, data, data,”  she said, actively measuring the past six to eight months. A study and data-heavy approach is crucial in global companies such as Western Union, where James Stirling, who leads its global talent Acquisition team across 45 countries, says that the process is “no one size fits all. It varies from one country to the other: it's important to understand nuances.” Upskilling, Reskilling, and Reframing Internal Talent Transferable skills, or a transferable mindset, has also been a main focus at TIAA. Wesley says that they’re very active in recruiting early talent in business and wealth management. “We need that younger generation to influence their generation to think about their future,” she said. “You don’t need someone with experience, you need someone with the drive to understand that purpose.” For this reason, “[At TIA] we also set clear messages around how talent moves in certain areas, where mobility is going to be more fruitful,” she said. “There’s career mapping that crosses over other leaders.” You can start in customer service and end up working in data science or portfolio management. Webinar speakers, top row from left: moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company and Angie Wesley of TIAA. Middle row: Crystal Lannaman of BASF, Deb Hallmark of CEC Entertainment, and Karla Samdahl of Cisco Systems. Bottom: James Stirling of Western Union (Image by From Day One) “Promotional velocity is crucial,” Samdahl said. At Cisco, leaders want people to see a career progression, so they focus on how to strengthen the existing foundation, how employees navigate how they see their path. “Upskilling and reskilling is key,” she said. They have three-term rotational projects, where employees can step into specific roles every 18 months, with managers looking in and exposing them to a new skill set. “We have a variety of calibrations, but how do we get out of the cycle of leaders wanting to hold onto high-performing talent?” Stirling said. The solution, for him, is giving executive recruiters more access to real-time data: someone might be ready for a move, and while it's not in that same structure or department, they can be moved and promoted somewhere else. “The focus is on internal talent getting ready for their next-level role.” ‘A New Assessment of Where We Are’  When it comes to workforce development and reaching out to external candidates, awareness is key. “In manufacturing, we struggle to find women,” said Lannaman, returning to her earlier point. This difficulty is sometimes attributed to the work being shift-based, but other shift-based professions like nursing do not have this same problem. “It’s more about thinking about a new assessment of where we are,” she said. “We’re partnering with middle schools, high schools, and college to bring awareness of what this work can be.” There is a three-pronged approach to this process: outlining the purpose, explaining what the so-called “package deal” is, and addressing the skills required, with an emphasis on transferable skills. Samdahl outlines that “years in a role” are now less important than a specific skill set. “Even though they had a two-year sabbatical, they still have a trajectory of aligned skill sets,” she said. “Our recruiters have become talent advisors, being able to influence hiring managers.” The internal versus external hiring dilemma remains a complex question. “One of the things we're seeing in an industry, when we think of our job description, is that we’re deliberate in what we need vs what we like,” said Wesley. For instance, at TIAA, they dropped education requirements, and realized it’s better to find someone who can perform at 75% at first and then improve to 90% than it is to wait six months for a 100% fit. “It’s not always a single hit, it does not have to be in the bullseye,” she said. “Internal growth, whether vertically or laterally, can allow new growth to come in externally.” Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Milan and Boston.

Angelica Frey | November 20, 2022

How We Can Bring Emotional Intelligence to Technology

A smile can be complex, and not just because we possess 45 facial muscles that create thousands of emotional and mental-state expressions. “If you look at how humans communicate, only 10% of communication is based on words,” said Rana el Kaliouby. “Ninety percentis nonverbal, split between facial, body posture, prosody.” El Kaliouby is the deputy CEO of Smart Eye, the co-Founder of Affectiva, which provides emotion-recognition software and analysis, and the author of Girl Decoded: A Scientist’s Quest to Reclaim Our Humanity by Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Technology. She is a pioneer of Emotion AI, in which machines study non-verbal cues to determine a person’s emotional state. El Kaliouby has spent the last 20 years building emotional intelligence tools, leading the technology with studies on school-aged children on the autism spectrum, then branching out to work for the likes of Bank of America and the Coca-Cola Company. “I noticed the emphasis in AI was on IQ, nobody was trying to build EQ in AI,” said el Kaliouby. The product consists of a video-testing solution which measures and quantifies how people respond to advertisements. El Kaliouby spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Boston conference, where she was interviewed by Boston Globe reporter Katie Johnston. The technology shares similarities with Paul Ekman's Facial Action Coding System, where each facial muscle was mapped as an action unit. Following this method results in five minutes spent decoding every minute of video footage when it comes to emotions. “It’s very laborious, so, instead, we use computer vision, machine learning, deep learning, and tons of data,” she said. “And we train these algorithms to do that–basically, in real time now.” El Kaliouby has fond memories of technology. When growing up in the Middle East as the daughter of parents who worked in tech, she remembers huddling around the Atari console with her sisters, and fiddling with a parent’s or a relative’s camcorder. “Tech can help divide us, but also keep us together,” said el Kaliouby. She does acknowledge, though, that it is a neutral force. “It can be a double-edged sword, and even though I am passionate about use cases, there are pitfalls, and there are areas where we, as a company, have stayed away from,” she said. For example, how does it factor into the talent-acquisition pipeline? “There are companies that ask candidates to submit a video instead of a standard resume, which I think is actually cool because it’s an opportunity for people to tell their story,” el Kaliouby said. “Then the algorithms can use a combination of your vocal and facial expressions to select the videos and then a human interviewer can watch them in order basically.” The unfortunate truth is that humans are pretty biased in their hiring as well. This is a problem el Kaliouby is optimistic the technology can help solve. “At least the algorithm isn’t biased against a particular gender or age or ethnic group. It’s blind to all humans,” she said. Similarly, using Emotional AI technology in the workplace requires caution. “If deployed in the wrong way, it could be like Big Brother,” said el Kaliouby. “But as a leader, I would love to know if my team is engaged or not, if people are stressed or depressed or lonely. Are people excited about our mission?” Having clearly-outlined core values helps. El Kaliouby is committed to consent as a baseline principle. “We want to be clear that there’s a camera and that people consent to that,” she said. The integrity of science is another important core value for el Kaliouby. In 2011, Affectiva was two months away from failing to make payroll when they got a call from a major intelligence agency, who offered them $40 million in funding, on one condition: Her technology would pivot to surveillance. “I remember thinking we might not exist in a couple of months,” el Kaliouby said. “But I also went back to the core values, and that was not in line with our core values. So we hunkered down and we were able to raise money from other investors.” Similarly, a few years ago, the company had a heated internal debate when they were approached to enter the public-safety space. “So this city basically wanted to install cameras everywhere and they wanted to use our technology to quantify outlier behavior, and suspicious behavior,” she said. “Yes, we had a debate: Shootings in school are an issue and tech can be helpful, but it can also be used to discriminate against other people.” They ultimately concluded that the technology wasn’t ready for that type of application yet. Overall, el Kaliouby remains a strong advocate for thoughtful regulation, and is optimistic about the applications of this technology in the future. “There’s amazing work being done with this technology to diagnose depression, anxiety, and suicidal intent,” she said.  “We hide behind technology, but technology can see facial and vocal biomarkers.” Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Milan and Boston.

Angelica Frey | November 20, 2022

Prescription for Well-Being: Getting Workers More Engaged With Their Benefits

Thanks to the pandemic, employers have now made the connection between employee well-being, both in and outside the office, and strong business. “A healthier well-being leads to more productivity, which ultimately affects the bottom line,” said Tim Massey, CEO at Penmac Staffing Services, a temp agency that helps job seekers and businesses with employment needs and HR services. The challenge for many companies is keeping their staff engaged with their health benefits. “We’ve had to develop a stronger level of empathy with the employee base that we didn’t have prior to two years ago,” Massey said. “It allows us to resonate with employees that Penmac isn’t just a place to go to work, but has a level of care about your work-life balance, and also your well-being.” I moderated a conversation with Massey and Kim Tabac, chief people officer at League, a digital health care platform platform designed to enable and accelerate care transformation. That webinar, titled “Benefits Engagement: A Tangible Indicator of a Happier & Healthier Workforce,” and hosted by From Day One, addressed the connection between employee wellness and the bottom line, and how employers can encourage employees to take full advantage of the benefits available to them. Health Benefits Are Top of Mind Now In the past, employees didn’t care much about health coverage until they or one of their family members got sick, said Tabac, but the Covid-19 pandemic spurred new interest in healthcare benefits. “With Covid, we’ve actually seen employees accessing their benefits more so than ever before, asking a lot more questions and becoming a lot more educated as consumers of benefits and their wellness and health care coverages.” And employees are more confident about using those benefits, too, Massey said. “I think the level of comfort over the last two years of our employees to actually engage and ask about their health benefits, as well as their mental wellbeing, has increased a lot.” So, if there’s more interest in health, is there room for employers to increase use of benefits? Getting employees to use their benefits before they get sick is a big opportunity, according to Tabac and Massey.  The speakers, clockwise from top right: moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, Kim Tabac of League, and Tim Massey of Penmac Staffing Services (Image by From Day One) Both encouraged companies to promote preventative healthcare. “[Provide] better benefits that are really about prevention, really about wellness, helping employees to really engage and think about their health every day in order to stay healthy, instead of thinking about benefits as insurance coverage for when you get sick,” Tabac said. Additionally, awareness should always be a priority, a strategy that has worked for Penmac. By making staff aware of the benefits of telehealth, they cut down on expensive urgent care visits. “A lot of our employees didn't even know that telehealth was an option for them. So when they got ill or sick, they would run to urgent care. And in a lot of those instances, telehealth was a better option for them. So just engaging with them and helping them understand the proper way that they could utilize their benefits has been very important.” Giving Workers Ample and Diverse Opportunities   Massey said Penmac also created more opportunities for employees to participate in their own wellness. “In the beginning, when we started kicking off [our wellness program], we had about 50% participation,” Massey said. “But that was mainly because the majority of it was weighted toward fitness—in steps and activity. What we found is that, really, the people who were already exercising were the 50% that were participating in the wellness program.” In response, Penmac redesigned the program to include things like wellness checks, community and volunteer involvement, and financial education, and more employees jumped on board. “We have to make sure that we’re providing lots of education and lots of outlets for our employees to get the type of wellness that works for them.” Penmac also remade incentive programs. For years, their smoking cessation program rewarded participants with lower premiums, but Massey found the money wasn’t a big enough incentive to get smokers to quit. They tried something new: To incentivize employees to get a health risk assessment, they offered a paid day off, and it worked. “Our approach has become targeted, maybe more of a customized-per-employee type to personalize the situation, even hyper-personalize it,” Massey said. League did similar customizing of wellness benefits and perks when the company went remote. For example, since 30% of employees no longer report to an office, League converted its in-office wellness programs into dollars and reimbursement programs remote employees can use. League also instituted quarterly wellness days. “We saw a huge uptake,” Tabac said. “Seventy percent of all employees last year took some of their wellness days. That’s huge for us.” The reason employees were so eager to take those wellness days was because they required no prior planning, like vacation days do. “It wasn’t about taking a whole week off or ten days, it was really about waking up in the morning and saying, ‘Today’s not the day, I’m not going to be able to be my best,’ and allowing employees to activate on their own personal needs to be their best selves when they came into the office.” The Employer Responsibility for Employee Wellness What the pandemic showed us about the relationship between work life and personal life, Tabac said, we can’t unsee. “I believe that we are now responsible to ensure that the level of care that we have provided during this trying time continues, because we can never go back and pretend that Suzy shows up to the office every day and forgets that she has three kids hanging off of her or a puppy that was sick.” It’s a responsibility that ultimately benefits the company’s health. “It’s very difficult to be 100% productive when you don’t have the support you need, and it is incumbent upon employers to be providing appropriate benefits and appropriate perks to allow their employees to be fully productive and fully present,” Tabac said. “It pays off in spades. It pays off in the amount of days that people take off of work. It pays off in the amount of time that they’re at work and they’re able to be fully productive.” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Va. She writes about the workplace, DEI, hiring, and issues faced by women. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 19, 2022

Why Mental Fitness, Not Just Mental Health, Matters at Work

“What we need now, more than ever, is a new approach capable of building mental strength. We need to manage challenges, enable peak performance, build productive working relationships, and create organizations that employees seek out and where they want to remain,” said Marissa Berman, a licensed clinical psychologist and a senior behavioral scientist at BetterUp, a platform to transform performance and growth for people, teams, and organizations in the areas of career and leadership development, proactive mental health, and inclusion and belonging. “If we’re languishing, it’s difficult to be present, do your work, collaborate, and get along with others, manage the complexities of life, learn, and grow. Now multiply that individual experience by your entire workforce and you’ll get a sense of why this is so important, especially at scale.” During From Day One’s webinar on mental health and wellbeing, titled “How to Build and Maintain Employee Well-being at Scale,” Berman gave a one-hour presentation on BetterUp’s platform and the importance of what the company calls mental fitness. What Is Mental Health? Mental health comprises emotional and cognitive capacity, said Berman. “Our ability to be present, to manage, and direct our thoughts and emotions, to maintain perspective about what’s most important, and to respond to the challenges of each moment with intentional and constructive actions.” Mental fitness, she said, is an approach to building mental strength that is both proactive and preventative and meets a broad spectrum of employee needs. It is an approach that can improve productivity and prevent health crises. Why This Matters at Work Employee well-being affects the business. According to Berman, who cited data from BetterUp’s own research, mentally fit employees miss fewer days of work due to illness, and are more engaged, more productive, and more likely to be top performers. “If you really dig into the research on mental health and wellbeing, you’ll see that it’s not only connected to health outcomes and keeping mental and physical illness at bay, but it’s connected to almost every business outcome we care about at work, like productivity, performance, engagement, teamwork, belonging, retention, and our ability to learn, grow, innovate, and change.” Marissa Berman, a senior behavioral scientist at BetterUp (Company photo) With this in mind, employers should expect the events since 2020 to have long-lasting effects on workers, she said, and should prepare to care for their workforces accordingly. Berman used the example of her own past career as an acrobatic skier on the U.S. Ski Team (she was national champion in inverted aerials): “When my mental health and well-being were strong, it literally helped me to fly through the air with the greatest of ease. But when my mental health and well-being were low, it was hard to focus, hard to manage emotions like fear, frustration, self-criticism, and it made it so much more likely that I would crash and burn with disastrous consequences.” Focusing on Mental Fitness for the Sake of Workers and the Business Berman says the current return to workplaces will present another stressor on workers, so employers have a responsibility to proceed with care in mind, lest it come back to bite. “Low mental health does not equate to mental illness, but it is a risk factor for developing not only mental illness, but physical illness.” Begin by teaching your workforce about the importance of mental fitness, which considers longevity. “You have to start with the acknowledgement that so few people actually understand what mental health and wellbeing are,” she said. “So you need to start there to build awareness of what it is and incentivize people to participate, to build it, help people understand the benefit to them.” Berman called for what she and BetterUp name a “mental fitness movement,” or a culture that prioritizes proactive and preventative care for one’s mental health and well-being. This means also considering employee needs on an individual level. Therapy isn’t for everyone, she said, but everyone does need help in one way or another. “Our behavioral health and digital solutions that are primarily focused on clinical needs take a reactive approach, or are just not sticky enough to build real behavior change. The bottom line is that this has left a really big gap in the support that’s needed for the majority of our workforce. And it’s kept a lot of us stuck, or worse, it’s led to personal and professional crises that could have been prevented with the right kind of support.” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Va. She writes about the workplace, DEI, hiring, and issues faced by women. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 19, 2022

AT&T’s HR Chief on Career Growth: ‘There Are Opportunities for Everyone’

To stick around and climb the career ladder, employees have to know there’s one available in the first place. That’s the takeaway from a conversation between Angela Santone, senior executive vice president of HR for AT&T, and Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company, in a From Day One webinar on career growth as a strategy for employee retention. To be sure, compensation matters. Nearly two out of three U.S. workers who left a job last year cited low pay as the top reason for doing so, according to Pew Research. With inflation at 40-year highs, macroeconomic headwinds are leading some employees to seek out better compensation opportunities. The runner-up reason for departure, however, is something companies can prioritize in any economy. A third of respondents said the fact that their employer offered no opportunities for advancement was a “major” reason they left a job. Employees who perceive opportunities to learn and grow are nearly three times more likely to be engaged in their work, and 91% of them say it’s either “very” or “extremely” important that their manager encourage learning and experimentation, according to LinkedIn’s most recent Skills Advantage Report. A lack of advancement opportunities stunts earning potential, noted Dishman. So how can stakeholders better cultivate opportunities for their employees–and bolster retention as a result? Santone is in a position to know, because her company is one of the best in the business in advancing its workers. What makes that happen? In the webinar, presented in partnership with the employee-coaching platform BetterUp, Santone offered her insights. ‘There Are Opportunities for Everyone’ Santone says she knows firsthand how powerful career-development infrastructure can be for retention and leadership. Prior to starting at AT&T in May 2019, Santone was an executive at Turner Broadcasting who had ascended from individual contributor to the head of HR over an 18-year period. Speaking in a From Day One webinar: Angela Santone, top, senior executive vice president of HR for AT&T, and Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company (Image by From Day One) “I joke and say that I’ve been in HR for a hundred years,” she said. “So it’s been a long journey, but never boring. And now, transitioning from Turner to AT&T, it’s a totally different industry, and a great learning opportunity.” Santone notes that, if infrastructure isn’t yet available to them, employees and managers should proactively curate their own mentorship opportunities. “I think about individuals that have been [my] formal mentors, but also the ones that have been informal mentors,” said Santone. “Even my mom. I learned from her to be independent, to have my own thought process, to be confident.” But in the new hybrid workplace, mentorship is easier said than done. “How can [mentorship] possibly unfold in this era of work, where we are asynchronous?” asked Dishman. “Very, very small segments of industries are fully in-person, 100% of the time, working synchronously together. How does that even work now, in this hybrid job market?” “I don’t know if I actually have the answer, because I think not many do,” said Santone. “But what worked 30 years ago doesn’t work today. Before, you could maybe get away with not having conversations with your employees face-to-face. Now, if you don’t schedule time with them to have a call, or a team meeting, you’re never going to know what they’re doing. You’re never going to know how they’re feeling. And those are the employees who are quick to look at other opportunities.” “People leave managers, not companies,” she added. AT&T appears to have mentorship and career mapping dialed in. The American Opportunity Index is a new measurement for corporate career advancement, co-published by the Burning Glass Institute, the Schultz Family Foundation, and Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work Project. In it, the 250 largest public companies in America were ranked on criteria related to career growth, upward mobility, and compensation. AT&T came out on top for economic and job opportunity, just ahead of American Express and Cisco Systems. “At AT&T, fewer than 5% of our positions require college degrees,” noted Santone. “We have over 20 programs that we offer to employees, and a continuous learning culture. There are opportunities for everyone.” Sweat the Soft Stuff Soft skills will likely appreciate in value in years to come, Santone said. Companies may want to take on-the-job, soft-skill development opportunities into consideration when weighing hybrid or remote-work policies. “I worry a little bit about how we maintain the soft skills,” said Santone. “We put such a focus on technical skills, which is obviously incredibly important. I just want to make sure individuals have the ability to share their ideas, have conversations about their careers, and engage. A lot of the kids coming up already have the hard skills.” She said companies will need to pay more attention to how young employees interact interpersonally, and may need additional mentorship or development to close the gaps. Volunteer work is a big part of the company’s employee engagement, including AT&T Believes, a program of grassroots initiatives to improve local communities (Company photo) “It’s a skill in and of itself to build in an hour every day for focus time,” noted Dishman, “so that someone doesn't usurp your calendar and stick a meeting in there. I know my prime times for doing certain tasks, but not everybody knows that.” Dishman asked Santone how employees can better advocate for their own development when they’re not always sure what they need next. Santone says it sometimes starts with saying no. “No one is going to make you a priority, so first and foremost is having boundaries,” she said. “The older I get, the more I realize how important boundaries are. They matter. If you aren’t willing to set those boundaries, and you’re always saying yes to everything, it really cuts into your time to develop yourself and learn.” Whether you’re advocating for your own career, or trying to build a culture that encourages your employees to do the same, Santone says leaning into proactive conversations is more important than ever for retention in a hybrid workforce. “We don’t have a mentality of up-or-out,” said Santone. “When I joined AT&T three years ago, I was completely blown away by how many people come here and have so many different careers at the same company. I always tell the leaders that I talk to about that. You can either keep [employees] where they are, or they’re going to leave the company. If you think they’re that great, I think we want to keep them.” Nick Wolny is a senior editor at NextAdvisor, in partnership with TIME. He has previously written for Fast Company, Fortune, Business Insider, Entrepreneur Magazine, and OUT Magazine, and was named a “40 under 40” by the Houston Business Journal in 2021.

Nick Wolny | November 18, 2022

Recognizing Employees for Their Lives Beyond Work

Before the pandemic, a work team might have sat around a table in a conference room and discussed the weather, or the latest sports scores, before delving into work. You might have known that your colleagues had kids or were married, but chances are you would not have known the kids’ names or how the couple met. Since large numbers of people began working remotely, though, we have learned far more about our colleagues and employees, from the reactions their dogs have to squirrels, to what their tired 2-year-old sounds like, and just how much someone’s partner likes mid-century modern. With so many people working from their homes, we got to know our colleagues as whole people, which comes with a whole host of benefits. Will some of those benefits stick around in the post-pandemic era? During a recent From Day One webinar on “Recognizing Employees for Both Their Work and Life,” sponsored by the employee-recognition platform Achievers, a panel of HR leaders talked about the lessons learned for making the workplace more open and welcoming. Each of the five speakers highlighted a different method. Among the highlights of the conversation, moderated by Shana Lebowitz Gaynor, author and correspondent for Insider: Engagement Through Volunteering For Zebra Technologies, a mobile-computing company, volunteering is a passion, said Melissa Luff Loizides, VP of HR. The company has 120 offices in 54 countries and is always seeking ways to build ties between employees. “Volunteering has been a great opportunity to do that,” said Loizides. “We give employees 32 hours a year to volunteer someplace that is a personal or corporate passion for them.” Although it is leadership-led, volunteering has grassroots strength. Zebra just completed its third annual Zebra Gives campaign and saw “exponential growth” in employee contributions. “I think that really speaks to the whole self of our employees,” said Loizides. A large group of U.S.-based employees completed the Great Cycle Challenge to raise funds for childhood cancer research and care. Together they brought in more than $100,000. “That’s hundreds of Zebras donating their time and getting others to join in the contributions.” Personal Connections in a Hybrid World Allison Lyons, VP of HR for Frontier Communications, a digital infrastructure company, is no stranger to remote working arrangements. She led dispersed, remote teams before the pandemic. Over the last ten years, she learned that when you can’t be physically present with employees on a daily basis, it becomes imperative to have regularly scheduled check-ins to gain insight into their personal journeys and struggles. Speaking on recognition, top row from left: Mario Ellis of WellSpan Health and Allison Lyons of Frontier Communications. Middle row: Fahd Alvi of Oerlikon, Melissa Luff Loizides of Zebra Technologies, and moderator Shana Lebowitz Gaynor. Bottom row: Denise Malloy of Johnson Controls (Image by From Day One) Lyons mentioned one former employee who wanted to be with her grandmother in the hospital at the end of her life. At a time when remote work wasn’t yet commonplace, Lyons allowed her employee work from her grandmother’s bedside for several months. “She was able to be there, but also still participate as an employee and not feel stretched. At that time it felt different for someone to be able to do that.” Frontier carried that philosophy forward into the pandemic, and now it’s not such a strange occurrence for employees to have the flexibility to work from wherever they need to be. Having a progressive attitude about the whole lives of workers has helped companies compete in the recent war for talent, said Denise Malloy, VP and global head of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for Johnson Controls. But at world-class companies with best-in-class employment policies, the rate of attrition has not changed all that much. “Culture is the way to win the war,” she said. “If you solidify your culture, if you take care of your people, if you provide opportunities, you will do a much better job of winning the war for talent than if you simply try to establish the brand and get people in the door. That can be easy. But can you keep them there?” The upshot: “Never allow work to trump our humanity,” Malloy said. In Benefits and Rewards, Everyone’s Needs Are Different Oerlikon, an engineering and technology innovation firm, initially looked to compensation as a method of improving retention, said Fahd Alvi, head of rewards and organizational effectiveness. Oerlikon took a living-wage approach and found gaps, especially among hourly workers. Once that was sorted, Alvi said they addressed other benefits. For example, Alvi sent out a benefits survey in the heart of the pandemic. “It was an eye opener. Everyone’s priority is different, and everybody’s needs are different.” They had medical, dental, and vision (coverage), but there was a gap in behavioral health. Oerlikon investigated the active-lifestyle model that it promoted among employees and found they didn’t fund that stated goal. As a result, the company added free gym memberships for employees. Other additions included childcare and eldercare benefits. In all, a dozen new benefits, most of them company-paid, were added as a result of the feedback gained through that benefits survey. Retention has improved, and employees feel that they are heard and that they have access to benefits their competitors do not offer. “They saw we were investing in them beyond just pay,” Alvi said. WellSpan Health, a Pennsylvania-based integrated health system, developed a peer-to-peer recognition program for its employees to encourage affinity within the company. Mario Ellis, VP of total rewards at the company, said they created badges tied to company values that anyone can award to anyone else. The badge is delivered to both the person and their manager. There is also an internal page where those commendations are shared within the company. “That helps build engagement,” he said. Thousands have been awarded. During August, every day has different events tied to the badges that bring people together whether they work from home, on-site, or in a hybrid model. Will the Changes Be Enduring? Lyons said the pandemic has helped drive home for many people how employees lead whole other lives. “You see each other in a different way,” she said. “The prevailing wisdom has generally been that when you work remote, you’re less connected. But it’s not uncommon for people to ask about my husband and my two kids and ask questions in ways that they wouldn’t have ever asked if we were just in a conference room talking about the weather and moving on.” The big events of your life, if supported at work, can stay with you for your whole career. Lyons recalled earlier in her career, when she worked for Mayo Clinic, her mother was dying. Because of her employer’s flexibility, she was able to bring her mother to her chemo appointments and work from the hospital. “There’s very little that’s positive about that experience. But one of the blessings is that it changed who I was, as a person made me a better human, a better parent, better manager. I very much understand when my when my team goes through things. These are short periods of an employee’s long life. Take care of your grandmother, work remotely, it’s fine. When we give people that grace, they work harder. And that’s a retention strategy.” Lyons tries to ensure her team doesn’t have to ask for certain basic kinds of support. For example, she doesn’t schedule meetings first thing in the morning, when people might be getting their kids off to school, or right at the end of the day, when they may have other family responsibilities. “At the end of the day, if people don’t feel cared about, it doesn’t matter–you can give me the best pay and benefits, but if you tell me I can’t make my kid’s event, I’m out.” Ellis agreed that when you have a team member who needs support, you should find a way to provide it, and you should provide methods for individuals’ humanity and personality to shine through. “At the end of meetings, I ask what’s going on in their lives. We go around the room and talk about what we’re going to do for the weekend or what’s going on with our child or what’s going on in a family. It brings a sense of humanity to the team.” People may not leave because of compensation or benefits, he said, but will consider it if they don’t have a good relationship internally with their peers or their manager. Loizides has a child with special needs at home, and during the lockdown period of the Covid-19 pandemic, her son would ask her every day what she wanted to drink, often while she was on Zoom meetings. Loizides said she could have turned off her camera, but she didn’t. She would ask her son playfully for some bubbly, and he would bring her seltzer water. It was a moment of humor and humanity. “We came together and celebrated our children and our spouses and our crazy dogs and cats and all other sorts of things that were going on. As we’e moving back into the office environment, now we can appreciate that we’re all showing up to work in different ways.” 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.

Lisa Jaffe | November 17, 2022

With HR on the Rise as a Profession, Students Want to Get on Board

If you’re a college student hoping to be employable someday soon, you might study engineering or math–but that’s not for everybody. Erik Raunikar, a student at Oklahoma State University, is sold on something else: human resources. HR is a career path with abundant opportunity, he believes. “I found a near-universal applicability in the business world,” said Raunikar, who has a mission statement ready-made for LinkedIn: “Every single firm out there needs the ability to not only hire the right person the first time, but also train them to become the highest-performing version of themselves.” This spring, Raunikar will join an HR field stoked with fresh enthusiasm for disciplines like people analytics and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and determined to exercise its broadened reach in organizations. And like many newly minted HR professionals entering the workforce right now, he comes with a new understanding of the business and technical side of HR. The HR field is growing, propelled by piqued awareness of social inequities, reexamination of workers’ relationship to work, and willingness from the C-suite to expand HR’s involvement in business. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment for HR specialists will grow “8% percent from 2021 to 2031, faster than the average for all occupations.” Employers are adding HR leaders with new specialties, including chief diversity officers, directors of people operations, HR data analysts, and HR tech leaders. “Covid-19 has had a big impact on the perception and view of the value of HR. It’s seen as a critical and strategic function,” Lynn Merritt, SVP and chief HR officer for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, told From Day One. “Additionally, the challenge around the war for talent has increased the value and interest in recruiting, career pathing, organizational design, and development, which I think has created a larger appreciation as well as a greater interest for the younger generation.” The world of higher education has taken notice–and responded with more curriculum and advanced degrees. This year, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania announced that it will add two disciplines for the academic year starting in 2023: an undergraduate concentration and an MBA with a major in DEI, as well as degrees in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in business, citing the “rising relevance” of these two priorities. Cornell University, whose School of Industrial and Labor Relations is regarded as perhaps the best in the field, offers both PhD and master’s degrees in HR, and Cornell’s digital unit, eCornell, now offers executive DEI certificates. Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies offers both a master’s degree in HR management and an executive DEI certificate. The Path to an HR Career  Ryan Greenbaum, the director of the undergraduate program in HR management at Rutgers University, says that for most undergrads in the management department, HR isn’t on the radar, at least initially. “Until they get into the intro to HR class, they don’t understand exactly what it is, and right when they get in, they realize how many different parts of each company are actually affected by what HR does.” To some degree, the shift in focus during the pandemic toward greater concern about worker well-being may be inspiring students who want to be advocates for employees as well as social causes. “They have this innate interest in the subject because they love the human interaction, they love the people,” said Pearl Sumathi, assistant professor of practice at the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State. Like Greenbaum’s, her students have little awareness of the field when they enter the classroom, but students quickly recognize the promise of a career in HR. Giselle Battley, the global head of early-career talent at commercial real-estate firm JLL, sees new enthusiasm for the purpose-driven components of HR. There are two questions she gets from early career recruits: “What are you doing about DEI?” and “What are you doing about sustainability?” Erik Raunikar, who is pursuing a degree in HR management at Oklahoma State University, aims to get an MBA someday as well (Photo courtesy of Erik Raunikar) This energy for social and ethical responsibility is new. “That’s something before 2020 I’d never really heard students say, but in 2020 there was an explosion of job opportunities in the DEI field. Jobs that never existed before started popping up,” said Battley. “I’ve had a few students approach me even about the work that I’m doing in D&I recruiting, but I did that for many, many years. They’re asking, ‘How do I do that?’,” said Battley. Drew Valvo, who works with Battley at JLL as a specialist in learning and development (L&D), started out at the company in a project-management role unrelated to HR, but during the pandemic felt himself drawn toward the growing emphasis on DEI in 2020. Valvo, who has a degree in biology from Clemson University, began recalibrating his career plans. “It was around July where I started to do a lot of introspection,” Valvo said. He didn’t really know how to make a difference, but he knew that marginalized workers needed advocacy. “LGBTQ rights were, and still are, pretty rocky. People of color always experience things differently. I think the pandemic really exacerbated that,” he said. While still working full-time, Valvo enrolled in a graduate program at Queens University in Charlotte, N.C., where he is earning a master’s of science in talent and organization development, with a concentration in DEI. Earlier this year, he moved into his L&D role at JLL. “My degree program has been really helpful in guiding myself both from a personal element, how to navigate and deal with my own change and stressors, and additionally, how to influence business decisions and how to make more inclusive spaces,” he said. A Burgeoning Field  While the human side of HR is what inspires many students, the field increasingly depends on digital tools to get the job done more efficiently. At the undergraduate level, both Sumathi and Greenbaum noted greater emphasis on quantitative and technical skills that might look more at home in a business-school curriculum. “In the time that I’ve been here for four years, they’ve changed the curriculum up quite a bit to incorporate more STEM. They include an analytics track, data analytics, people analytics, statistics for [human resource management],” Greenbaum said. Businesses recognize the need for quantitative acumen in HR. According to a 2018 study by HR.com and BambooHR, a typical HR department’s weakest skill is “understanding and using HR data.” Only 16% of HR professionals consider themselves HR data experts. “While [HR analytics] has always been around, workforce planning, job design, and employee value propositions will be anchored on workforce data,” said Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Merritt. At Rutgers, Greenbaum sees a remarkable number of students interested in compensation policy, which happens to coincide with a growing public focus on pay equity and passage of pay-transparency laws. “They start to get a better understanding than what a lot of other students understand,” Greenbaum said. Students learn how compensation is calculated, and how to control their own. “They really dive into it,” he said. Drew Valvo went back to school to get an MS in HR and now works for JLL as a specialist in L&D (Photo courtesy of Drew Valvo) As the HR department commands a bigger say in business operations, HR management programs and business programs are starting to take on more similarities. Jeffrey Schwartz, who co-teaches a course on the future of work at Columbia Business School, told Bloomberg Businessweek that talk of the “future of work” in business schools was once about robots replacing humans, but now more closely resembles HR. As Bloomberg reporter Matthew Boyle put it: “It’s less about threats and more about such opportunities as exploring the proper relationship between a business and its workers, or the trade-offs between people and profits.” Raunikar, the Oklahoma State student, sees his degree in HR management as a natural precursor to a career as an executive. He plans to one day get an MBA and start his own company in his hometown of McAlester, Okla. (Its motto: “Small Town. Big Frontier.”) Raunikar hasn’t decided on the business yet, but he wants to create something that can reduce housing costs and puts more cash in residents’ pockets. For now, he wants the HR experience. “My end goal in its simplest terms is to leave McAlester–and perhaps Oklahoma–better than I found them. That’s my home, and it’s my duty to fix and maintain. The cool thing about learning HR, though, is I have the freedom to make that choice,” he said. Appealing to business inclination is one way employers can attract this new wave of HR talent. “Showcase how HR as a function excels in your organization by strategically partnering with the business to accelerate growth and profits. Show the purpose for which you exist and how that translates to the HR strategy,” Sumathi said. Valvo of JLL has the CHRO position in mind for himself, but detours are welcome because the applications are now so broad. “There’s no deadline on goals. There are so many opportunities that I can kind of go into or lean into that, fortunately, I don’t feel like I’m in a rush to do it,” Valvo said. “There are a huge array of possibilities in the HR whole realm that I’m really excited about.” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Va. She writes about the workplace, DEI, hiring, and women’s experiences at work. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 13, 2022