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Nzingha Hall | July 05, 2022

To Make Progress in DEI, It's All About the Follow-Through

A prominent question that crosses the minds of many in these unprecedented times is, “How are my daily lived experiences and personal principles honored and reflected in the work that I do?” In a fireside chat at at From Day One’s Atlanta conference, Laurie George Billingsley, global chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at The Coca-Cola Company, reflected on the responsibility of businesses leading the charge to achieve justice and equity. In many ways, employers and employees have had to shift direction. The workplace is no longer physical, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has become an imperative, and most of all, businesses are setting the standard of prioritizing and openly outlining their values. In a conversation with From Day One co-founder Steve Koepp, Billingsley shared strategies to elevate the DEI function of Coca-Cola locally, regionally, nationally, and globally using the company’s social-justice framework. The company has four pillars that serve as support structures for global markets to address social justice and inclusion issues: Listen, lead, invest, and advocate. The Four Pillars Listen, lead, invest, and advocate isn’t some sort of mantra or slogan; it is a company norm that has transformed into a methodological scoring system to evaluate how to respond to DEI concerns. Employees answer questions based on the scoring tool, and subsequently are directed to action-based solutions predicated on the four pillars. The scoring tool was just the beginning of addressing DEI priorities at Coca-Cola. Employees brainstormed a plethora of ideas to facilitate change at the century-old food-and-beverage company and chose three principal ideas as main focal points. The first was an allyship guide, created by employees for employees, that became a standard of engagement for having conversations that centered on social justice. The second priority was increasing the number of employees who identified as people of color and women in leadership positions. The final principal was committing to supplier diversity. By 2025, Coca-Cola will commit half a billion dollars annually to contract with Black-owned businesses. At the Atlanta conference, the Coca-Cola leader spoke with From Day One co-founder Steve Koepp Community Beginnings Billingsley, a proud alumna of Howard University, reflected on her experiences as a child surrounded by community members who were intent on creating solutions around social justice, remembering, “I grew up seeing, you know, church leaders, nonprofit leaders, government officials, politicians, neighbors coming in our house to talk about the issues of the day, if it was education reform, civil rights, integrating neighborhoods, a whole host of issues. And I just saw how bringing those people together really helped to provide a platform for action. And so that stayed with me growing up, seeing that in real action in real life.” Those values instilled in her as a child and young adult were the inspiration for the advocate and leader she is today. Working Alongside Strategic Goals DEI is only as effective as your programmatic strategy, she said. Billingsley emphasized the importance of creating symmetric objective inputs and outputs. “Develop the commitments that are relevant to your business. So don’t come out of left field with something that doesn’t align at all with your business.” The commitments are indeed commitments: along with a robust strategy, she uplifted the importance of accountability. Inclusion: a Conversation for Every Employee Data is crucial in DEI and should be transparent to everyone invested in the effectiveness of DEI programming, including managers, supervisors, members of employee-resource groups and other stakeholders. Billingsley advocated finally for a comprehensive and well-thought-out approach to stave off any atrophy to progress earned, recommending, “Let’s develop a plan. Let’s talk about how we’re going to take action and move the needle forward from a DEI perspective. And again, how can you get the visibility at the C-suite level, as well as at the board-of-director level, and just make sure that you’re having touch points with those people so that it doesn’t become sort of out-of-sight, out-of-mind?” Editor’s note: Since the From Day One conference, Billingsley retired from Coca-Cola after a 20-year career at the company. Nzingha Hall is a journalist, public speaker, and DEI facilitator in Atlanta, Ga.

Tania Rahman | July 05, 2022

Inside the Cultural Shift at a Legendary Company

How does a 111-year-old technology company survive in the modern age? According to Obed Louissaint, SVP of transformation and culture at IBM, the answer lies in driving a growth mindset and culture shift within the organization by breaking traditional modes of talent acquisition. Leading a cultural transformation at such a massive organization requires more than simply posting mantras on a wall or kicking off meetings with a catchy phrase. “As you are defining what your culture is, you can easily erode the narrative by who you appoint into the job,” he said in a fireside chat at From Day One’s May conference in Brooklyn. “The people you put in leadership roles tells more about what the culture is of the organization.” The Inception of Change Illustrating the desire to transform culture at IBM, Louissaint cited a business problem: there was a shortage of talent for the numerous cybersecurity roles the company was hiring for, yet an abundance of individuals available in the labor force. The company realized that more than 90% of the job descriptions posted on its Careers page required a bachelor’s degree, in a nation where more than 62% of people over 25 didn’t have one. This led hiring managers to re-evaluate hiring practices and consider what true requirements were necessary for the job. “We realized there were real-life experiences that were more important than the degree. So we had to decode what was under the degree that we were hiding from, and determining what real skills were needed,” said Louissaint. “This rethinking has led to an increase in motivated and curious new hires, higher retention rates, and a more inclusive workforce.” He pointed to the airline hiring practices as an example of an industry successfully embracing this approach, having removed degree requirements for pilot roles. “People panic a little bit when they hear that, but when you’re in a flight, are you more interested in somebody who has experience–or degrees?” he said, adding that finding talent among veterans was a positive shift of focusing on skills over degrees. Adopting a Change Mindset with Limited Resources Moderator Sharon Epperson, the senior personal finance correspondent at CNBC, pointed out how a company like IBM had numerous resources at its disposal in order to enact such a shift in hiring practices. How can companies with limited resources do the same? Interviewing Louissaint was Sharon Epperson, senior personal finance corresponding for CNBC One method is by re-examining job descriptions and thinking through what the true success profiles of jobs could be. Another critical step is to train managers and talent-acquisition teams to look for specific skillsets over conventional skills and be more thoughtful in their selection, Louissaint said. “We’ve been screening out individuals way too easily and not looking at the skills necessary to get the job done.” Though IBM is a technological behemoth with the ability to use artificial intelligence as a supplement for hiring, human managers are still the ones who make the final call on a candidate. “Technology should be used to ensure candidates are diverse, and to be a good aid to a recruiter to surface inequities so the team has full visibility,” said Louissaint, who leads the areas of leadership, learning, diversity and inclusion, and transformation for the company. In addition, culture transformation requires leaders who are responsible for the clarity of the outcome, as well as an engaged and contributing employee base. To cultivate a conversation around company values, IBM hosted a Slack conference inviting all 250,000 employees worldwide, utilizing feedback from the discussion to reconfirm its values. Beyond that, management must ensure that employees are able to adopt recession-proof skills. Louissaint said that companies have to build the platforms and tools to equip people to learn, as well as creating a culture of learning, which he says IBM achieves by gamifying the process. What HR Leaders Can Do Now Ultimately, professionals who are determined to cultivate culture change must develop a mindset that focuses on skills versus degrees in order to create a more diverse workplace, such as reviewing existing hiring methods and considering recruits from nontraditional places of learning such as coding boot camps and community colleges. “It’s not enough for us to look different if we sound the same,” Louissaint said. “By focusing on inclusion and not just diversity alone, it will be the power of what drives us towards innovation and building a real growth culture.” Tania Rahman is a native New Yorker who works at the intersection of digital marketing and tech. She enjoys writing both news stories and fiction, hot chocolate on cold days, reading, live music, and learning new things.

Emily Nonko | July 04, 2022

How One CEO Broke Capitalism—and How We Can Fix It

In his role as the Corner Office columnist for the New York Times from 2018 to 2022, David Gelles interviewed hundreds of CEOs. In those interviews, one name consistently came up: Jack Welch, who served as chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001.“They would bring up his name unprompted, sometimes as an example of everything they thought was wrong with the economy, and that alone was telling because it suggested he was a reference point for people trying to create a different kind of economy,” Gelles said in a fireside chat at From Day One’s May conference in Brooklyn, where he spoke with fellow Times reporter Emma Goldberg about his new book, The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America–and How to Undo His Legacy.If that title sounds epic, so has been the rise and fall of Welch’s standing as a corporate role model. Back in 1999, Fortune magazine named him “Manager of the Century,” explaining, “Welch wins the title because in addition to his transformation of GE, he has made himself far and away the most influential manager of his generation.”In his book, Gelles explains how this came to pass. Welch produced uncanny financial results, which held Wall Street in thrall. “When Welch took over, GE was worth $14 billion. Two decades later, the company was wroth $600 billion–the most valuable company in the world,” Gelles writes. “All that material success obscured darker truths. Welch was not, as he would have liked us to believe, a patrician steward of sound business judgment and good character. ... Rather, he was hungry for power and thirsty for money, an ideological revolutionary who focused on maximizing profits at the expense of all else.”Gelles was interviewed at the conference by Emma Goldberg, who reports on the future of work for the New York TimesBefore Welch came along, that wasn’t the prevailing ethos, either at GE or Corporate America in general. While capitalism before Welch was hardly equitable, it was a very different ballgame than the one played today in terms of winners and losers. “If you look at a GE annual report from 1953, they proudly talked about how much money they were paying their workers. It was a good thing. The more money they paid their workers, the better,” Gelles said in the fireside chat. “They talked about how they were investing in their communities, and trying to make the cities where they operated their factories better, more wholesome places. And they even talked about how much money they were paying the government. They were proud to pay their taxes.”Welch introduced different tactics that would completely reshape GE and the rest of the American economy, a process Gelles called “relentless, ruthless, deliberate.” Welch embraced three core components: massive downsizing, outsourcing and offshoring, and stack ranking of employees, which utilizes bell curves to rate and rank employees based on performance and is used to cull low performers from the workforce.These tactics are still practiced by corporations today, Gelles pointed out. WeWork relied on stack ranking even as it was raising billions of dollars; Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has sought for “transactional” relationships with warehouse employees; and companies like Chipotle are regularly sued for labor violations. Gelles, who reported extensively on the root causes of the fatal crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jetliners, said they were the result of a corporate culture that prioritized profits over safety.After the downfall of GE, which was tied heavily to the financial crisis of 2007-08, Welch went on to spread conspiracy theories about President Obama and support President Donald Trump. “Into his retirement, he started essentially being an internet troll,” Gelles said. A seminal moment was both Welch and Trump got behind a 2012 job reports conspiracy.Even though Welch kicked off a decades-long, strategic dismantling of worker’s rights and well-being, Gelles believes that capitalism can still be saved. “Creating an alternative that’s viable and still allows companies to thrive and prosper and be profitable–because I’m a capitalist too–is going to take a long time. We are, though, at this moment where something seems to be shifting in the ethos of business,” he told the crowd.The last chapter of his book outlines what could come next: a commitment and actual action from business leaders to take care of workers, communities and the environment, as well as legislation designed for a more equitable economy. Gelles takes hope in a culture shift that’s beginning to acknowledge that Welch’s idea of capitalism isn’t sustainable: “It’s been a shift in tone and messaging that is long overdue, of course, but we didn’t even see ten years ago.”Emily Nonko is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to writing for From Day One, her work has been published in Next City, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian and other publications.

Angelica Frey | July 03, 2022

‘We Listened, We Understood, and We Did Something’

When leaders at IPG Media Brands, the global media and marketing firm, noticed that a lot of women, especially the ones with care-giving roles, were leaving the workforce during the pandemic, they promptly convened focus groups. Essentially, women in the groups felt that they couldn’t take a break, said Hermon Ghermay, IPG’s global chief culture officer. The women acknowledged that they had discretionary time off, but felt that they couldn’t use it because they couldn’t fully log off from work and worried about possible retaliation once they got back to the office. “The only time they felt they could take time off is when the office is closing between Christmas and New Year’s,” Ghermay said. So her company’s leaders considered how to replicate that break and decided to close the office again, for the week after Labor Day. “This did not solve the systemic issues,” said Ghermay, “but we listened, we understood, and did something.” Listening, understanding, and acting upon what has been learned, as Ghermay’s example showed, is a superb way to develop an inclusive culture–not just to increase empathy for caregivers, but for all overlooked and under-appreciated workers. That was among the lessons shared by expert panelists in a conversation at From Day One’s May conference in Brooklyn with journalist Siobhan O’Connor. In the last two years, what people expect of work and leaders has changed, with formerly taboo conversations now being not only accepted, but also expected. “What made an effective leader pre-pandemic is so different post-pandemic,” said Emma Mon, head of global talent at the real-estate service company JLL. “We still have leaders who still try to manage like they did pre pandemic.” In particular, she recalls how, at the height of the pandemic, JLL launched an employee resource group (ERG) for parents and other caregivers. “We had a session, and I could not believe the things in the chat, how many people were saying they were alone, overwhelmed. The people that were key leaders had no idea how to respond to any of that.” How to make leaders more aware of the diverse life experiences around them–and change their behavior? Among the highlights from the experts? Shifting From Awareness to Action It starts with conversations. Maria Mejia, a learning experience designer at the management-training platform Hone, is one of the people responsible for creating DEI and leadership training materials. “At the macro level, organizations want curricula that will meet them where they are and help them grow,” Mejia said, pointing towards more attention being devoted to the oft-forgotten leader, “the middle manager that now has this knowledge and wants to do something but does not know how to start and is uncomfortable reaching out.” Emma Mon of JLL and Mejia, who said: “It’s key that leaders max out on demo-ing empathy” On the micro level, by contrast, four skills in particular can contribute to inclusive culture. “Skills are transferable regardless of role,” Mejia said. These skills are: having curiosity (the ability get past one’s own discomfort); creating psychological safety within a team; developing fluency in intercultural competency (the ability to recognize difference and embracing it); and conflict management. “[Conflict] is going to happen in the workplace, and it’s up to you to find how to work around that,” Mejia said. Democratizing Learning and Development Programs: The Case for Creative Pairings Katasha Harley, the chief people officer for the coaching platform Bravely, has been studying intersectional data for a long time, which she sees as a starting point for designing learning and development and leadership programs in a personalized way. In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, for example, she had senior leaders reach out to employees for one-hour conversations. “We know that relationships are important in career mobility. This creates new relationships, and then you begin to track how that appears: What do their career journeys look like, based on these experiences?” she said. This does not solely apply to HR leaders, though. Harley advocates for having people with different roles in the same room: someone from tech, someone from marketing. “Who does this person have the least amount of exposure to?” is what she asks herself. The result is a cross-functional approach of people who would not normally talk to each other in the course of their work. The full panel, including R. Carmel Boyle-Lewis of NYU at far left and moderator Siobhan O’Connor at far right Similarly, IPG Mediabrands tackled inclusivity and representation where they observed the biggest representation gaps, which varies around the world. In the U.S., it’s Black talent; in Mexico, by comparison, it’s indigenous talent. The solution was a pilot program resting on three pillars, so that leaders could learn from it and scale it. The first step was focusing on the relationship between employee and manager, and not just their manager, but their skip-level manager. Creating structured ways to meet up on a monthly schedule proved helpful. “The second component is if that’s a relationship between your manager and your skip-level manager, let’s take you out of that group, and look at the relationship that you might have with a sponsor,” she continued. “So we created an advocate program, which is part mentorship, part sponsorship.” As a final piece, the company introduced an external coach for 1:1 coaching, an objective expert for employees to work with. The outcome: “We had a higher rate of people who were part of the program who were getting promoted,” said Ghermay. Empowering People to Say No R. Carmel Boyle-Lewis, the HR director at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, has been spearheading efforts to have staff and faculty be more reflective of the student population. To improve the hiring process, Boyle-Lewis employed what she called “creative tactics.” She and her team created an inclusive recruiting guide, with the goal of mitigating bias and creating job descriptions that eliminated barriers. “Our faculty is 65% white, which does not reflect the community or the student base,” she said. So she moved toward a new strategy. When there’s a job vacancy, and when there’s no candidate who brings diversity to the pool of finalists, the hiring process for that position freezes. “I brought this practice to my dean. We started doing that to drive home the fact that we want to see individuals to match the student base,” she said. Leaders should be sensitive to what they’re not hearing from their team members. “Silence can convey something too,” said Mejia, who works with organizations where one of the values is to bring one’s whole self to work. “That means that, as an employee, I am going to get distracted, feel emotions, and that my productivity is not going to be at an optimal level. So it’s key that leaders max out on demo-ing empathy, especially when that community does not look or sound like that leader in question.” Failure of leaders to speak up and connect, Mejia warned, leads employees to create their own narratives. “[They think] maybe they belong somewhere else.” Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Milan and Brooklyn.

News

The Essential Questions Facing Employers on Abortion Rights

When corporate America was called on to speak out in favor of same-sex marriage and racial justice, few hesitated. On the supremely divisive issue of abortion, however, corporate leaders face much tougher decisions. Despite the leak of the majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s hearing of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization almost two months before the official decision, employers are scrambling to understand what the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the removal of reproductive rights means for their employees. The list of questions companies will have to address in the coming months is growing–and changing. For now, employers are thinking immediately about public statements, in the middle distance about health care coverage, and over the long term about whether they will contribute to the fight to regain reproductive choice. Among the most essential questions: What Kind of Position Will You Take on Abortion Access? Rather than condemning the ruling itself, most corporate leaders framed the issue as a matter of employee reproductive rights. “I believe CEOs have a responsibility to take care of their employees–no matter what,” Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff said in a tweet. “As a company,” Hewlett Packard CEO Enrique Lores tweeted, “we believe that it should be up to every single one of our employees to decide whether and when to start a family, whether that’s choosing who they love and marry, taking paid time off if they are having a child, and having access to health care.” But many other major corporations, including Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Delta Airlines, stayed mum on the issue. As businesses consider their public message, Susan McPherson, who runs McPherson Strategies, a company that consults on corporate social responsibility (CSR), recommends considering this question: “Do our company values and giving align with the statement we are making? Align with our philanthropic and political spend?” McPherson warned about inconsistency. “Making a public statement in support but not providing any tangible benefits to workers,” she said, is the first mistake employers are likely to make. “Words matter less than actions,” she told From Day One via email. The second is being insincere. “If your company speaks out against something but you have donated to political campaigns or PACs that support it, workers and consumers will call out that inauthenticity, and the company will suffer the consequences.” For example, AT&T celebrates Women’s Equality Day, but is the biggest corporate donor to politicians behind anti-abortion “trigger laws” designed to ban abortion upon the defeat of Roe v. Wade, Insider reported. Not every company will be able to make a public statement about access to abortion rights without losing customers and employees. “We recognize people feel passionately about this topic, and that there are teammates and athletes who will not agree with this decision,” said Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Lauren Hobart in announcing financial support for employees who decide to travel to have an abortion in states where it remains legal. Even if a company decides to neither publicly endorse nor condemn, “first and foremost, don’t pretend that this didn’t happen,” said Sarah Sheehan, co-founder and president of the employee-coaching platform Bravely. “I do think it’s possible to acknowledge in a very neutral way that this decision has repercussions and that there are a lot of feelings surrounding it that may impact how people show up at work,” she told From Day One. Does Your Health Care Plan Cover Abortion Services in States Where It Is Legal? Employers are examining whether their current health care plans cover abortion, and if not, whether they will make changes. Many high-profile companies including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Nike and Starbucks have said they will cover travel and health care costs related to getting an abortion in a state where it is legal. Nike is among the high-profile companies that have promised to support employees who need to travel for abortions (Photo by Artran/iStock by Getty Images) However, new abortion benefits won’t be available to most U.S. workers, according to a survey of 220 HR executives conducted this week by the Gartner consulting group, Bloomberg reported. A majority of the HR leaders in the survey said they don't plan to change their health care offerings, or are still considering options. This gap is likely to add to social inequality. “To the extent that corporations are making any moves, they’re making moves with regard to the so-called talent—low-wage, hourly workers are not going to be getting these extra benefits,” Robert Reich, the secretary of labor under President Clinton, told Boomberg in an interview. “It’s a cover. It’s a sweetener. It makes people feel as if the right things are happening.” Employers that have added travel costs to their health care offerings will, in the coming months, wade through the administration of such a benefit in a way that satisfies compliance requirements and protects the workers who use it. They will have to navigate state-by-state legal issues as well. Texas lawmakers have warned companies including Citigroup and Lyft that they may ban or sue companies that help employees travel out of state for abortions. How Will You Protect the Confidentiality of Employees Who Seek Abortion Care? For companies that choose cover or reimburse the cost of travel for abortion care, confidentiality should be a concern. Employees may feel compelled to disclose the reason for their absence to their manager or HR director—information that could put them at risk of discrimination. “You shouldn’t have to tell your manager you're getting an abortion,” Aubrey Blanch, a senior director at the employee-survey firm Culture Amp, told the New York Times. Whether such travel puts them at legal risk in states that have made abortion illegal is not clear yet, but suddenly digital privacy is a critical issue, since evidence of a crime may reside in a woman’s smartphone. The Dobbs ruling inspired many women to delete their period-tracker apps, which have become part of many corporate family-health benefits. One of the most popular apps, Flo, announced an “anonymous mode” to allow users to remove identifying details from their profiles. One way to protect employee privacy is to make abortion benefits non-specific, said Janine Yancey, CEO of Emtrain, an employee-learning platform. The more generic the policy, the better. “Employers are doing it right by drafting a health care benefit that can be used for all health care situations, not just for abortion situations.” She continued: “Employers can provide a generic travel subsidy to all employees who need to travel for health care needs, and the use of that benefit is protected health care information, protected by HIPAA.” Do You Risk Losing Employees Over Abortion Access? McPherson said employers should be asking the question, “What are the ramifications, both in employee retention and financially, of not responding or taking a stand?” The American workforce is increasingly principled in its choices. Gartner reported in 2019 that 87% of employees say businesses should make a public stand on societal issues related to the business, and 74% say they should do so even when the issues aren’t directly related to the business. In the case of access to reproductive care, it’s likely that no matter the position a company takes, some employees will walk. The workers with resources will have the means to leave, and those without resources and without social supports, will not. Salesforce and Google said they would move employees who want to leave states where abortion is banned. Despite such corporate beneficence, the Dobbs ruling puts a new geographical limit on women’s career choices, asserted Tressie McMillan Cottom, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, writing in the New York Times. “With Roe v. Wade toppled, we do not have the same rights in all labor markets,” she wrote. “In a global market, an empowered worker is one who can migrate. With Dobbs, women cannot assume that we can safely work in Idaho the same way that we can in Oregon or Washington.” How Will You Protect Other Rights That Are Now at Risk? The fall of Roe v. Wade raised concerns that the ruling conservative majority on the Supreme Court could roll back other civil rights as well, including same-sex marriage and contraception. Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion in the Dobbs case, said the court “should reconsider” earlier precedents that affirmed such rights. Given the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, employers should start thinking now how they will protect the rights of their employees–and respond to their fears. Employers need to be aware that overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, which guaranteed the right to same-sex marriage, would compromise “access to employer-sponsored health coverage and retirement plans, as well as adoption and fertility benefits, and would leave room for employers to redefine who would qualify as a dependent for employees seeking parental or caregiving leave,” said a report by Charter, an organization that examines workplace practices. While last week’s decision was not a surprise, especially after the leak of a draft in early May, some employers waited to respond and are now racing to catch up with what is shaping up as a new battlefront in the culture wars. Companies should take the language in the official decision as a serious warning that other rights are now on the table. How Will You Contribute to State and Federal Action to Protect Reproductive Health Care Rights? Corporate leaders have been steadily taking a higher profile on social issues, typically with their stakeholders in mind. In the early 2010s, corporate America appealed to the Supreme Court in favor of same-sex marriage. Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, employers pledged money to racial-justice organizations like Black Likes Matter and the NAACP. When the Russian government invaded Ukraine in February 2022, major companies, including McDonald’s and American Express, halted operations in Russia. Part of the explanation is peer pressure, asserts Stephanie Creary, an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School. “What we’re seeing right now in many companies is a really strong response to external advice, recommendations, pressure to engage more intently around social issues,” she said last month in a radio interview. She has even noticed an increase in hiring of executives with the title “director of employee activism.” Even so, the abortion issue may be a bridge too far for most companies. The June poll by Gartner found 20% of HR executives don’t feel compelled to respond in any way to the official Dobbs decision. Thirty-six percent said they aren’t sure. Yet polls consistently show that a majority of Americans oppose the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Among women and college graduates, the majorities are even larger. Those majorities will notice employer timidity on the issue, McPherson told From Day One, and it won’t be long before many consumers do too. “Now more than ever, companies are being challenged to take a stand publicly on social issues that matter,” McPherson said. “Younger workers, in particular, want to know that their company’s values align with their own. This isn’t an issue that’s going away. Businesses are going to continue to be held to account for their speech or silence on things like reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights. It’s past time to have a plan in place to take a stand.” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Virginia. 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 | July 01, 2022

Nzingha Hall | June 27, 2022

Inclusive Culture: ‘We Have to Have Rules of Engagement’

When we think about a career, we are not simply thinking about wages, projects, and staff meetings. Our society has moved away from “clock-in” culture and rigid formalities. When we go to work, we want to be recognized and appreciated not only for our talents, but we also want to be engaged in an environment that is reflective of our lived realities. No one wants to go to the office being the “only.” Work is more than just making a living–when folks go to work, they want to be heard, they want their ideas to be taken seriously. In 2022, companies need to meet the expectations of an increasingly diverse workforce. In a panel moderated by Nicole Smith, the editorial audience director for Harvard Business Review, experts across several fields gathered at From Day One’s Atlanta conference to discuss ideas, agendas, priorities, and “what works” in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). To begin with, how do we define inclusion? It’s become an overused buzzword in a lot of spaces, to the point of futility and semantic satiation. “Inclusion is about engagement, but not just engagement. Engagement with a sense of belonging, self-worth, full inclusion, being able to bring your entire self to work with you,” said Tommy Welch, PhD, chief equity and compliance officer for Gwinnett County Public Schools. He emphasized the importance of creating spaces where marginalized voices are elevated and are included in measurement tools to assess how to improve inclusionary practices in the workplace. The panel drew a clear distinction between inclusion and diversity. Though often regarded as synonyms, these words have entirely different definitions. As Valerie Norton, chief people officer for Habitat for Humanity, explained, “The measures are really different. So diversity, it's real. You can count it quantitatively and through employee surveys and other mechanisms that give you feedback, you can tell if people feel included. I heard a wonderful description the other day: we often say people feel included when they feel welcomed, but it’s when they feel expected.” The full panel, from left: Jamie Hillegass of of White Cap, Pujo, Welch, Norton, Henderson, and moderator Nicole Smith of Harvard Business Review What happens when we cannot always have teammates who value the importance of DEI initiatives? From the surface, it would seem that understanding the power of a diverse workforce is axiomatic, however DEI professionals have to be prepared to engage with employees who are skeptics. Jamie Hillegass, director of talent, development and learning at the building-supply company White Cap, laid down the ground rules: “Some of our leaders are trying to dismantle systemic racism, right? And some of them are very new to the terminology. And so we meet with each of them, we coach them, we find them on their journey. When you do have some of those leaders that won’t get on the bus, then we have to find employment for them elsewhere. We believe from the leadership down, we have to get everyone moving in the same direction, even if they are maybe on different parts of the journey.” Finding mutual understanding is one of the keys to strategic alignment. Carol Henderson, PhD, chief diversity officer and vice provost for diversity and inclusion at Emory University, spoke of ways to initiate understanding of DEI as a community benefit, as opposed to a burden: “I find that people are threatened by inclusiveness, because they’re fearful that something’s going to be taken away from them, or that they will be excluded or blamed for something. We have to have rules of engagement. At Emory, our mission is to create, teach, preserve and apply knowledge in the service of humanity. So if that’s our mission, my comment or question to the individual that doesn't want to engage is ‘Give me your explanation of how you will live out our mission.’ And then maybe we can start from there.” Said Henderson: “If you give people the tools, they will utilize those and do amazing things.” It is evident that businesses cannot move forward without strategic DEI initiatives, and the organizations that create a sense of belonging are those that value inclusivity. Pamela Pujo, diversity advocate at Affirmity, which offers DEI training, explained how DEI impacts the bottom line: “You want to have inclusion in your work environment, because you’ve gone through the process of hiring great talent. Do you want to keep hiring talent so it starts to impact the cost of recruitment, lose productivity because you’re constantly training new employees, or lose employees who are there and they don’t feel included? You’re really impacting and hurting your business, not only with your products and services, but with your culture and your environment. Having that inclusive environment, when you bring in that diverse talent, they’re more likely to stay. They will feel like they belong. They have that sense of value within the organization.” Emory’s Henderson concluded, “I’ve looked at DEI as a journey, not a destination. And because of that, you win in small steps. I got into the game because someone paid it forward for me. If you give people the tools, they will utilize those and do amazing things.” Nzingha Hall is a journalist, public speaker, and DEI facilitator in Atlanta, Ga.

Michael Stahl | June 27, 2022

Looking Inward: How Internal Mobility Can Propel Your Talent Strategy

Corporations across industry are scrambling for solutions to perhaps the most pressing need in today’s business climate: effective employeeretention. So far, they’re seeing mixed results at best. “Traditional tactics, things like company-wide pulse surveys [of employees], company-wide recognition programs, these things don’t appear to be working,” said Dave Novak, senior talent strategy consultant at SmartRecruiters, which makes talent-acquisition software. “Employers are really going to have to be a lot more creative when it comes to retaining their employees, and a one-size-fits-all solution, typically, is not working over the last year and a half.” Novak, a longtime recruiter, said in a presentation at a From Day One virtual conference on recruiting skilled talent in 2022 that he believes the key to better retention is a well-resourced, mindfully executed internal- mobility strategy that focuses on opportunities for individual workers to pursue their career goals. The reasons employees tend to stay with a company, Novak said, include flexibility and autonomy, a connective tissue between the worker’s role and company values, and fair compensation that’s competitive with the open job market. A final factor is career opportunities, which Novak supported with data suggested that three-quarters of promoted employees are retained through their third work anniversary. If a worker is not recognizing career opportunities within the organization they are already a part of, at the moment they can very easily realize them elsewhere. “Those employers that have that infrastructure to be able to allow employees to move around–and move up in the organization quickly and with a good experience–are the ones that are doing a better job of retaining their talent,” Novak said. His research indicates that employers should focus on individual departments—particularly those that are small but highly productive and valuable—and “do a lot of discovery” to find out “what factors are important to them.” Dave Novak, senior talent strategy consultant at SmartRecruiters (Company photo) Novak suggested a “differentiated internal-mobility program,” whose hallmarks are “dedicated talent resources,” “visibility for less restrictiveness,” and “an internal job ‘marketplace.’” This translates into having somebody or a team of folks dedicated to internal-mobility programming, doing away with requirements that demand a worker spend a certain amount of time in a role before being promoted—if they’re generally qualified, they should be considered right away—and actively recruit internally. The differentiated internal mobility program, of course, might look a little different from company to company. To some degree, it’s built on the wants of workers, and should be customized. However, an effective one will result in less time spent filling roles. Recruitment can be more heavily focused on entry-level positions, and institutional knowledge will remain in the company. There will also be a closer binding together of talent and business decisions, and the company will save money in recruitment costs, Novak said. While strong retention can come down to the amiability of a corporation’s culture, with no single person responsible for its cultivation, Novak said there are individuals and teams who need to take charge of a company’s retention efforts. The first is direct managers, who Novak called the “primary conduit” for an internal mobility strategy. This is the point person who can most directly communicate to workers the company’s efforts toward retention. The talent organization “builds the infrastructure that creates opportunities for talent,” Novak said, while the total-rewards group “builds an internal rewards program that competes with the external market.” Executives, finally, have to support the other three groups in their mission. Ultimately, Novak said, “It takes a village” to keep the most talented employees: Managers working together to carry out the internal-mobility efforts, finding out exactly where workers want to go, and helping them get there. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SmartRecruiters, who sponsored this Thought Leadership Spotlight. Michael Stahl is a New York City-based freelance journalist, writer, and editor. You can read more of his work at MichaelStahlWrites.com, follow him on Twitter @MichaelRStahl, and order his first book, the autobiography of Major League Baseball pitcher Bartolo Colón, at Abrams Books.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | June 26, 2022

Helping Caregivers Navigate the Complexity of Care Needs

Many employers have caregivers in their workforce and don’t even know it. Few companies collect this kind of demographic data and few caregivers, parents especially, want to volunteer this information for fear they might be deemed less competent or less committed, or both. Perhaps more surprising is that many employees are caregivers and don’t appreciate it themselves. It’s clear that a person with a young child is a caregiver, or that a person whose elderly parent lives with them is a caregiver, but so is someone who helps an aging parent manage their finances or a parent of a student with a learning disability. These are tasks that require not just time, they’re demanding on physical and mental energy too. “Caregiving will affect everyone at some point in time,” said Chelsie Mackey, the director of strategic growth for Cariloop, which provides coaching services and help to caregivers who need help doing the work of caregiving, like finding backup child care, tutoring their high schooler, or a navigating Medicare. I interviewed Mackey and her colleague Melinda Stroda for a webinar hosted by From Day One, titled “Putting a Value on Supporting Employees With Family Care Needs.” Mackey works with Cariloop’s clients, who are typically HR professionals, and Stroda, who is one of Cariloop’s care coaches and is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), works directly with caregivers. A conversation on caregiving, clockwise from top right: Melinda Stroda and Chelsie Mackey of Cariloop and moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza (Image by From Day One) Mackey and Stroda made the point that caregiver support is a factor in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and encouraged employers to create what they called a “culture of care,” in which the stigma of caregiving is allayed. “An employee may feel like they will be seen as uncommitted if they have to take mom to a doctor’s office, or I have to pick the kids up from school this week, or maybe feeling like they may not get that promotion because their employer knows that they have a second full-time job of taking care of a loved one,” Mackey said. Fear of penalty, worry that one won’t be taken seriously, lack of flexibility and time one needs to be a caregiver–these happen when caregivers don’t feel supported. Stroda said employees who work in a culture of care are able to behave and work differently. “I think the ones who feel more comfortable are the ones where the companies have really taken the chance to build employee resource groups (ERGs) for parents or for caregivers, so they have a place where they feel safe, where they can all talk together. And they feel like that’s an important thing to the company.” Both said that employers should make sure they have varied kinds of support in place, because every caregiver’s needs will be different and everyone’s caregiving needs will change. Mackey said she often hears from clients that their EAPs or subsidized child care benefits aren’t always “equipped to handle the complexity of caregiving journeys.” Employers have to help the caregivers in their ranks and give them the flexibility and freedom to be caregivers, yes, but also have to help them with the caregiving itself. The benefits to the business are many: Cost savings, employee retention, productivity, and engagement. It’s simple: When employees are less distracted by caregiving duties–like finding child care, touring nursing homes, or helping a spouse through substance-abuse counseling–they can be more present at work. “One of the biggest ways we can put a value on caregiver support is just all the amount of time that we’re saving employees,” Mackey said. “Whenever caregivers are trying to talk to insurance companies or call providers, day cares, senior-care facilities, a lot of times families can only get in contact with them Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. From an employer’s perspective, employees are doing all these care responsibilities during the week while they’re at their desk or on their job. Productivity is at a low and then presenteeism issues come into play.” “It really takes that off the plate of the employee, being able to focus on their job, focus on work, focus on being a caregiver,” Stroda added. If companies fail to support caregivers of all kinds, the business will feel it, said Mackey. “If organizations don’t soon explore how to best support caregivers, they will just continue to face a lot of the turnover challenges that they’ve been experiencing in the past two years.” Stroda said she has seen the difference having help can make in the mental health of a caregiver. It’s a powerful thing, she said, “being able to be that person to let them know they’re not alone, that those are very normal feelings they’re feeling as they’re going through this journey, and being able to offer them resources.” Stroda added that it’s about helping them “know they’re not alone in their journey.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner who supported this webinar, Cariloop. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Virginia. 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.

Tania Rahman | June 26, 2022

Tech Has a Diversity Problem. How Can We Solve It?

The tech sector is widely touted as an environment driving innovation and progressive values, yet a lack of diversity has long been problematic in the industry. The root of the issue lies in the way organizations approach the fundamental value of diversity, according to Salima Bhimani, PhD, chief strategist and director of equity, inclusion and systemic change at the Other Bets at Google. “We think about diversity in terms of adding numbers, filling roles–but we’re not thinking of it in terms of what we’re trying to drive forward or how to bring in talent that’s fundamentally going to change who we are, what we are, and what we do in the world,” Bhimini said in a fireside chat at From Day One’s June virtual conference on more inclusive approaches to diversity. Companies get caught up in the idea of visual representation, but the chief complaint is that these organizations are not systemically and structurally set up to expand diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in valuable ways. To solve the diversity challenge, Bhimani said it requires a true mindset shift around the critical value of diversity, she told moderator Kelly Yamanouchi, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Accelerating Progress Towards a Mindset Change Because DEI is part of a larger social conversation, particularly as attrition grows among women of color and other marginalized groups, many organizations are quickly seeking to find ways to attract and retain a diverse workforce. But in order to effect meaningful change, it requires slowing down and asking the right questions, instead of simply poaching talent from competitors and recycling the same problem. The fireside chat, from left: Moderator Kelly Yamanouchi of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Salima Bhimani, PhD, of Google (Image by From Day One) Often, processes involved in hiring are solidified in organizations and get entrenched over time, making it difficult to create a cultural change and leading diversity efforts to be added as an afterthought. For an example of how organizations should incorporate these values, Bhimani looks to startups, which have an advantage in their ability to build DEI practices into their values from the beginning and enabling their statements to become part of their DNA. The shift in the way the workforce operates, especially since the onset of the pandemic, has given companies an opportunity to take a step back and observe what things can be done differently in order to be more representative of traditionally marginalized groups. For instance, the advent of remote work has created a new level of accountability: organizations and leaders need to create culture within the hybrid workplace, but with the additional task of incorporating the lack of inclusivity that existed prior to remote work. “The fact that people can and want to work from home should not indicate that a company is inclusive,” said Bhimani. “When you look at the research, a lot of those people are working from home because they don’t want to go into a micro-aggressive environment.” She said that it is critical to shed misconceptions, such as that innovation is possible only in the office, since those environments didn’t produce those things for all people. The Case for Diversity To drive some level of change internally, hiring managers are often tasked with providing executives with data in order to get buy-in for organizational changes. But Bhimani said that this is an idea that teams need to step away from, as it can lock in a concept where HR feels the need to convince senior leadership that the problem is real. “A lot of leaders in tech are data-savvy, but then you show the data, and it doesn’t convince leaders,” she said. “We need to ask, What is the entry point in connecting with my leader about what needs to change here?” The issue should be reframed in a manner that transforms leaders into long-term commitment in this space and figuring out how to achieve it. “The reality is that leaders have 50 other things on their mind that we don’t know about that’s influencing their thought process and decisions. Leaders need to be more curious in order to create a natural dynamic of openness.” The Future of DEI Work The upside to the growing focus on DEI efforts is that many organizations are creating opportunities for historically underrepresented groups to be hired in leadership or senior-level roles. While this helps resolve the numbers game of diverse talent, it still does not address the separate question about what expertise organizations need to solve a specific problem–and how can they address the problem with a diverse team. Bhimani said that ultimately, the best way to drive meaningful change around diversity in tech is for companies to ask two questions: What are they really trying to solve, and what is their hypothesis around why they don’t have it? “Figure out what outcomes we want, and then work backwards. We have a lot of work to do in asking the right questions,” she said. Tania Rahman is a native New Yorker who works at the intersection of digital marketing and tech. She is both a creative writer and freelancer, enjoys hot chocolate on cold days, reading, live music, and learning new challenges.

Emily Nonko | June 25, 2022

How Career Growth Can Be Part of the Employee Experience From the Start

It’s increasingly acknowledged that the traditional career ladder is dead. With that begs the question: What should career growth look like and when should it start? “My focus at this point is to literally catch them young,” said Rapti Khurana, VP and head of talent engagement and development at the National Football League. Career growth can blossom with young employees from the first day of employment, she believes, a priority that will make companies stronger. Khurana joined a panel of experts at From Day One’s May conference in Brooklyn to talk about changing attitudes around career growth and how companies can adapt. Surveys show that employees are hungry for opportunities. According to moderator Lydia Dishman, a staff editor at Fast Company, employees who see good opportunities to learn and grow are nearly three times more likely to be engaged with their workplace than those who don’t. For 91% of employees, it’s very or extremely important for managers to encourage learning and experimentation, while 84% of managers believe this can help close the skills gap. Panelists discussed how companies can adopt a culture of early learning, flexible growth, and personalized pathways of opportunity. “The challenge with talent management processes in general is it’s really subjective,” noted Ben Colvin, founder of Coaching Works NYC. “What we focus on with our clients is to start to create a level playing field.” The full panel, from left: moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company, Judith Heller of Northwell Health, Ben Colvin of Coaching Works NYC, and Khurana, Carter, and Rebholz “Where we’ve seen success is ensuring where there is leadership accountability as part of scorecard metrics: understanding where you’re importing and exporting talent, what’s the makeup of that talent, what’s the retention,” said Carrington Carter, VP of talent acquisition and internal mobility at TIAA, the financial-services organization. Panelists agreed that opportunities and support for growth need to be democratized across the company. Judith Heller, VP of physician recruitment for Northwell Health, noted that the company allows all employees to sign up for its High Potential Development Program. “You can put together what you think your next skill traits can be, and you can also be selected for it, and I think those go hand-in-hand,” she said. Laurie Rebholz, managing director of global leadership and performance solutions at Citi, added that “for leadership development globally, it’s for all of our employees–whether high-potential or not–because we want them to have as much growth in different ways.” Citi moved away from a “core leadership curriculum” to a “lab-and-modular format” that better took into account individualized needs for growth, and responded to employees who’d be going through job changes. Panelists also stressed the need to support soft skills development, especially as technical skills more frequently become outdated. “For us, we prioritize it at the very front, because some of the other skills we can help provide,” said Carter. “If we inject learning agility into the business and the function, that’s where the magic happens,” added Rebholz. “Coaching has to be integrated into other efforts; it can’t be a standalone effort,” said Colvin Colvin noted that coaching can be a powerful tool to help employees in their career journeys, if implemented the right way. “Coaching has to be integrated into other efforts; it can’t be a standalone effort,” he said. “How you create that personalized conversation with employees will help them build out what skills they have, the innate traits you have that will support you as you continue to rise up.” The panel ended on that increasingly common question: What’s the state of the career ladder today? Colvin pointed out that organizations are still hierarchical and employees must navigate that. “Whether it’s through coaching or talent management, there has to be some level of personalized connection and support around navigating that disconnect,” he said. Rebholz compared the modern career journey to a game of Chutes and Ladders. Carter said, “The reality is that it’s about horizontal growth and expanding your base of knowledge about all things soft and technical skills.” Khurana said she draws on lessons from her own career mentor: “Own your career. It’s really your career, and you see the critical experiences you need to develop yourself.” Emily Nonko is a Brooklyn, NY-based reporter who writes about real estate, architecture, urbanism and design. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Curbed and other publications.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | June 21, 2022

How All Managers Can Become Inclusive Leaders

The number of executives with diversity and inclusion titles more than doubled between 2015 and 2020, and companies continue to add diversity leaders and entire teams to make their workplaces welcome, safe, and productive for all employees. But before you tick the inclusion box and move on, consider that one department, one that’s often set apart from the rest, cannot make this happen for an entire company, no matter its size. It takes every single person in an organization, people managers especially. At From Day One’s June virtual conference on bringing more inclusive approaches to diversity, five experts in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and employee experience spoke in a panel discussion, which I moderated, on how companies can successfully develop people managers who understand the values of equity and embrace the habits of inclusion. Charisse Fizer said one of her first actions as chief DEI officer at AtlantiCare health system in New Jersey was adding a new core value: inclusion. This established its importance and set a standard against which people can be evaluated. The panelists agreed that training is a necessary part of creating managers who prioritize DEI, but if you’re going to train managers, you need to train everyone. McKendree Hickory, who leads facilitator performance and development at digital training platform LifeLabs Learning, said managers as well as all staff should receive similar training, “so that there is a really org-wide transformation,” and employees can know that their managers will be held to the same standards they are. Consider the potential of every person in your company, because all of them will affect the DEI culture. “Everybody is a leader. A leader is somebody that is influencing somebody else,” said professional coach Nick Ferraiolo, founder of Elm City Coaching. From Day One’s panel on inclusive leadership, top row from left: moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, Yuri Ramirez of Intel, and Nick Ferraiolo of Elm City Coaching. Bottom row: McKendree Hickory of LifeLabs Learning, Charisse Fizer of AtlantiCare, and Keturah Hallmosley of Seattle Children’s Hospital (Image by From Day One) Training managers on awareness, but without action, can freeze progress. Hickory said LifeLabs has been most successful when focusing on behavior. “There’s a lot of research that shows that the awareness training, just the bias training, typically either leads to a reaction from people, or just doesn’t lead to change, because ‘Cool, I’m aware that I’m really biased now. But I don’t know what to do about that.’” New managers may need a little more help than most. Ferraiolo said he has seen newly minted managers struggle, particularly if their direct reports are former coworkers. They’re not sure what kind of leader they should be, or even can be. “It’s tough when you’re growing from a line worker, to a supervisor, to a manager, and all of a sudden your coworker is now working for you. What tools do you give your staff when you promote them? Do you help them with boundaries? How do you talk to that coworker who’s now a person that’s working for you?” Don’t just tell people to be DEI leaders, show them how. Intel’s director of the global employee engagement program, Yuri Ramirez, described it this way: “We have to be solution-providers instead of just goal-setters.” Once they’re trained, managers must be held accountable for the way they lead. Fizer said that at AtlantiCare, inclusion values are a part of manager evaluations. “We have added an accountability area for their performance appraisal. They get rated by the employees about how they’re actually creating this inclusive environment for the staff.” Still, Hickory noted that, as with any area of accountability, you must make sure expectations are clear. “Before we even get to the ‘Have they failed?’ I think the organization has to do a really thorough diagnostic to actually understand, what did we ask of them in the first place?” If you’re having trouble getting your managers to take up the DEI cause, it may be a problem of skill rather than will. “My experience is, a lot of times, it’s not a resistance to the idea, it’s either ‘I don’t know how to do this,’ or ‘I’m too scared. I’m really scared to engage in the conversation, or to do this in the wrong way,’” said Hickory. Fizer said it’s not uncommon for managers to feel like they’re just “going through the motions” to check a box on their performance review. “We are looking to understand exactly what’s getting in the way of you being able to do what we would like you to do.” It may help to train managers on the idea that inclusion and equity are practiced in small moments and actions. Keturah Hallmosley, who leads people experience at Seattle Children’s Hospital, reminded the audience that “a lot of times we think it’s a grandiose action,” but that turning points for good or ill can be much smaller moments like, for example, when an employee dismisses someone else’s opinion in a meeting or doesn’t give credit when it’s deserved. “It’s in those-day to-day experiences that we all really have the responsibility to demonstrate inclusion,” Hallmosley said. If the work of DEI is to be shouldered across the organization, how can employers make sure they’re not asking too much of their managers and abdicating the responsibility? Think of it this way: Even though you’re asking managers to change the way they lead, “it’s not delegation, it’s teamwork,” Ramirez said. “It does need to start from the top, getting commitment from leaders, getting a good direction and a strategy.” 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.

Michael Stahl | June 21, 2022

The Power of Digital Coaching to Transform Employee Well-being

A few months ago, the wife of Matti Niebelschütz, the founder and managing director of CoachHub, a global talent-development platform, told him that she felt he was suddenly not very present at home. He was “physically” there, she told him, but not “mentally.” “When you’re playing with the kids, you’re not really paying attention,” he remembers her saying. “When we go out to eat or when we’re sitting at the breakfast table, you’re sitting with your phone in your hand checking emails.” Niebelschütz’s wife wanted to know why he’d grown so uncharacteristically disconnected from his family. Whatever the cause, she observed it was also having a negative impact on his disposition. Pulling up recent family photos on her phone for him to see, she said, “Look at you! You look like Grumpy Cat!” “She was right,” Niebelschütz admitted to the audience at From Day One’s May conference in Brooklyn during his presentation titled, “Helping Employees Thrive: Using Digital Coaching to Transform Employee Well-being.” As it turned out, Niebelschütz’s wife wasn’t the only one who observed his personality changes. A few days later, a trusted colleague made a similar observation. Ordinarily, Niebelschütz was an “inspiring” figure during meetings, the colleague said, and someone who could be depended upon for a joke to lighten the mood. “You motivate us and you don’t really get angry quickly,” he remembers the coworker saying on behalf of the other team members. “What’s going on lately? You are not really resilient.” Niebelschütz values his relationships with his family and colleagues, as well as his friends, so much that it didn’t take any more prodding for him to reflect and consider why his behavior was so different. The culprit, he recognized, was work. Said Niebelschütz: “There is a great potential within everyone in your organization.” He’d immersed himself so deeply into what he described as “a big project” with “tight deadlines” that he’d paused sessions with his coach. Seeing that he’d strayed away from a key cog in his well-being practice, he re-engaged with his coach, scheduling sessions with him through Niebelschütz’s own CoachHub app. “Together, we worked on the issue; he helped me to get back on track,” Niebelschütz said. “My family is happy, my colleagues are happy, and I have to say coaching really changed my life. Maybe it even saved my life.” Nobody is immune to the effects of stress that can come with work. Not the mailroom employees, nor executives like Niebelschütz. Given all the social turmoil packed on top of whatever might be going on at work for any one person at any particular time, we all need to be aware of the mental health issues of our colleagues today. Among the great challenges of doing so, however, is the hidden nature of many such problems. Looking Below the Surface In his talk, Niebelschütz likened people to icebergs, particularly in the context of work. On the surface, we see how a person behaves, communicates and, in a work setting, performs. But we see so little of what is actually guiding all of this behavior. Among other contributing factors, a person’s well-being can be counted among the elements that influence their outer demeanor. (Employees are not robots, after all, Niebelschütz pointed out.) Investing in employee well-being, Niebelschütz said, can have an outsized, positive impact on a company’s bottom line. Citing the World Health Organization, Niebelschütz said that more than $1 trillion is lost every year, globally, due to decreased worker productivity–a byproduct of burnout, stress, anxiety and other issues. Not only would investment in employee well-being cut into that figure, but, according to additional research, Niebelschütz said that such investment leads to greater worker alignment with company values and goals, as well as the attraction of better talent. “We see at least a 6x return on investment into all people’s well-being,” Niebelschütz said. “I’m not a finance person, but I feel that 6x is a pretty strong return for doing the right thing.” Employees who report feeling supported at work repeatedly cite coaching as a reason why, Niebelschütz said, providing survey evidence. Coaching fuels the development of a trusting relationship between an employee and their coach. This allows them to, in tandem, identify the employee’s values, strengths, areas they want to develop, and greater clarity on the resources available to them. The professionally trained coach can also explore the well-being of the employee, Niebelschütz said, what’s going on below the surface, things that most employers might never access on their own. Exploring “the Greater You” All this helps the employee “unleash their full potential,” Niebelschütz said. “We have a saying, ‘Explore the Greater You,’” he continued. “There is a great potential within everyone in your organization … and a coach can help your people—especially in difficult times—leverage these resources.” With the aid of coaching—made more accessible through digital platforms such as CoachHub—employees can enjoy increased self-awareness. Their communication and collaboration skills will be strengthened, too, and there will be better management of conflicts, Niebelschütz said. Furthermore, employees will emerge more resilient and more productive, with a decreased sense of burnout and the emergence of a healthier work-life balance. “We all know coaching is not therapy,” Niebelschütz clarified. “[But arguably] coaching is even more important for your organization, because working with a coach will help your people to not even have any clinical disabilities that will need psychological treatment.” In other words, investment in coaching is a proactive step that company leaders can take to get the best out of their employees while also just exhibiting good, human compassion toward the people they depend on most—something this world could certainly use more of. Editor’s Note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this Thought Leadership Spotlight: CoachHub. 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.

Susan Kelly | June 21, 2022

Cultural Intelligence: Bringing Inclusion That’s Natural Rather Than Forced

Talent management these days can feel like an endless cycle of attracting and welcoming new hires into the workplace, only to be followed by frustration when those employees leave just as it seemed they were settling in. The Great Resignation, which goes by many names, has seen record numbers of Americans quit their jobs over the past two years, even as employers spend billions developing programs to encourage them to stay. High on the list of reasons why workers move on from an organization is a feeling of not belonging, Keyla Waslawski, a VP of sales and marketing with the Cultural Intelligence Center, said in a presentation at From Day One’s June virtual conference on bringing more inclusive approaches to diversity. Waslawski advocates for a strategy that uses the framework of cultural intelligence to tackle the challenges of employee retention. That calls for confronting one of the thornier, unintended problems employers are coming up against: diversity fatigue. U.S. businesses spend an estimated $8 billion a year on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training, in hopes of unlocking the potential of those crucial goals. But some of those efforts are falling flat, because to employees they often they feel forced, uncomfortable or, worse yet, polarizing, Waslawski said. Keyla Waslawski, a VP of sales and marketing with the Cultural Intelligence Center (Company photo) “We recognize the importance of building the right culture, one that promotes inclusion, and yet we still see record high resignations, we still have managers who are burned out, we still see our talent leave as fast as we find it. As leaders, then, it’s up to us to change our approach so that we can build effective inclusion programs,” she said. Programs that focus on evaluation, rather than on bringing people together, increase feelings of polarization, Waslawski said. Initiatives that emphasize awareness and facts rather than adaptability and action can lead to mechanical, unnatural interactions between colleagues because they reinforce stereotypes instead of allowing unique individuals to get to know one another. Systematic inclusion, however, can be hard work. Burnout among managers often stems from efforts to bring together, in a productive way, a group of people who think and work very differently. Waslawski shared her own story of frustration involving a team member who never followed through with an approach to a project once it was agreed upon in a meeting. The employee would nod in agreement, then go in a different direction afterward. “It was driving me nuts,” she said. “I was expected to finish projects as the leader of the department, and I couldn’t seem to get on the same page as my team.” By researching the employee’s cultural values, Waslawski found that her team member preferred a chain-of-command hierarchy and was uncomfortable expressing an opposing view in a group. She asked her colleague after a meeting to follow up with an agreement in writing. “This simple change changed everything. It allowed her not to disagree in person, but in the safety of our one-on-one interaction,” Waslawski said. Waslawski drew upon her own cultural intelligence to solve the dilemma she faced when running her staff meetings. “I learned not how to manage those meetings differently, but rather how to leverage the different voices I had at the table,” she said. Cultural intelligence, said Waslawski, values the uniqueness and authenticity of the individual and supports belonging within a working group without forcing assimilation. It allows people to engage effectively with others from different cultural backgrounds, encompassing nationality, ethnicity, age, gender and even function. “To be a truly inclusive culture,” she said, “we have to approach our initiatives in a way that supports uniqueness and belonging simultaneously. If we want our talent to stay, we need to ensure our people are accepted and accepting.” Waslawski outlined four components of cultural intelligence: Drive: The motivation and confidence to engage with others who are different. Knowledge: The understanding of cultural differences. Strategy: Considering and preparing for cultural differences before an interaction. Action: Behavioral flexibility. “When pulling all four of these together, cultural intelligence allows us to build the foundation of an inclusive culture, where individuals and teams feel they belong as who they are, because it taps into what’s personal in each of us–our own motivations, knowledge, our values,” she said. A slide from Waslawski’s presentation (Courtesy of the Cultural Intelligence Center) To use cultural intelligence to retain talent, learning should focus on differences beneath the surface rather than on those that are obvious–such as skin color, gender and age–and tend to be polarizing. “If we focus on differences at the core, how we’re raised differently, even in our own homes neighbor to neighbor, it allows us to take a culturally intelligent approach and focus on who we are, not how we look,” Waslawski said. Build organizations by adding what’s missing from the culture, she advised, rather than bringing in people who fit in or add more of what’s already working. Leveraging the capabilities of cultural intelligence can develop unconscious inclusion that is flexible and focused on the needs of others, fostering an environment of trust in complex, multicultural situations, Waslawski said. The flexibility of the approach aims to move people beyond awareness and into action. Because it is malleable, cultural intelligence is a skill that is in each individual and can be improved upon. It’s an approach that does not need to be driven from the top down to succeed, and it is focused on development, not evaluation, Waslawski emphasized. Two decades of research shows that people with higher levels of cultural intelligence are more adaptable, make better decisions and negotiate more effectively, she said. The result is more innovation, creativity and sharing of ideas. “In other words, cultural intelligence allows us to unlock diversity’s promise to us,” she said. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Cultural Intelligence Center, who sponsored this Thought Leadership Spotlight. Susan Kelly is a freelance business journalist based in Chicago.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | June 20, 2022

How to Balance Workplace Productivity With Compassion

If we’re going to prioritize the well-being of workers and prevent burnout, we can’t expect employees to work at the same pace they did three years ago. “It’s an imperative now, in our environment, to start thinking about how we’re looking at high expectations and performance at the same time that we’re thinking about well-being,” said Gabriela Mauch, the VP of the productivity lab at the workforce-analytics company ActivTrak. To do this, she said, there can’t be one team pushing work productivity and another team pushing work-life balance. “Those conversations now need to come together in order for us to be having this conversation about well-being and performance,” said Mauch, “so we can get to a point where we’re not celebrating productivity gains while ignoring the fact that people are burning out, we’re not celebrating hitting our business numbers while people are turning over because there’s a better work-life balance across the street.” In other words, productivity plus well-being equals a compassionate workplace. Mauch was one of five experts who spoke on a panel, which I moderated, during From Day One’s May conference in Washington, D.C., focusing on the realignment in the relationship between workers and employees in the wake of the pandemic and remote-work revolution. If the workplace is to be a compassionate one, then most organizations will need to change the atmosphere. This means managers need a new kind of training. Where managers were once trained to enforce policy across the board, we must now train them to support individual needs. Alyssa Johnson of Blueboard, left, and Scott Nycum of General Dynamics. Personal forms of recognition show workers that you’re paying attention, Johnson said. “We have to make our role-plays and our [training] materials account for scenarios that are no longer about someone who has a dress-code problem,” said Scott Nycum, the VP of diversity, inclusion, and giving at General Dynamics Information Technology. “We now have to put our practice hat on and be comfortable about putting scenarios out there about what happens when an employee brings up that they have a child or they’re dealing with anxiety at home.” Millette Granville, the VP of diversity, equity and inclusion at the digital-education company 2U, said her company is focusing on developing emotional intelligence among their workforce. “We created a new learning session on emotional intelligence and leading with empathy, because those things tie very closely together for you to be able to notice when someone is acting differently in the workplace, in the meeting, or online.” Employees and managers who feel comfortable sharing what they need and responding to the needs of others also feel psychologically safe, said Sally Bartas, a VP of HR for Stanley Black & Decker. We should be concerned, she said, with “how an organization is creating space for employees to feel like they can manage what they’ve been dealing with over the last two and a half years.” 2U’s Granville encourages such an environment by urging leaders and team members to be clear about needing a break, like a mental health day, for example, and calling it that, to set a tone that makes it OK to ask for help and take it. Compassion also requires recognizing individual contributions. Employees want to feel valued. Bartas said lack of recognition leads people to write their own story about what’s going on with the organization. “That can also turn into disengagement, or ‘Oh, my leader doesn’t care about me, because they haven’t checked in.’” Alyssa Johnson, the VP of account management at employee-recognition platform Blueboard, noted that effective recognition is first, personalized, and second, connected to the organization. The complete panel, from left: Nycum, Bartas, moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, Mauch, Johnson, and Granville (Photo by From Day One) “Some folks are, for example, caring for aging loved ones. We have some people that are starting their career and they’re just out of college, and the things that are important to them in their personal lives will impact what they need out of their professional work relationships,” said Johnson. Personalized forms of recognition show workers that you’re paying attention. Put the well-being of the employee first, and the benefit to the business will naturally follow, panelists said. Bartas closed with this: “The golden rule is ‘Treat others as you wish to be treated,’ but it’s really the platinum rule, which is, ‘Treat others as they wish to be treated.’ Meet them where they are.” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance reporter based in Richmond, Va., who writes about workplace culture and policies, hiring, DEI, and issues faced by women. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others, and has been syndicated by MSN and The Motley Fool.

Lisa Jaffe | June 20, 2022

Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work

It’s all work that needs doing–taking notes at meetings, introducing new employees to their colleagues, interviewing candidates, or preparing slides for a presentation. But it’s not work that’s rewarded, doesn’t count towards meeting core goals, and largely, it’s done by women. “This is work that is important to the organization, but not to the career of the individual doing it. It can’t be tied directly to the mission of the organization, it isn’t revenue-generating, it tends to be invisible, and it tends to be work that can be done by a lot of people,” said Lise Vesterlund, Ph.D., professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh and co-author of the new book The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work. Women do as much as a whole extra month of work every year that is unrecognized and doesn’t impact their pay or potential advancement in an organization, according to research done by Vesterlund and her three co-authors, including Laurie Weingart, Ph.D., a professor of organizational behavior at Carnegie Mellon University. Vesterland and Weingart spoke with Emma Hinchliffe, a senior writer at Fortune, in a fireside chat at From Day One’s June virtual conference on more inclusive approaches to diversity. The research and book were the offshoot of a small club they formed, the “I Just Can’t Say No Club,” where they identified the phenomenon and resolved to help women learn to more appropriately value their time. “I spent my career running around doing anything I was asked to do,” said Weingart. “I didn’t realize it was so big a problem until we got together for the first time as a club and started talking about how we were being asked to do a whole host of tasks that were important to the organization but weren’t necessarily a good use of our time for our own careers.” The more they talked, the brighter the lightbulb over her head got. “I don’t have to say yes to all of these things I’m being asked to do, and I should really be more thoughtful about how I fill my plate.” Talking with co-authors of The No Club, clockwise from upper right: Lise Vesterlund of the University of Pittsburgh, Laurie Weingart of Carnegie Mellon University, and moderator Emma Hinchliffe of Fortune (Image by From Day One) Vesterlund had a similar a-ha moment. “I always felt guilty if someone asked for help, and I declined the request. I never thought about where the time was coming from. In academia, it was students or colleagues asking for help, helping with recruiting, doing assignments that weren’t core to my job, and helping other departments. I did not have time to do work critical for my own career.” Her meetings with the club led to a concrete evaluation of where time for these extra tasks was originating: every additional assignment ate into the already limited time with her children. “That made it easier to think about saying no.” While they learned to say no, Weingart says club members were still constantly asked to help, and they quickly realized they were doing a lot more of this than their male colleagues. “We needed to figure out the root cause. We knew it wasn't just us. We’ve talked to our friends, we talked to colleagues, and we heard a lot of stories of women who are in similar situations.” They tried to determine the gender split of this work. In both existing papers and their own new research, they confirmed the burden of this kind of work falls much more heavily on women. “Whether or not you’re an architect or engineer, a supermarket clerk or a TSA agent, women everywhere are spending a lot more time in this work,” said Vesterlund. One professional services company they examined recorded billable hours and specific tasks in minute detail. They asked the firm’s leaders which of those tasks was promotable, somewhat promotable, and non-promotable. The female employees were doing an average 200 more hours per year of the non-promotable tasks. Why is this happening? they wondered. “Are women are doing this work because they’re better at it, or do they like it more?” asked Vesterlund. “If so, it’s concerning that they have made choices that will hurt their pay and hurt their potential promotion.” The co-authors ran a study at the University of Pittsburgh, where they asked various groups to volunteer for tasks. “Women end up volunteering 50% more often,” she said. “It isn’t altruism driving that. If we split it up to all-female and all-male groups, they volunteer at exactly the same rate. It’s not that men don’t know how to volunteer. It’s just they don’t volunteer if there are women around.” Vesterlund calls it a “collective expectation” that women will take on the work. To confirm this, the co-authors conducted a study having a manager come in an ask someone to take on some unrewarded task that had to be done, but everyone prefers not to do. The managers asked women 44% more often than they asked men, regardless of whether the manager was male or female. “We shouldn’t allocate work according to who is least reluctant to take it on. We should allocate it based on who’s best at it,” she said. Among the remedies the co-authors recommend: Don’t ask; tell. Weingart said managers should immediately stop asking for volunteers. At the University of Pittsburgh, they draw names out of a hat. Companies could also institute a rotation of duties. “The goal isn’t to stop women from doing this work; it’s to make a more equitable distribution.” Re-allocate tasks. At the leadership level, Vesterlund says organizations should determine if these tasks are even in the right place. For instance, is the best use of a professor’s time to be organizing conferences? Support staff could do this work, where it could be listed as part of their job description and for which they could be recognized and rewarded. Reevaluate tasks that are vital to the organization that aren’t rewarded. One of these tasks is onboarding, to ensure that new employees are welcomed and make the connections they need to succeed in their careers. Vesterlund says in this job market, the task has a much greater importance. But it’s often a job doled out to whoever raises their hand. Instead, allocate it to someone who is good at that job. Unlike taking notes at a meeting, which can be done by anyone, making new employees feel welcomed may be something that certain people have an affinity for, and a capability of doing well. Set clear guidelines for what work matters for promotion, raises, and progression in the company. Monitor who is doing what work and assess the distribution regularly, advised Vesterland. Weingart says the business case for doing this is straightforward. “People often leave their jobs not because of money, but because they don’t have opportunities to advance, the next step is unclear to them, or they aren’t challenged at work. This is especially true for women and especially true today with the Great Resignation. People are burdened with work that does not advance their career. That directly ties into the issues of retention and turnover, and is especially important for organizations trying to get gender equity in the workplace.” Don’t think this isn’t your problem. “Every single organization we spoke to knew that this was a problem,” Vesterlund noted. “They just didn’t know how big.” The work the co-authors did has paid off. Along with changes at the University of Pittsburgh, the Harvard Kennedy School changed its rules, Vesterlund said. There are clear guidelines on how much non-promotable work employees are expected to do. “It doesn't matter how much promotable work you have done. If you don’t meet the expectation for non-promotable work, you will not get a satisfactory job performance. Another organization thought that employees helping one another was something that should be included in performance evaluations. They encouraged employees to submit little cards identifying who helped and how. These are used in performance evaluations.” Knowledge is power, she concluded. “When you get new managers or supervisors, share with them that women are doing more non-promotable work. It shows it’s something you care about. While some may feel threatened by the characterization that women are doing more of this, we can’t have one set of employees spending an entire month per year on unrewarded, unrecognized work.” 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.

Erika Riley | June 20, 2022

The Lesson for Leaders From the Spirit of a Campfire

The No. 1 reason that people left their job between 2020 and 2021? Uncaring leaders, according to a McKinsey & Company study. More than two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, more and more companies are acknowledging that successfully leading a team doesn’t just mean streamlining productivity and keeping people on task. Knowing what your team members are going through, what they’re distracted by, and what makes them tick is all part of being a caring—and effective—leader. “Managers are the key to growth in companies. They’re the linchpin,” said Steve Arntz, the co-founder and CEO of Campfire, a company that trains managers. “And if you look at the research around manager effectiveness and its role to company growth, they are a linchpin to company growth.” Arntz’s talk, “The Connection Gap: Redefining Leadership Post-pandemic,” was part of From Day One’s May conference in Washington, D.C. During his talk, Arntz stressed the importance of getting to know the people you’re working with and offering them the same grace you might extend to yourself. He began by asking the members of the audience to close their eyes and think about three things: What are you feeling? What are you thinking? Who are you? He then asked the audience to think about their teams and specifically focus on one person. Then, he instructed them to ask the same questions about them: What are they feeling? What are they thinking? Who are they? “What are the types of things that might be distracting them? And who are they?” asked Arntz. “Do you know their strengths, their motivators, their drivers, their personalities, their interests, their dreams, their passions, their family situation?” Steve Arntz, co-founder and CEO of Campfire (Photo by Justin Feltman for From Day One) Arntz showed the audience a range of 27 emotions that their employees might be feeling, but observed that researchers have identified more than 34,000 distinct emotions they could be feeling. It’s easy to assume that your coworkers and team members are enjoying their work and focusing on only that. But there are plenty of things that they could be feeling in addition to their enjoyment or focus. Everybody gets distracted at work, whether checking the score of a sports game or getting texts from family members. But there are many distractions that your team members cannot control or expect, which can affect their mental health and work. Examples include the pandemic, war, money, loss, and political conflict. Arntz shared that some of his colleagues with ties to Ukraine found it hard to work in the first days of the Russian invasion and decided to take time off work. Regarding the question of identity, Arntz shared that it’s important not to lump everyone into the same box. For example, he might naturally assume that every sales team member is extroverted, sociable, and motivated by closing deals. But when he researched the matter, he found surprising results. Of 200 salespeople he spoke with, only 20% said money and rewards were in their top five motivators. “They were driven by impact, mission, vision, problem-solving, all of these different things,” Arntz said. “And yet we build these pictures of the people we work with. We frame their identity in certain ways. We have stereotypes and all sorts of things we use as crutches to identify who they are.” Working with different people and acknowledging their strengths can help break the mold and change how your team operates. By working with one of his introverted colleagues, Marinne, to develop Campfire’s brand, Arntz was able to find a new way of doing things in which every voice was heard. Instead of discussing ideas with his colleagues in a meeting room, everyone answered questions in a Google doc regarding their ideas for the brand. After everyone wrote their answers, they typed “=” signs next to the ideas they liked. “And at the end of this experience, this beautiful brand emerged called Campfire, about connection and community and collaboration and all these things. And this brand emerged from very little speaking,” Arntz shared. “There weren’t stickies. There weren’t whiteboard markers. There weren’t loud extroverts in loud rooms. There was an introverted dialogue between people who were able to all share their voice and opinion in the exact same amount of space and time. And we were able to create something magical and beautiful.” Hearing every voice is one of the critical parts of being a caring and effective leader. Manager effectiveness can help a company reach its other goals, such as diversity and inclusion and mental health, because an effective leader will prioritize these issues. “What does the post-pandemic leader look like? Someone who’s inclusive and collaborative, someone who’s connected and caring. It’s a little bit different than the pre-pandemic leader,” said Arntz. “And maybe it should have always been this way, but the pandemic has given us an opportunity to rethink our definition of leadership.” Prioritizing connection and collaboration can mean using a Google doc like Marinne’s to evaluate everyone's ideas, having one-on-one meetings on walks outside, or finding an online game for the team to play together on a Wednesday afternoon. Most importantly, effective managers help their team members feel seen. They acknowledge what they’re thinking and feeling and who they are. It can be as simple as reaching out and asking, “How are you?,” a gesture Arntz said brought him closer with a friend 2,000 miles away and helped him work through his feelings at the time. On the spectrum between “quitting” and “winning,” Arntz said, he sat more toward the former than the latter. After the call, he felt like he had moved in the other direction. “Everyone we work with is somewhere on this continuum,” Arntz said, “and there’s no way we can know where they sit unless we reach out and connect.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks Campfire, the sponsor of this Thought Leadership Spotlight. Erika Riley is a Maryland-based freelance writer.

Jennifer Haupt | June 20, 2022

Coaching in Fair and Effective Ways in a Hybrid Work Environment

The hybrid work environment is here to stay–and companies need to provide coaching in a personalized way to match an employee’s remote, hybrid, or in-person work schedule. What are the emerging best practices for ensuring equity in such a variety of situations? How can employers avoid favoring those who spend more time in the workplace, known as proximity bias, and offer recognition to those who might feel isolated? How can an environment of inclusion and belonging be fostered? These questions and more were addressed in a panel discussion moderated by Fast Company staff editor Lydia Dishman as part of From Day One’s May virtual conference on new approaches to coaching and recognition. The session kicked off with a discussion on the difference between coaching and mentoring which, the panel agreed, cross a lot of gray areas. “When I think of mentorship, I think of partnerships, guiding a person with experience that you have been through,” said TeNita Ballard, global diversity and inclusion business partner at Intel. “I look at coaches as eliciting answers already within an employee.” Ballard gave the example of when she was a mid-level manager and her boss asked her to speak on a panel. She was nervous and felt insecure, but her boss coached her through it so she could succeed. “She wouldn’t have put me on that platform if I wasn’t ready, said Ballard. “What she had to do was coach me to make me laugh or make me realize she asked the right questions: So what are you working on? How are you going to guide them through X, Y, and Z? She coached me through the process.” Jill Carter, director of leadership and organizational development at Intermountain Healthcare, added that at her organization, mentoring is more for competency development, and coaching is about helping an individual achieve their own goals and objectives. Speaking on coaching, top row from left: moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company, Mary Vinette of Technicolor, and Caitlin Collins of Betterwork. Bottom row: Jeff Orlando of Medtronic, Jill Carter of Intermountain Healthcare, and TeNita Ballard of Intel (Image by From Day One) As a coach, making sure you ask the right questions, questions that a person understands, is critical for success. “Focusing on developing fundamentals, versus always focusing on outcomes, is also key. It makes a huge difference to be able to help guide someone in understanding how to improve certain skills, behaviors, knowledge,” said Caitlin Collins, an organizational psychologist and program-strategy director at Betterworks, a performance-management platform. Collins learned her first lessons in coaching from her father, who played pro football and then volunteered as a high-school coach. “All that applies in the world of work outside of sports—making sure we’re doing something better on a smaller scale, so that we can improve the outcomes on a bigger scale.” Mary Vinette, global head of learning and development at Technicolor, spoke to the importance of using coaching to create safe spaces for employees to grow into their best self in the workplace–and gain the confidence that leads to success. She said coaching can lead to higher levels of well-being at home and work, and integrating those two parts of life has become more important than ever in the hybrid workplace. “If I’m trying to be this person at home, this person at work, this person with my boss, and this person with my direct reports, that’s exhausting,” she said. “What we are in now is a time when everybody’s exhausted. It’s this integration of the whole person that helps you say yes to the things you want, say no to the things you don’t, and be okay with it. It’s the coaches role to create the space to say it’s okay.” The panelists agreed that implementing an equitable coaching program becomes more difficult with employees working remotely. According to Jeff Orlando, VP of global learning and leadership development at Medtronic, a health care technology company, greater employee initiative may be required to level the playing field. “Raise your hand, let people know if you need to be coached,” he said. “We don’t necessarily know, through our talent processes. We need to hear it from you.” As far as creating a safe space during virtual meetings, Ballard suggested allowing people to be visible who want to show up on camera, and also allowing people to have their cameras off. “To create a safe place to create well-being,” she said. “We’ll check in versus just jumping into our meeting. How is everyone doing? What's going on?” Carter added that training coaches to be inclusive is another piece of the puzzle. “We’ve taken the opportunity over the last year to train inclusion coaches, specifically for [diversity, equity and inclusion],” she said. “We actually step our coaches through something called ‘How do you be an inclusive coach?’” When it comes to implementing a coaching program in the most equitable way possible for all employees, Orlando recommended starting with peer mentoring. “It’s a step in the direction of coaching and broader mentoring,” he said. “There’s been some great research that peer-to-peer mentoring builds affiliation, builds engagement, builds a sense of belonging, and it builds that muscle between employees.” Jennifer Haupt is a Seattle-based author and journalist.

Emily Nonko | June 16, 2022

Building a Culture of Resilience in Your Workforce

Stress, burnout, overwork—no worker has been immune over the last few years of the pandemic. Many employees, in fact, have hit a wall and are quitting their jobs en masse. So how can you build a workplace, and a workforce, able to respond to these challenges? More companies should be thinking through a lens of resiliency, according to experts from BetterUp Care, a comprehensive mental health solution combining the interests of employee engagement, productivity, and business growth. Karen Phillips, regional VP for BetterUp Care, joined Sarah Greenberg, director of clinical design and partnerships for BetterUp, for a From Day One webinar on “Building a Culture of Resilience in Your Workplace.” “Over the past eight years, what we’ve seen time and time again, is just how critical a resilient, healthy mind is to this work,” Phillips said in her introduction. “We also found that the majority of the workforce is in a state of languishing, where employees are really not functioning at full capacity.” Phillips and Greenberg spoke from experience when it comes to building a culture of resilience. BetterUp, the parent company of BetterUp Care, has partnered with more than 400 organizations around the world, has a global network of more than 3,500 coaches, and has completed more than 1.5 million coaching sessions to date. “Over 71% of those sessions are considered amazing or life-changing,” Phillips said, “So when we talk about building resilience, we’re really seeing an impact across our members and partners.” So what is resiliency? “The definition of resilience is actually a nice image to think about as a rubber band,” Greenberg said. “We can experience stress like a rubber band: we can stretch, and then we bounce back. And not only do we bounce back when we experience digestible or manageable stress, we actually grow larger as a result—we grow stronger over time.” Without resilience, she added, we’re more like a pencil, rigid to change and snapping under pressure. Speaking on resiliency, clockwise from top right: Sarah Greenberg and Karen Phillips of BetterUp Care and moderator Emily Nonko, freelance journalist (Image by From Day One) Greenberg stressed that “resilience doesn’t happen in a vacuum —it doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s truly an interaction between the individual and the system.” So while a person can be individually resilient, it’s important that they also are part of resilient organizations. A resilient workplace, for example, “can experience and can acknowledge the stressors as they’re occurring, but then they actually come through stronger,” Greenberg said. “It reminds me of the phrase that ‘crisis is what makes a leader.’” Non-resilient workplaces result in employees who are languishing, a term used to describe high levels of disengagement, difficulty with focus and prioritization, struggles around the work-life balance, and resistance to change. To support resilient workforces, BetterUp focuses on what the company calls Mental Fitness Coaching. “It’s really the proactive work that we do to prepare our minds for the many challenges that life presents us,” Phillips explained. “Think about it as an ongoing practice, a proactive and preventative approach to building mental health in a similar way that good nutrition and exercise or prevention works in the world of physical health.” In providing the coaching, BetterUp combines personalized, human-led coaching with AI and machine learning. The idea is to be responsive to individual need, “to really help employees understand why it’s so important for them and what building mental fitness can do for them personally and professionally,” she continued. (In a survey of more than 185 employees, BetterUp found that overwhelmingly people wanted coaching on how to increase their confidence.) Phillips and Greenberg shared other strategies companies can utilize to increase resilience. Greenberg introduced the idea of “inner work,” which is to understand your own personal needs around resiliency issues like work-life balance, and feeling confident enough to ask for support. Phillips built off the concept: “It’s to ask yourself, Where am I right now? What thoughts do I have? Am I being fully present in this moment? And it’s really important to know that resilience happens in the moment. Mental fitness is the practice of helping you understand and ground yourself in the moment.” This can translate to daily workplace practices, like holding check-ins and groundings at the beginning of meetings or one-on-ones. Phillips also said employees should feel comfortable in setting boundaries and that boundaries should be respected. (Her own boundary was scheduling all phone notifications to be turned off after working hours.) “Creating boundaries really creates the space to be in the moment so that we’re not constantly being pulled in every direction, and really becoming burnt out.” Coaching impact is measured by both clinical and performance-based outcomes, with a particular focus on adaptability. Adaptability, Greenberg explained, is “the capacity to manage our thoughts and emotions, so we can focus on what matters most to us as we define it.” BetterUp has found an 18% increase in adaptability within a few months of coaching. In measuring impact, Phillips stressed that the decision to invest in a more resilient workforce often has ripple effects. Thriving employees, according to research by BetterUp, have 56% fewer missed days due to health reasons, are five times more likely to be rated a top performer, have 25% higher productivity and 34% higher engagement. “It’s connected to almost every single business outcome that we really care about at work,” Phillips said, “Like productivity and performance, leadership, collaboration, belonging, and our ability to grow, innovate and change.” Editor’s Note: From Day One thanks our partner who supported this webinar, BetterUp Care. Emily Nonko is a Brooklyn, NY-based reporter who writes about real estate, architecture, urbanism and design. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Curbed and other publications.