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Katie Chambers | November 17, 2023

What Employees Expect When They Bring Their Full Identities to Work

Bringing one’s personal identity into the workplace doesn’t just refer to the more “traditional” demographics associated with DEI, like racial identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation. It also includes disability, age, chronic illness, neurodiversity, and even mental health. Today, progressive organizations are working hard to recognize that all individuals are unique, carrying with them sometimes invisible identities that may impact how they view and move throughout the world–and the workplace.Especially in recent post-pandemic years, workers have demanded greater respect for the many facets of their lives: family, ethnicity, politics, outside interests, and much more. Whether it’s creating a wellness program for those navigating a chronic illness, or understanding how questions about transportation during a job interview could unintentionally disqualify a disabled candidate, employers need to be thinking about how to build an inclusive environment that encourages all individuals to be their full selves.Speaking to this subject at From Day One’s recent Denver conference, was Dr. Sabrina Volpone, an associate professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Volpone is a well-published scholar who focuses on the orientation of workers toward their roles. During the fireside chat session she discussed why the clock can’t be turned back on workplace inclusion.The Merging of Personal and ProfessionalIt's becoming the norm for “your personal life and your work life to collide,” Volpone said. Especially during Covid when many workers were quickly forced onto Zoom, their home lives began literally appearing on the screen as children, pets, and spouses wandered into the background and interrupted conversations. The separation of one’s professional and personal life was no longer an option. “If I had chosen not to share that, or it was important to me to segment those two lives, all of a sudden that wasn’t really an option anymore,” Volpone said. “Especially those first few weeks where we didn’t know how to blur the background and all those fun privacy features that we’re experts on now.”While this was a struggle at first, ultimately, Volpone says, it allowed for a humanization of the workforce. “We’re realizing more and more that our colleagues are humans with lives,” Volpone said. The shared experience of pandemic-era struggles combined with the physical merging of work and home life helped break down barriers, allowing colleagues’ humanity to shine through.Diverse Leadership as a Pathway to Inclusive WorkplacesIn 2023, workplaces continue to diversify as DEI initiatives remain a top priority. Volpone notes that leaders with underrepresented identities are more likely to institute policies that are inclusive of people with lived experiences similar to their own, leading to an overall more welcoming, accommodating, and inclusive workplace. “As people with traditionally marginalized identities get into positions where they have power and can control policies and procedures, we see that the lived experience that hasn’t traditionally been a part of those policies and procedures has an impact,” Volpone said.For example, with more women in positions of power, maternity leave policies are expanding, as are bereavement policies that account for pregnancy loss among other types of grief. “That sphere of life is being brought into the workplace more and more because those individuals have a seat at the table where their voice can be heard more easily,” Volpone said.Remote Work and InclusionJust as the pandemic impacted how we see one another in the workplace, it also sparked an increase in remote or hybrid working environments which, for many companies, are here to stay. Pre-pandemic, remote work was a benefit that proved elusive for many, meaning that certain employees with disabilities or those in caregiving roles, would find themselves at a disadvantage when it came to access and opportunity for advancement. Now that remote work is commonplace,and even the norm, those workers have expanded opportunities, Volpone says. Freed from the limitations of scheduling and physical workplace accessibility, those with disabilities or additional caregiving responsibilities can strike a more effective work/life balance that allows them to excel in the workforce.Dr. Sabrina Volpone, right, was interviewed by Saja Hindi of the Denver Post in the grand finale session of From Day One's Denver event.Ironically, while there has been a recent increase in bringing one’s own personal identity to the workplace, there has also been a reduction in identity-based discrimination in the remote-working world. Volpone and her team are seeing a reduction in employees reporting on workplace microaggressions now that so many more workers are not in an office full-time. “You’re not having those watercooler conversations or those side conversations in the break room where jokes are made,” Volpone said. “There’s not a space for that in a Zoom environment.” The remote workplace, while more inclusive, also manages to be more professional.Volpone urges employers who are still pushing for a full return to office policy to reconsider. “By rolling back those flexible work policies we’re really damaging the flexibility, accessibility, and the positive day-to-day experiences for a number of marginalized groups. This could really make a difference, keeping things flexible,” Volpone said.Organizations Taking a StandIn recent years, especially since the social reckonings of 2020, “Employers have faced a lot of public pressure to either take stances on certain issues or they have taken stances and have faced backlash,” said moderator Saja Hindi, reporter at The Denver Post. Regardless of the risks involved with making a political or social justice statement, organizations must recognize that their employees and even customers now expect them to speak out on injustices and share their values openly.“All of a sudden, these values of organizations became very relevant to stakeholders for a number of reasons. Where do I want to work? Where do I want to put my money?” Volpone said. “2020 certainly wasn't the first time we saw organizations making statements. But I think they really sat differently because we were at home and they were hitting our emails. It wasn’t just a team leader saying this or that, or a CEO saying something on the news. These hit in very personal ways.”While these statements can have a positive impact, there are also consequences, says Volpone. It’s important for companies to seek out resources and training on how to talk about important issues and go into their statement creation armed with knowledge and research. But generally, Volpone said, “Making a statement is better than not making a statement.” And once you make a statement, stick with it. Backtracking in the face of backlash only causes a loss of trust among employees and consumers. “Knowing who you are as a company, and being able to stay firm with that is the most important thing,” Volpone said. “As HR practitioners, this is a new management competency that is going to be expected.”Volpone encourages employers and managers looking to build a more inclusive working environment to stay informed about marginalized identities so that they can be better prepared to support their teams. By understanding which accommodations are necessary and what language should be used when discussing certain identities, leaders can reduce stigma and build an environment where employees feel free, comfortable, and supported.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.

Wanly Chen | November 17, 2023

How HR Leaders Can Use People Data to Increase Their Strategic Influence

Recently, Intermountain Healthcare had a 36% growth projection, and as vice president of human strategy and delivery, Jim Ritchey needed to make sure there were enough physicians in his work field to support that growth.To begin, Ritchey looked at his data. “Once I understand the turnover, the growth, the data of where I am today, then I want to understand at the operational level my risk. So I sent out a basic questionnaire to my operators to assess turnover at high, moderate, or low risk and see how many people that was going to generate.”Looking at data not only helped Ritchey to understand the task properly but also helped him to effectively strategize. “We looked at the benchmark from our perspective of how many recruiters it takes to hire a number of physicians and the benchmark data tells us how many recruiters we need.”From analyzing employees’ sentiments to predicting turnover, people analytics can be a powerful tool for human resource leaders to yield to their advantage. During From Day One’s Denver conference, Ritchey and other leaders sat down with Matt Bloom, a reporter at Colorado Public Radio, to talk about the importance of people analytics and strategies leaders can lean on.Start with the BusinessWith over 3,000 metrics, people analytics software company Visier has a lot of data to offer leaders. As principal of research and value, Andrea Derler advises leaders to look at the data that matters most to the business.“Start from the biggest business needs and see what the business needs to answer. Some metrics that everybody should have on hand all the time are talent movement, volunteer turnover, involuntary turnover, resignation rates, and retirement rates,” Derler said.Understanding these core metrics is key to building other initiatives and priorities for a company, Derler says. “You may be interested strategically in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and if that’s a big topic for your organization, you need data on representation of demographics and gender, as well as pay equity and compensation for those groups.”Lead with a StoryWhen analyzing data, leaders should look for the story they want to tell. Vice president of business partnerships, diversity, and talent acquisition at building materials company Summit Materials, Monet Hires advises leaders to look beyond the raw metrics and look for the problems and solutions they may hint at.“Stories are made up of multiple components. People might look at turnover statistics or just an engagement number, but in isolation, it’s not as impactful. You have to build all those components together,” Hires said. “What is our engagement? What is our turnover? How does that compare and contrast to onboarding or exit surveys to inform our ultimate stories?”Looking at data for the story has not only helped Hires understand how her employees feel, but also see the differences in sentiment that arise with different employee populations. “We dug a little deeper and had intentional focus groups with certain segments of the population to get better insights as to what people are feeling and getting in terms of feedback,” Hires said.The full panel of speakers from left to right included moderator Matt Bloom, Kristian Gaetano of Achievers, Andrea Osborne of Genesys, Monet Hires of Summit Materials, Andrea Derler of Visier, and Jim Ritchey of Intermountain Healthcare.When processing and understanding large data sets, leaders may get overwhelmed by where to begin their stories. In cases like this, AI can be a significant help, Andrea Osborne, vice president of people, product research and development at software company Genesys, said.“AI can do some of the legwork for you if you have the right tool and the right trusted source of data. This lets you focus on providing the business insight versus crunching stuff in a spreadsheet or trying to connect data from finance to HR manually,” Osborne said.Osborne isn’t alone in adapting AI in her work; in fact, 81% of human resources leaders have explored or implemented AI solutions to improve efficiencies in their companies. “AI can automate some of those processes and bring your data together. You can then provide the story and help the business to decide what to do with it,” Osborne said.Listen to the Data, Then ActAs chief operating officer of employee engagement company Achievers, Kristian Gaetano does a lot of listening in his role. Listening, Gaetano says, can give valuable insight into employees’ overall sentiment toward a business.“We have a weekly check-in tool that pops up on Monday mornings for each of our employees and asks them, ‘How are you feeling about work today?’ They can respond with things about their compensation, manager, or something that happened in their personal life,” Gaetano said.The data can give leaders a snapshot of how employees are feeling from different time frames and how different news and actions can affect employees. “For example, if I speak at a town hall and the intentions are good and my message is to certain groups, employees might interpret that as me saying, ‘We’re closing an office.’ The next day, you can see in the data that the scores are lower and comments like, ‘I'm fearful about this new office.’”Actively listening to employees can allow leaders to act quickly to resolve any concerns before they escalate. “That ability to have this always-on listening is the most powerful to us,” Gaetano said.“If it is something that comes out across the organization and there’s quite a response, we will reconvene as a leadership team and try to understand what’s at the root of it, and then we’ll re-communicate it in a better way.”Wanly Chen is a writer and poet based in New York City.

Mary Pieper | November 16, 2023

What Motivates Workers? An Exploration of How Employees Relate to Their Roles

For past generations of Americans, getting a job was usually just a means to an end. Although some people have always felt called to certain careers, for most individuals, the goal was simply to find work that allowed them to support themselves and their families. However, young people today “Are willing to trade off real income to join organizations where they feel aligned with the purpose or mission,” said Amy Wrzesniewski, the William and Jacalyn Egan Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Wrzesniewski was interviewed by Reynaldo Anderson, Graduate Director and Associate Professor of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University during From Day One’s recent Philadelphia conference. “Whether we're talking about neurosurgeons or laborers, and their relationships to how satisfied they are with their lives, work, and experiences of well-being, their sense of purpose and satisfaction is significantly better if they feel as though they would do what they're doing in the workplace anyway, even if they won the lottery.”How to Attract and Retain Workers With a CallingAlthough many companies are realizing the benefits of hiring people who are mission-driven, these employers often fail to support them, according to Wrzesniewski. Dr. Reynaldo Anderson of Temple University interviewed Wrzesniewski in the grand finale fireside chat. Once they join an organization, workers too often “Find that the calling for the work that they’re doing is eliminated over time by how the work is arranged in the organization, how the jobs are designed, how they’re being led and managed, and so on,” she said. A company’s leaders, managers, and supervisors should, instead, educate new employees and help them tap into what the organization is trying to accomplish and what their responsibilities are, says Wrzesniewski. The next step is to give employees as much autonomy as possible to carry out their responsibilities. However, companies must provide some guidance, Wrzesniewski added.“I think everybody wants autonomy until you have too much,” she said. “And once you have too much, it’s paralyzing. And it’s terrifying. And it’s particularly paralyzing if you're new to the job, the workforce, or the organization, and you don’t know what you don’t know.”The benefits of autonomy only come once new hires have a secure base of knowledge about how things are done within the organization, according to Wrzesniewski. She said one of her greatest concerns is that hybrid and remote work can prevent these employees from gaining that knowledge. “There’s so much information, understanding what it is that the organization is trying to make happen that gets lost when people are not working together,” Wrzesniewski said. She noted that loss contributes “to that sense of anxiety about not knowing what to do with the autonomy or how to get from A to B if you haven’t traveled that path many times previously with your colleagues, supervisors, or more senior teammates.”Include Everyone To Boost MotivationAlthough providing guidance and support to younger team members is crucial to keep them motivated, employers should also pay attention to their more experienced workers, says Wrzesniewski. She said these employees, who didn’t grow up with “a very deep understanding of all of the technological tools and bells and whistles” that their more junior colleagues had, are facing a lot of anxiety because of advancements such as artificial intelligence.“The solution is to create partnerships, cross training, cross education, between these younger folks and these older folks, because they have such different skill sets and knowledge bases,” Wrzesniewski said. One of the best methods for getting team members from different backgrounds and fields to work together is to give them a common goal that they can only accomplish through cooperation, says Wrzesniewski. “But a way to amp up the motivation is to identify a common enemy that will wipe them all out,” she said. “That can be a competitor, a competitive environmental force that is not in the form of a person or a group that is threatening to all of them if they don’t band together to try to solve that problem. That can be enormously motivating and quite effective at erasing boundaries between people from different groups who we’re trying to bring together in service of a larger goal.”Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.

the Editors | November 16, 2023

HR Is Already Behind in the AI Revolution. Here’s How to Take the Lead

Most HR leaders didn’t go into their field because of their love of technology. Their affinity is more about seeing people reach their potential in the workplace. Yet now comes a transformative revolution in which they’d be best advised to embrace both. And do it soon. It was only a year ago, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT 3.5, that generative AI burst into the public consciousness. Within two months of its release, it had 100 million users, ranking it as the fastest-growing consumer software application in history. Tapping its uncanny cognitive capabilities, people began using it to compose songs, draft emails, plan parties, write software, and conduct myriad experiments. Yet in the HR world, most professionals have taken a guarded approach, one that could prove detrimental to their businesses given the speed and potential of AI’s transformative impact, according to a global study that surveyed 1,522 professionals in HR and related fields across 62 countries. Conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), the study concluded that because of “HR’s purview of workforce capabilities, skills, potentials and deficiencies, this is a strategic miss that needs to change if organizations expect to truly leverage AI,” wrote Kevin Oakes, CEO of i4cp, in his foreword to the report, titled “Is HR Already Behind in the AI Revolution?” His answer to the titular question is yes, followed by a detailed assessment of the situation and recommendations for how HR can take a leading role. (An executive brief is available here.)As part of the survey, i4cp interviewed HR pleaders, many of whom testified to the benefits that are already apparent for those who have embraced AI early. “As an HR professional if you’re not digging into this space, then you’re already behind. It’ll change the way we do so many things,” said Cameron Hedrick, chief learning officer at Citi. An executive summary of i4cp’s new report can be obtained here.In the years since the pandemic, repeated crises have heightened the influence of HR leaders in their organizations. The arrival of generative AI is the next disruption, one in which HR profession could take a leading role at the decision table. “We’ve always said we want HR to be more strategic partners with the business,” said Dalia Kendik, head of digital HR for Thomson Reuters, the news and information giant. “There’s a lot of opportunity for generative AI to improve the employee experience and HR needs to be an advocate for the rest of the organization.”Approaching Generative AI: Three Organizational TypesBased on its survey, i4cp identified three archetypes to describe how organizations are approaching AI, which it calls the Generative AI Maturity Model:AI Laggards, where leaders have not communicated clear guidance on usage and have no formal usage policy.AI Enquirers, where leaders are researching potential uses but are largely in wait-and-see mode. They’ve likely told employees to refrain from using AI until there’s more evidence of how other organizations have used it.AI Innovators, whose leaders have communicated their support of AI usage and experimentation, and likely have put formal usage parameters in place.To evaluate these organizations, i4cp described nine AI Innovator practices that every organization should follow if they hope to stay current with the revolution. These practices range from openly communicating about generative AI to reduce fear and uncertainty in the workforce to providing a secure environment for workers to experiment with generative AI. The survey found a striking gap in engagement between AI Innovators, who on average have put into place 77% of those nine practices (or are planning to adopt them), the AI Enquirers, who have embraced just 13%, and the AI Laggards, who are at fewer than 1% of those practices. The difference can be huge for organizations who take the innovative path, the study forecasts: “AI Innovators lead when implementing these practices compared to others. Their gap-creating lead can be cataclysmic for those lagging in the number of practices they are planning to implement or have implemented.”How AI Innovators Can Create a Competitive AdvantageOrganizations who wait to embrace generative AI will face a huge opportunity cost. Here’s what they’ll miss: “Organizations that are the most advanced in AI applications (the AI Innovators) are more likely to have higher market performance, increased innovation and productivity, and healthier cultures than those that are slow to adopt,” the i4cp report asserts. To illustrate these points, the report offers several case studies of organizations that have acted quickly to apply generative AI to their processes. Felix Martinez, senior director of talent acquisition at General Electric Appliances, describes how TA leaders at his GE division are using an internal platform similar to ChatGPT to draft individualized recruiting messages to potential candidates. “Best practice is you send 10 emails and get four responses—that’s best in class,” Martinez said. “Our ChatGPT-crafted emails are generating 70% to 90% response rates. Now we’re able to reach individuals in a more compelling way and they’re responding at a higher rate, which affects time-to-fill and quality-of-hire.” The mandate to be innovative comes from the top, Martinez said. “We’re very fortunate to have a CEO who is leading the way,” he said, speaking of Kevin Nolan, CEO of GE Appliance.“He gave us a task where anyone could come up with any idea to use AI to solve for business problems. There were 300 submissions. And our CHRO is challenging us in HR—how can we use this and how can we get in front of it? If you don’t learn how it can impact you, you are going to be left behind." For Leaders, What You Don’t Know Can Hurt YouBesides the risk of missed opportunities, an overly cautious approach to generative AI has other dangers, some of which could strike quickly. In organizations where management have explicitly forbidden employees from using AI for work, 36% are certain their employees are doing so anyway, and another 36% say it is highly likely, according to the i4cp survey.In such cases, companies can increased the hazard of data leakage. “Exposing company information often happens unintentionally when employees copy and paste proprietary or sensitive data, such as a source code, into publicly available models like ChatGPT,” the reported noted. AI Innovators are more likely than their laggard peers, for example, to have data security and ethics policies, as well as requiring fact-checking and citations when AI is used.Another risk is bias in the system. “Since generative AI models are trained on content created by humans, it can perpetuate human biases at scale,” the report said. Such bias can not only undermine an organization’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), but can also run afoul of the need to comply with new regulations among, local, state, and federal governments about how organizations use AI in candidate selection, hiring, and promotion.There’s Almost No Area of HR That AI Won’t ChangeThe list of tasks for which AI can be useful starts with the mundane (searching information, data cleaning) and rises to much more strategic levels. Today, HR professionals in the survey said they’re using generative AI in learning and development (58%), people analytics (57%), talent acquisition (54%), employee experience (46%), and leadership development (45%). Many AI Innovators say they plan to use it next in such areas as workforce planning, succession, labor scheduling, and performance management.To help organizations be on the forward-looking side of the AI revolution, the report makes four recommendations: Be prepared to lead strategic discussions about the workforce implications of generative AI; proactively prepare HR with the necessary skills for the AI revolution; approach generative AI as a systems enabler, not just a personal productivity tool; and create a change-ready culture.Already, HR leaders who have taken these steps on the journey start seeing exciting prospects down the road. At Sysco, the world’s largest foodservice distributor, the company expects to use the technology to make end-to-end HR processes more efficient, for example, by matching employees in need of specific skills with internal “gig” opportunities to help them advance. “Those are huge opportunities for us, and they are just some of the use cases,” said Michael Fischer, Sysco’s VP of global talent management. “You’ve got transactional work, then you’ve got really meaningful work around career development and around colleague development. We know it’s the future and we also know it’s early days. We are going to invest in this. But we want to be very thoughtful about it as we continue because it is changing so fast.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks its partner, i4cp, for sponsoring this story. An executive summary of its new report can be obtained here. (Feature illustration by Quoya/iStock by Getty Images)

Wanly Chen | November 16, 2023

Supporting the Well-Being of Neurodiverse Employees

For neurodiverse adults, finding employment can be difficult. Unemployment runs at least as high as 30-40%, three times higher than that for people with disabilities and eight times higher than the rate for those without disabilities.The statistic is staggering and can stem from stigma and unfavorable work conditions, says Louis Chesney, neurodiversity program manager at behavioral and mental health platform, RethinkCare.“There’s this issue about the declining workforce, but there’s also an untapped reservoir of talent. So people with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, are being edged out of the workforce because of this idea of engagement, which is disproportionately impacting neurodivergent individuals,” Chesney said. “The same people that can fill a huge gap in the talent pipeline are also not being supported in the workplace due to stigma, lack of compliance reduction and retention, inappropriate assessments and performance misalignment.”In a recent From Day One webinar, Chesney joined moderator and journalist, Kelly Bourdet, to discuss neurodiversity and how leaders and fellow employees can work to make an inclusive workplace for all.Neurodiverse adults can display special skills in pattern recognition, memory or mathematics, which can correlate to key skills in the workplace and higher productivity. These skills from neurodivergent employees can positively impact a company, says Chesney.“A lot of companies are seeing the tangible benefits of enhanced productivity, improved retention rates, and a more skilled workforce from some of the current neurodiversity hire programs,” Chesney said. However, companies are struggling to implement fair practices and an inclusive work environment before neurodivergent candidates even join their teams.Louis Chesney of RethinkCare was interviewed by journalist Kelly Bourdet during From Day One's recent webinar on supporting the well-being of neurodiverse employees (photo by From Day One)“When we think about our screening processes, we may not consider that people are unable to answer open-ended questions effectively because they may not pick up on the nuanced meaning of what is really asked,” Chesney said. “Then there’s a relevant assessment where social communication or social interaction isn’t a deal breaker. For example, a data analyst person has excellent analytical capabilities, but is maybe a bit more introverted and does not exude overzealousness or enthusiasm in an interview.”With pressure to be conversational and extroverted during an interview, neurodivergent candidates may feel like they are at a disadvantage. Researchers in the UK found 88% of neurodivergent candidates felt discouraged from applying for a job and 52% of those studied felt discriminated against by the hiring process.By changing hiring practices to be more inclusive, neurodiverse candidates can have a more equitable chance as prospective candidates. Research suggests that accommodations such as sharing interview questions early or allowing for a virtual interview can help ease anxiety for neurodivergent candidates.In a survey on workplace inclusivity, 64% of neurodivergent respondents believe their organization could be doing more to support neurodiversity in the workplace.To start, leaders need to understand certain workplace communications and structures may impact a neurodivergent employee differently. Chesney points to meeting spaces, team activities and communication methods as a few examples of things that may need to be adjusted for neurodivergent employees.Special accommodations, however, should not be seen as special privileges, Chesney said. Having this distinction made in the workplace can help ease neurodivergent employee stressors in asking for help.“Other team members need to understand these accommodations are about equity,” Chesney said. “These accommodations are giving everyone an accurate, equitable chance to showcase their abilities when they’re given the tools and the training they need to do their job effectively.”From having a safe space to ask for help and being accommodated, fellow leaders and co-workers need to create a space to listen and learn about their neurodiverse employees. Chesney points to Rethink’s specialized training that offers courses and audio sessions for employees to learn more about neurodiversity, but also emphasizes the importance of actively listening and engaging with neurodiverse community members.“Engaging with diversity, equity, inclusion and talking to the people who are within the community can increase people’s empathy and understanding,” Chesney said. “Listen to employees and people within the community who are vocal and talk about issues around neurodivergence. Even if what they’re saying doesn’t align with your worldview, listening actively helps.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, RethinkCare, for sponsoring this webinar. Wanly Chen is a writer and poet based in New York City.

Mary Pieper | November 16, 2023

The Secrets of Boosting Remote Team Productivity and Performance

When Covid abruptly forced a transition to remote work in March 2020, corporate leaders assumed it would be temporary. However, when employers tried to bring workers back to the office, they realized their team members had different expectations. “Employees had really found their voice. And that voice said, ‘hey, it’s just not necessary for me to go into the office to be productive at my job. In fact, I think I can be more productive while working from home,’” said Gabriela Mauch, head of ActivTrak’s productivity lab, during a recent From Day One webinar about “The Secrets of Boosting Remote Team Productivity and Performance.”ActivTrak is a workforce analytics and productivity management software company that helps employers optimize processes and technology to make the new normal of remote and hybrid work as effective as possible.“The technology solutions that really unlocked potential in the office might not be the exact same technology solutions that you need for your highly distributed, highly flexible, hybrid remote workforce,” Mauch said. “In fact, organizations that are really rolling up their sleeves and committing to figuring this out are saying, ‘What's the right technology I need? How can I support my employees? How do we need to alter our management practices, to really make sure that we can unlock the potential of our workforce?’”The Challenges of Remote TeamsGabriela Mauch of ActivTrak led the webinar titled "The Secrets of Boosting Remote Team Productivity and Performance" (company photo)Many company leaders believe some of their employees are less productive when working from home. In contrast, others have become so efficient in this new environment that they are experiencing burnout, says Mauch.Another challenge employers are facing is onboarding new team members. Especially if there isn’t an opportunity to see one another in the office on a daily basis and quickly identify areas that need support.Workplace policy effectiveness and adherence can also be an issue, says Mauch. “A lot of us struggle with the validation of scheduling and policies that we have in our environments today,” she said.For example, if employees are expected to be in the office a certain number of days per week and work remotely the rest of the time, “That becomes really hard when the workforce itself isn’t just as visible as it once was,” Mauch said. “Maybe there’s an absence or inconsistency of badging data, scheduling data, and really tracking and whether or not the policies are being adhered to.”Finally, there’s the question of whether investments in technology are making the hybrid workplace more efficient. “Is it really being used in a way that we expect people to use the office space that we have?” Mauch asked. “Is the workforce that we’ve employed fully optimized as they work remotely?”Getting Insights Into ProductivityJavier Aldrete, senior vice president of product at ActivTrak, said the company’s software allows employers to click on various teams within their organization to see key leading indicator metrics for each member, such as productive time, non-productive time, and productivity ratio.“This very quickly gives you the ability to see what’s happening at the team level,” he said. “For each particular team member, we can get a little bit more of their pattern of work, like how are they working through the day, are they taking breaks, when are they taking the breaks, or are they just continuing without any breathers in between meetings.”Employers can use these reports to understand when an employee might be able to have a conversation and when they shouldn’t be disrupted, says Aldrete. He said they are also a vital tool for managers to see who might need some support to reach their goals.ActivTrak’s location insights feature is a helpful tool when designing hybrid workplace policies, according to Aldrete. “You can see metrics like those productive hours per day in leading indicators that we described earlier, but broken up by location,” he said.This means ActivTrak tracks productivity in three different setups. First, working 100% of the day from somewhere outside the office, whether from home, a coffee shop, or another location. Or working part of the day in the office and part of the day remotely. Lastly, those working the entire day in the office.Employers can also use ActivTrak to gain insight into the workload balance occurring within teams, says Alderte. For example, some people may be putting in too many hours, while some need to work more hours and others are achieving a healthy balance.“We’re able to see the distribution of the work within the team and make decisions around reallocating work, changing project deadlines and goals, as well as potentially deciding whether we need to hire more folks to help this team balance out that work,” Aldrete said.When it comes to evaluating the productivity of a hybrid workforce, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, says Mauch. However, the overall philosophy for doing so remains the same.“The idea is that your people organization and your business leaders are being thoughtful about the culture of your organization and the employee base, and having open and honest conversations about leveraging this data for performance, as well as just the overall enablement of hybrid work,” she said. “A lot of organizations have employees that really want to be hybrid, or really want to be remote, but leaders are less comfortable with allowing that to happen. And so, there’s this business case for having a solution that provides some level of accountability for remote work while still allowing it to take place.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, ActivTrak, for sponsoring this webinar. Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 15, 2023

Creating Opportunity Within: How Employers Are Boosting Internal Mobility

Many think of promotions as a retention tool, but a new study by ADP suggests this strategy is not as sticky as imagined. The company looked at data from 1.2 million workers from 2019 to 2022 and found that within a month of their first promotion, 29% of people left their employer. At six months, those who had been recently promoted were just as likely to leave as their peers who hadn’t climbed the ladder.In fact, ADP’s data indicates that a promotion increases the risk that someone will leave their employer, especially within the first six months of that promotion – that new job title makes them more confident, and more marketable. Simply bumping someone up a pay grade or giving them a higher-ranking job isn’t enough to keep them around.The solution may be internal mobility. The notion of a “career ladder” that goes only up or down is losing its appeal, and workers are instead hopping across organizations. Someone may move laterally before they move up, said Gary Blith, head of executive search at insurance firm Humana. “As we try to guide the careers of others, it’s important to let them know that moving within the organization doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be two or three steps up. It could be two or three steps to the side. What you’re gaining as you move laterally, that’s going to equip you to move up.”Blinth joined From Day One’s September virtual conference on building a work environment to persevere through multiple challenges for a panel discussion titled “Creating Opportunity Within: How Employers Are Boosting Internal Mobility.” I moderated the panel in which the group talked about fruitful, low-cost ways to get workers moving around, growing their skills, and growing the company in the process.Who Gets to Move Internally?Internal mobility often requires upskilling and training opportunities, and panelists were keen to discuss their strategies. When planning to let workers start moving about, the first question to be answered is, Who gets to do so?The panelists spoke about "Creating Opportunity Within: How Employers Are Boosting Internal Mobility" during From Day One's virtual conference (photo by From Day One)At global marketing tech company Epsilon, those who get upskilling opportunities are initiative-takers, says Michael Dixon, the company’s global SVP of learning and organizational development.They’ve demonstrated their desire in two ways: The first is that they’ve taken it upon themselves to start learning on their own, perhaps by earning a new certification or a coding language, for instance. “We see folks make the demand without doing the homework. If you’re looking for that new role in data science, but yet you haven’t consumed any of our wonderful AI-driven data science training or networked with somebody inside the company who’s got a Ph.D. in data science, we’re a little curious how you think you’re gonna pull that off.”The second is that they’ve asked their manager for more responsibility, to work on a new project, sit in new meetings, or take on extra client work. “As a leader, I want to see that you’re willing to take on more before we ask you to, or especially before you ask to be given formal scope,” he said.Training requires resources, of course, and sometimes they’re just not available at the moment. If you have to choose, then choose managers, said Meredith Haberfeld, founder and CEO of business training and development platform ThinkHuman. “If they’re trained and supported, they become a cascading force where they’re identifying growth areas, coaching people, and having developmental one-on-ones.”Insurance provider VSP Vision is investing in making its workforce leadership-ready, so they’re poised to move whenever it’s time. “No matter where you sit, we’re looking at providing opportunities to upskill in business acumen, team development, and self-development so that at every layer in the organization, you’re ready to go,” said Jennifer Malena, the company’s VP of employee enablement. “We had several workshops on developing leadership skills, even if you’re not in leadership right now.”What Skills Get Added to the Organization?Savina Perez, co-founder of upskilling and training platform Hone, recommended first conducting an internal skill-gap analysis to identify what your current workforce needs to meet your future business goals. In tandem, stay abreast of trends in your industry – regulatory, tech-related, and otherwise. “Another opportunity to identify skills is doing industry analysis, understanding current market trends, staying updated with current research and reports, attending industry events, conferences, and workshops to hear what others in the field are saying.”When picking what skills to instill in your newly mobile employees, prioritize efficiency, said Haberfeld. Ask, “What are the one or two behaviors that would have the biggest impact?” Potency matters too. She likes an 80/20 rule: “What 20% shift could have 80% of the impact?”Low-Cost Training and Mobility OpportunitiesThere are opportunities already in your workplace waiting to be tapped. ThinkHuman uses bungee assignments: The chance to step out of one’s current role and briefly dip into another. That could be in the same team or business function, or in a new one altogether. “The person gets new connections, new perspectives, and new skills, enhancing what they have to offer and what they receive from the company,” said Haberfeld.“Bungee assignments are high impact, but they’re also high effort,” she added, so enter only with appropriate support for employees and their managers to get it done productively.Internal Mobility Is a Talent MagnetMobility is the stuff of growth, said Perez. “You’re not only able to hit business goals more efficiently and more quickly, but you’re also diversifying talent and breeding innovation. And, of course, you’re going to reduce turnover.”Cutting back on training and opportunities for growth and development might save money for now, Dixon noted, but employees will notice, and they’ll notice what companies are providing what you’re not. “They’re going to go where they see that they have development and internal mobility. We see [talent development] as non-negotiable. We have to spend money to keep these folks here.”Internal mobility can retain workers, and, just as well, it can attract new ones. “One of the distinct advantages of retaining your employees is that they’re great culture carriers,” said Blinth. “The longer someone has been at the organization, the more they’re embedded in the culture—you could use them on interview panels, and you could use them to help sell the organization.”Creating movement is a means of cultivating belonging, he pointed out, and that feeling is contagious to those outside the organization. The more you give people to build their skills and move throughout the company, the more they understand the company is invested in their success. “We all want to work for an organization that has a strong culture, right? The more you upskill, the more you provide those opportunities. You’re equipping those folks to help you to sell the organization. They’re the talent magnet.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz at Work, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Feature

Fire in the Belly: How to Find Hidden Potential in the Workforce

“Our systems for judging qualifications are flawed,” organizational psychologist Adam Grant declares in his new book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. “In schools and workplaces, selection systems are usually designed to detect excellence. That means people who are on their way to excellence rarely make the cut.”The good news: This is changing, and shifts in the way companies recruit and hire indicate corporate America is starting to look for people who are excellence-bound, rather than already credentialed. Until recently, insistence that candidates have a four-year degree has confined the way we think about what people are capable of. But out of necessity in a tight labor market, companies ranging from IBM to Google have reconsidered or dropped that basic requirement. As Grant puts it: “You can’t tell where people will land from where they begin. With the right opportunity and motivation to learn, anyone can build the skills to achieve greater things,” he asserts, citing research on the relationship between initial aptitude and later outcomes.“We’re seeing a lot of employers moving more and more into the skills-based movement, thinking about developing talent with a set of skills that have indications they can be successful on the job,” said Elyse Rosenblum, the managing director and founder of Grads of Life, an organization that works with employers to promote skills-based hiring.Elyse Rosenblum, the founder of Grads of Life, which works with employers to promote skills-based hiring. (Courtesy photo)Skills-based hiring, the practice of prioritizing skills and capabilities over educational background and jobs held, represents a new enthusiasm for worker potential. In that spirit, companies are making new investments in workforce development. “This is a really exciting trend that we’re seeing,” Rosenblum told From Day One, citing the kind of investments made by Delta Air Lines, which launched its apprentice program in 2022, and JPMorgan Chase, which announced this week it will commit $3.5 million to apprenticeship programs in the financial and tech sectors. Apprenticeships are often considered more risky for employers because they don’t guarantee returns right away but are long-term investments in capable professionals. “They’re looking for people with potential,” Rosenblum said.Seeking a New Set of StandardsA growing number of companies have removed degree requirements for many jobs, but as I’ve reported, many employers still haven’t entirely worked out how to recruit without one. Some continue to favor applicants (and employees) who have degrees over those who don’t; some remove the degree requirement but replace it with arbitrary proxies; others limit the upward mobility (and therefore pay) of people without a bachelor’s by relegating them entry-level roles and internships because they assume these workers lack potential.“It’s a mistake to judge people solely by the heights they’ve reached,” Grant writes. “By favoring applicants who have already excelled, selection systems underestimate and overlook candidates who are capable of greater things. When we confuse past performance with future potential, we miss out on people whose achievements have involved overcoming major obstacles.”Predicting potential by past achievements is a terrible mistake, Grant argues. “In a meta-analysis of 44 studies with over 11,000 people across a wide range of jobs, prior work experience had virtually no bearing on performance,” he writes. “Even if a candidate’s past performance is relevant to the current role, this metric is designed to detect polished diamonds, not uncut gems.”Early reports on skills-based hiring policies are promising. According to a report by workforce development organization OneTen, 77% of hiring managers who apply a skills-first approach find it twice as easy to identify qualified candidates as managers who don’t. Hiring managers also reported that skills-first made it easier to grow their talent pools with qualified and motivated talent.How Better to Predict Success?So, how can employers identify those uncut gems–the workers whose potential is greater than their present achievements?Track trajectories, says Grant. The change in performance over time is more indicative of capabilities than is recent or average performance. Rather than evaluating a student’s overall grade-point average, for example, consider their performance for the duration of their schooling. Low grades across the board in freshman year can weigh down a GPA, but when that same student logs all As by graduation, that indicates promise.Similarly, reward workers’ performance over time rather than investing only in those who ace their first performance reviews. As Grant writes, “the most meaningful form of performance is progress.”In an organization of tens of thousands, tracking the trajectories of individual employees is now made possible by HR tech tools that monitor employee progress, skills developed over time, and even match capabilities with jobs.Give people the opportunity to put their skills in context, says Grant, who cites the example of astronaut José Hernandez. He applied to NASA 12 times before he was accepted. At the time, NASA’s selection process was not designed to find potential, it was designed to award achievement. There was no system to learn that Hernandez grew up in a family of migrant workers and would miss months of school as his family traveled, or that Hernadez was not fluent in English until he was 12.Instead, the application asked for education, work experience, special skills, and awards. “The form did not ask for unconventional skills like picking grapes,” Grant writes. “It didn’t signal that a command for the English language would qualify as an honor. The awards section wasn’t a place to mention passing physics while working in the fields. The system wasn’t designed to identify and weigh adversity candidates had overcome.”See How Far They've ComeInstead of achievements, Grant argues that distance traveled is a better measure of potential. There exists a unique brand of motivation and grit required to travel as far as Hernandez did. Mona Mourshed, the founding CEO at nonprofit advocacy group Generation, calls this intrinsics. “As an employer, you’re asking, Does this person have the intrinsics to grow quickly in my company?”What you’re getting at, Mourshed told From Day One, is the energy of that candidate, their hunger to learn, their willingness to take what you give them and run with it. “They’re looking for the fire in the belly of this person,” she said.That fire in the belly is what Mourshed wants to see–or rather, feel–from a candidate. The humorist David Sedaris has noted the same about aspiring writers: “You meet people like that, and it’s like opening the door of an oven.”Looking for Fire in the BellyMourshed’s organization has an exercise designed to look for potential in candidates for its workforce-training programs. When a learner identifies the role they want to aim for, Generation tells them to go find three people who have that job and find out what’s great about it, and what’s not so great, then report back.Learners get a week to do this. In addition to pressing them to learn more about their potential career, “you’re also testing their ability to plan and to check their progress against that plan, in addition to the depth of the questions that they have and the quality of what they write.”How do you read a resume for that potential? “You don’t,” says Mourshed. You have to meet that person. “The only way you know is that when you are engaging in a conversation, it’s really clear when someone’s got that spark. They are asking questions as much as they are answering questions. They are bringing an energy to the conversation about what they want to do and what they want to learn if they’re given this opportunity.”In many cases, those people with fire in their belly won’t have any work experience or education in the career they’re aiming for. But they will have the drive to get there and the character to persevere.“In a world obsessed with innate talent, we assume that people with the most promise are the ones that stand out right away,” Grant writes. “But high achievers vary dramatically in their initial aptitudes. If we judge people only by what they can do on day one, their potential remains hidden.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz at Work, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 15, 2023

Webinar Recap

Using AI to Revolutionize Hiring for Top Talent, While Avoiding the Pitfalls

The influence of AI on our world is profound and ongoing, though its effects may be more understated than the sensational headlines suggest. Instead of the Matrix abound, AI is enhancing the work of human hands by simplifying or eliminating rote tasks, and making it easier for companies and workers to focus on more important tasks.“AI is a job transformer, right? What it is basically doing is automating things, like high volume, repetitive tasks. And it is giving us more time to think and do something that we’re good at like problem solving,” said Ankur Saxena, SVP & head of strategic operations and talent at Mphasis.One of those areas of work where AI is improving processes, and will continue to streamline on both the client and user end, is in hiring and talent acquisition. But there are many pitfalls, namely in how AI carries human biases. During a recent From Day One webinar, Matt Charney, talent acquisition leader at HR.com, spoke with professionals in-the-know about AI and how it affects talent acquisition.The Genetics of Bias in AI“There was one very famous article about Amazon creating an AI hiring bot, and it failed miserably because it was trained on data. The data was from all the people who are working in the firm. Being about 70-80% males, they unintentionally created a sexist AI hiring tool. It kept on selecting only people who are males,” said Saxena.The matching of resumes to job descriptions has been a practice for over 20 years, with a historical feedback loop embedded in the machine learning and AI processes, says Dan Finnigan, CEO of Filtered.To overcome bias Saxena says organizations need to look at the data AI is getting trained on, because the people training the AI carry their own inherent biases. Next you have to monitor the output so you can understand the results you’re getting. He likens this to going to the gym and maintaining an exact regimen but never seeing any increases and positive changes in your abilities. You have to change your workout to see different results.The full panel of speakers from top right: Dan Finnigan of Filtered, Ankur Saxena of Mphasis, Alec White of Computershare, Madeline Laurano of Aptitude Research, and moderator Matt Charney of HR.com (photo by From Day One)Madeline Laurano co-founder of Aptitude Research turned the discussion to ethical AI and how it should be defined by transparency and specific use. “Ethical AI is pretty much defined by transparency. And are these providers going to be transparent with their algorithm? Or are they going to be transparent with the methodology that they’re using? Are they constantly re-evaluating it?”Focusing on ethics, Charney directed the panel to think about two questions. First, will AI reduce bias going forward, or is automation bias simply replacing hiring bias? And within an organization, who is responsible for making ethical decisions behind AI-driven processes?“I firmly believe that AI and recruiting is by definition biased, and maybe significantly so,” Finnigan said. He says that earlier in his career with Hot Jobs, product people found candidates using unseeable fonts to game the algorithm, and basically create a marketing document for themselves. On the company side, hiring managers would do the same, adding in things to make the job more appealing.“And so it is biased by definition. It's just like the way we read news on social media; it's an echo chamber. So I would argue it's a bias accelerator so that we don't have to take the time to really try to figure out what's in the resume, or for the candidate to really figure out what's in the job description.” Finnigan says that the power of generative AI should be one that double checks bias and includes a process that is better at matching verified job skills, instead of just looking for patterns in applicants it's been trained to favor.AI Is Still in its InfancyUnfortunately, there aren’t a lot of companies out there that use AI very well for the hiring process, according to Laurano. She referenced Amazon's crash and burn with AI recruiting as a cautionary tale that’s still scary to a lot of talent acquisition leaders.Charney turned to Alec White global head of talent acquisition at Computershare, which is in the early stages of that journey. White is working on the applicant tracking system. “We started with some fundamental things like digital interviewing, and self scheduling of interviews. And that, from the very beginning, felt natural. It’s the feedback loop that we’ve talked about.” White says that based on their metrics, their process doesn't “feel off putting to candidates, but like they are interacting with something human.”“They could interview with us at midnight, with a digital interview, and then the system would tell them, ‘Hey, this is what is next’ and respond to questions and send them information that was customized to their role,” White continued. He says by personalizing the application process it doesn’t feel like a black hole with an automated email at the end saying not you.Defining the Perfect AI Recruitment Tool“I completely see it as an enhancer. I see AI as providing tremendous value to TA professionals, whether that’s being a campus recruiter all the way to a TA leader. “There’s lots of value in a lot of these use cases where AI can come in and improve the recruiter experience,” said Laurano.She referenced research her firm did in early 2021 that looked at the recruiter experience. There were 14,000 job openings for recruiters that January, and the research found that they were wasting their time on tasks like managing job boards, manually advertising jobs, scheduling interviews, and more, instead of connecting candidates with jobs. “AI can provide tremendous value in a lot of these use cases for recruiters. And I think recruiters that better understand and get excited about AI, they can get excited about generative AI."“If you view a human as an algorithm, and you view AI as an algorithm, what do you trust as having less bias? We bring these biases into our organization, and it’s hard to unlearn those. But with AI, you can unlearn things, you can retrain it, and you can reduce bias in a way that you really can’t do with humans," Laurano added.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Filtered, for sponsoring this webinar.Matthew Koheler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.

Matthew Koehler | November 15, 2023

Mary Pieper | November 14, 2023

College Admissions Counseling: An Employee Benefit That Can Boost Productivity

Three years ago, Connie Livingston’s teenage son was going through the college admissions process. Livingston, who had been an assistant director of admissions at Brown University for 14 years, was shocked to learn first-hand just how stressful the process is for students and their families.“I thought, ‘Wow, I could really help them by taking this burden off their plates,’” she told journalist Anna Maltby Patil in a From Day One Webinar about College Admissions Counseling: An Employee Benefit That Can Boost Productivity.So Livingston, who is now the head of counselors, joined Empowerly. The platform connects students worldwide with experts who have a deep understanding of the U.S. college admissions process. Empowerly’s clients include not just individual students and their families, but also an increasing number of companies, both big and small. These employers recognize that offering college admissions counseling to their team members boosts worker satisfaction, which has fallen to its lowest level in two decades. The Challenge of Getting Into College TodayOver the past couple of years, students and families have been spending more than 200 hours working on college applications because the process has become more complex, according to Changxiao Xie, co-founder of Empowerly. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the time and effort needed to prepare for higher education, he said. Even a decade ago, college was nowhere near as expensive as it is now, says Xie. “So, you have to make sure you’re getting into the right program with the right fit for you so you’re not going to switch majors or transfer to another university and pay even more money,” he said.Another factor putting pressure on students and families is today’s complexity around entry-level employment.For example, students who think they might be interested in software engineering as a career need to figure that out early enough in their high school years so they can build their skills to a level where they can get internships at top companies by the time they are a freshman or sophomore in college, says Xie.Journalist Anna Maltby Patil led the conversation between Connie Livingston and Changxiao Xie of Empowerly (photo by From Day One)Making things even more stressful, the competition to get into college is tougher than ever. “Ten to 15 years ago, the average application volume nationally hovered anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 applications per school per year,” Livingston said. “Now we see schools with 50,000 plus applications per year, some approaching 100,000.”A major reason for the increase in applications is that many colleges and universities have joined the common application, which means students can apply to as many as 20 schools with one application, says Livingston. However, the number of spaces colleges have available for incoming freshmen hasn’t increased.Due to this more selective environment, college admission officers are “Looking for students with a sense of purpose,” Livingston said. “In addition to stellar grades and testing, admission officers are looking at things like, what have you done? What have you accomplished? How have you made an impact? What is unique about you? Have you specialized in something that’s really important to you that you’re passionate about? And how can you bring that specialty to our campus?”In addition to the difficulty of applying to and getting accepted by colleges and universities, students and parents are facing the daunting prospect of qualifying for financial aid, which is more important than ever due to the rising cost of higher education. Families must fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The application process normally opens in October, but a revamped FAFSA will now roll out sometime in December.Empowerly offers not only college admission counseling services, but also assistance with FAFSA and even helps find non-federal scholarship and grant opportunities.Why Companies Offer College Admissions CounselingCollege admissions services might seem like an extravagant benefit to offer employees in an era where companies are tightening their belts, but many businesses say the investment is worth it, says Xie.Whether the economy is good or bad, “people still have kids, and kids will always have to go to college, or at least figure out what they want to do,” he said.And when those employees take advantage of the college admissions counseling their company offers, “this is something that just immediately boosts productivity” because the workers are less stressed by something they are going through in their personal lives, says Xie.“We don’t see this as a one and done benefit that maybe you don’t get much ROI on,” he said. “It’s an investment into the employees’ future, because it’s an investment into their kids’ future.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Empowerly, for sponsoring this webinar. Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.

Webinar Recap

How Innovative Companies Put Advanced HR Technology to Work

What are the most important HR technologies right now? Skills management, learning experience platforms, and internal talent marketplaces, according to a 2023 Gartner survey. Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company cited these findings in a recent From Day One webinar. HR leaders will have to persuade key stakeholders to adopt the new technology, justify investing in HR tech, and figure out a roadmap for rapid tech transformation, which isn’t easy.“Yet, while nearly half of the HR leaders surveyed said that driving better business outcomes was their top priority, implementing these tech tools needed to bolster the strategic focus hasn’t quite caught up,” Dishman said.Managing Talent“The pandemic was definitely a mode where we saw a dramatic push to get employees in all the countries we operate in,” said Jason Radisson, CEO and co-founder of Movo. “From a tech space, we’ve seen the pendulum swing from talent acquisition technologies to workforce management technologies.” Now he says there’s more focus on using technology to manage the workforce. Like mobile apps, for example, being used to not only gather data on their frontline workers but allow for frictionless interactions.“If you're asking what the future looks like, it’s a mobile application. If we could talk to somebody on Saturday and have them working Monday morning, that’s an ideal world. Or talk to them on Sunday and have them download the app, do the hiring paperwork and get to work. That’s really what we were going for.”Simon Taylor, head of organizational effectiveness at Gap, Inc., honed in on what drives decisions in the management space. “What are the core questions we need to answer? And then what’s the data that’s going to enable us to be able to answer those questions?” Taylor said one of those major sets of questions is around understanding the pain points because that’s where there’s opportunity to come up with solutions.“There’s always a need to continuously focus on what those questions are, revisit them and then modify them over time to ensure that you’re answering different questions as the business model evolves and the market evolves,” said Eyad El Hindi, vice president of HR technology & operations at Catalent Pharma Solutions.Reflecting on lessons learned about frontline workers during the pandemic, Dishman pointed out that “a happy worker makes a happy customer.” Workers who feel supported by their company have better morale, and better worker morale means better customer service. Better customer service can lead to bigger positive feedback loops in terms of revenue.Dishman moderated the panel about “How Innovative Companies Put HR Technology to Work” with panelists Simon Taylor of Gap, Eyad El Hindi of Catalent Pharma Solutions, and Jason Radisson of Movo (photo by From Day One)A big part of that morale boost is how well companies integrate technology to enhance the work life of the employee. “From a skill standpoint, it's really thinking through, what are the skills that we need for these individuals to be able to be successful to provide a positive customer experience to feel comfortable and confident on the floor and engaging with customers and serving them?” Taylor said.El Hindi touched on the fact that as companies adopt AI technology, they will need a “more dynamic workforce” to manage the use of those technologies. “I think the key thing is acquiring talent with that skill. But then how you sustain that overtime is another dimension, right?” El Hindi said.Looking at hiring, Dishman pointed out that the AI technologies the panelists talked about were supposed to eliminate bias in the hiring process, which they don’t always do. “Are there good use cases for incorporating AI tech tools, particularly when it comes to recruiting and retaining workers?” Dishman asked.“You hit the nail on the head in terms of the journey on the TA side with bias and the promise of removing bias” said Taylor. He emphasized that even though many companies are beholden to the technology they use, their using that technology, experimenting with it, and exploring its limits is also an important part of the journey. How you have meaningful insights in hiring quality candidates based on a job profile using AI is really the question companies are trying to answer, says Taylor.“I think what is underpinning that in some respects is the volume of work that happens on the TA side with our field organization, and how can we use that to compliment, not to replace our recruiting team. To be able to help make sure that we’re really putting the net out as wide as we can to be able to attract the right diverse candidates” Taylor added.Stepping Into the Unknown“The most important thing for us to make sure we’re getting right when it comes to change management and driving adoption with these kinds of things, is getting that sponsorship secured upfront. And when I say sponsorship, I mean the leaders that provide that legitimacy and role modeling, and getting them on board first,” Taylor said.El Hindi added that when deploying new technologies you have to have a clear understanding of what’s in it for them. Ensuring that the people who will use the technology “understand the corporate benefit to why it’s being adopted, both from a productivity cost perspective” is key, he said.“You understand that I have an individual personal benefit to what's been deployed. It’ll help me run my organization better. It’ll help me get greater insights into the workforce that I oversee, empower me to do more with technology,” El Hindi said.This isn’t surprising to Radisson who says the heritage of HR is conservative “because it’s focused on compliance,” which usually makes it late to advancements in technology.“So if we all agree on what the future should look like, and then you take that gap with the senior team or with your operating team, you really have to pick it apart and look at that gap and decide what the actions, use cases, and implementation of technology is going to be in order to fill that gap. And then you get people working concretely on things,” said Radisson.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Movo, for sponsoring this webinar. Matt Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.

Matthew Koehler | November 14, 2023

Carrie Snider | November 13, 2023

Recognizing and Reimagining the Roles of Middle Managers

Who are middle managers, anyway? The off-beat Michael Scott, the droll “Dilbert,” the micro-manager Bill Lumbergh are popular caricatures of this often-misunderstood group. Bryan Hancock, partner at McKinsey & Company, spoke about middle managers from personal experience in a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Philadelphia conference.Middle managers manage people, while upper management decides how the company operates. The corporate-like stereotypes associated with middle managers are not always accurate “Middle managers are more the victims of bureaucracy than the perpetrators of it,” Hancock said. Resolving misconceptions of middle management is why he, along with Bill Schaninger and Emily Field, wrote Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work.“They’re not saying, ‘Gosh, if I could only pack in one more meeting today, that’s what I want.’ They’re looking to motivate their teams to be there,” said Hancock.The idea for the book came from a few things. Hancock and Schaninger host a podcast called McKinsey Talks Talent, and in one episode they talked about the vanishing middle manager. During the pandemic, employees were displaced and felt disconnected. As a result, more was required of managers to keep people working.“There were all of these additional pressures that managers were having,” Hancock explained. “But they didn’t have time to do it.” What happens if a manager doesn’t consistently check in with their people? Distress, low productivity, and high turnover. Turns out, middle managers matter a lot. They always have; it just became more apparent during Covid.The Weighty Burden of AdministrationWhen it comes to reworking the workload, one perhaps less-visible burden for middle managers is administrative work. As companies adopt new technologies, who trains people to use them? Who takes care of the paperwork? Who coordinates with outside contractors to help integrate them into what the company needs? The answer to each question: middle managers.“One of the things that we found through our research is that middle managers, on average, spend half of their time on either individual contributor work or administrative work. And that is squeezing out their ability to do some of the more strategic work thinking through the talent on their team,” Hancock said.“One of the clients that we’re working with now has this idea of a concierge bot,” he added. For some companies, AI could help make life easier for middle managers. “Managers are critical in reimagining what the work of the future looks like.”Some companies also look in the wrong places for managers. Companies value employees who are good at what they do. In order to keep that person, a company will typically increase their pay and give them a managerial role. That can be a pitfall, Hancock says.“Now they’ve got a team. And they may or may not be natural team leaders. We’re selecting them because of what they did great as an individual contributor.” Middle-manager roles and skills are different.Hancock signed copies of his book, Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work, for the From Day One Philadelphia audience.In the book, the authors talk about Waffle House’s approach. The core of the organization is the short-order cook, or “Elvis on the grill.” They cook $5,000 worth of food in one shift. Waffle House recognized that they need to keep those rockstars on the grill, not promote them to managing people and making schedules. These cooks are still advancing and making more money, sometimes more than an assistant manager.“The question I have across the organizations that I work with is, what’s the equivalent for you?” Hancock said. “What is that critical individual contributor role where you want to create a track of increased pay and responsibility for them, but you don’t need to have them be a manager?”On the flip side, when selecting middle managers, search for those who are good at managing and leading people. “We found that organizations that had role clarity, and had managers who were skilled at not micromanaging, but having tough conversations and had good performance rhythms, are the ones that outperform. But it’s a skill.”Empowering ManagersHelping managers do their jobs better helps the entire company, from employees to productivity to operations. But how do you help them succeed? The best thing business leaders can do, Hancock says, is involve their managers in the decision-making processes of the company. Their input is invaluable because they know their people and the day-to-day work better than upper management does. The key is open, effective communication between all levels of leadership.The book includes a story about an employee who clearly isn’t a good fit for a specific team. The manager invests time over a year, offering counseling and feedback. But the person still isn’t a good fit.Come review time, it's time to counsel this person to find another opportunity. Unfortunately, HR needs the paperwork, but the manager never filled out a performance improvement plan. Maybe the manager didn’t know they were supposed to do it. Maybe HR never told them.Notice the breakdown in communication? Companies must figure out how to flip the time of their managers and their HR so they can have more productive conversations and be on the same page, Hancock says.Another way to empower managers is to define a clear company purpose. Available talent ebbs and flows. So how are you going to attract and keep people who have options? They need something beyond a paycheck; they need purpose. And a good manager will help incorporate that into everything the team does.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner McKinsey & Company, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix, Ariz.-based journalist and marketing copywriter.

Mary Pieper | November 10, 2023

Elevating the Talent Journey: A Comprehensive Approach

A few years ago, Nemours Children's Health learned through the organization's employee feedback process that some team members wished their benefits package included coverage for fertility treatments. Realizing the irony of a pediatric organization not offering this benefit, Nemours’ leaders added it. “One of our employees was saying she had worked for us for seven years, and she could not conceive and she couldn’t afford the treatment. But with the treatment, she now has a child,” said Peter Adebi, chief HR officer for Nemours, during a panel session at From Day One’s Philadelphia conference.That’s just one of the examples Adebi and the other four panelists gave to illustrate how employers can attract and keep outstanding talent.How to Attract Job ApplicantsHeather Hoffman, chief operating officer of Recruit Rooster, said many employers pay special attention to the homepage of their career website, posting photos, videos, and other content that shows what it is like to work there.However, “Only about 50% of job seekers land on your homepage,” she said. “The other 50% are typically landing on your job description page.”Hoffman recommends that organizations redo their job description pages to “Share a little bit more about yourself as an employer.” She said a good way to do this is to post short videos on topics such as what it’s like to work in that position within the company.One way to entice job seekers is to simplify the application process, according to Krista Gathercole, vice president of talent acquisition for Burlington Stores.“No one really wants to go through that application process,” she said. “It’s formal, it’s arduous, it’s not fun.”Using social media effectively is another key to attracting potential applicants, according to Gathercole. She said Burlington Stores started a program called Boost, in which company leaders asked 200 highly engaged associates to post curated content to their social media networks to spread the word about why the company is a great place to work.A significant current conversation regarding work is whether job applicants need a college education, which often requires them to take out loans they struggle to repay.“I would suggest that experience trumps having a degree requirement on the job posting or the job description,” Adebi said.The panel titled “Improving the Talent Pipeline, From End to End,” was moderated by Lizzy McLellan Ravitch, workplace reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer.For example, one of Nemour’s clinics had difficulty filling an office manager opening because the organization required applicants to have a college degree. Nemour decided to waive that mandate since it wasn’t a regulatory requirement. As a result, the clinic hired an office manager who didn’t have a degree but brought eight years of relevant experience to the role.Lisa Santin, chief human resources officer for Graham Packaging, said the company partners with local high schools and technical schools as part of its recruitment efforts.Graham invites high school students to come to Graham’s plants and learn what working there is like. If the students are interested, they go through the interview process and receive a sign-on bonus if they join the company. And if these new employees decide to pursue education beyond high school, Graham provides tuition reimbursement.After graduating from a two-year tech school, those who join Graham receive a stipend of up to $5,000 a year for three years to help them pay off their student loans because “Technical schools aren’t cheap,” Santin said.Keeping the Talent You Already HaveAttracting new workers is just one end of the talent pipeline. The other is helping those already employed by an organization recognize their skills and how to build on them, according to Carla Garcia Williams, senior director of people analytics consulting for Visier. Managers play a crucial role here, she says.“Most people stay with or leave their organization because of the relationship they have with their manager,” Garcia Williams said. Therefore, it’s essential to “provide those managers with the right pieces of information to be able to have better conversations with those employees that might be most at risk of leaving.”According to Garcia Williams, an employee might be ready to bolt if the company hasn't promoted them in a long time. She recommends that leaders and managers consider what career opportunities are available within the organization.“There might not always be an opportunity to move up, but being able to provide some of the skill set to be able to broaden their abilities, especially among some of the professional workers, we do see that’s a real differentiator in those organizations that are able to retain talent over time,” she said.The big buzzword these days in HR is culture, says Santin. It may be a cliché, but it can make a difference in retaining team members.However, “When we say culture, a lot of times people say, ‘Oh, everybody has to stand together and be nice to one another and sing together,’” Santin said. “And that’s not what we mean. What we mean is, the examples that everybody just offered here are creating a way for people to feel special within your organization, so they want to go the extra mile and deliver for you. It’s about creating a culture of performance. You’re treating people like human beings and connecting with them on an emotional level, while getting the performance and excellence out of them.”Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.

Mary Pieper | November 09, 2023

How Companies Can Do Better at Giving Workers the Right Development Experience

Earlier in her career, Kathryn Coleman took a risk on making a sharp turn in her career–and today she's glad she did. Coleman, the former director of diversity initiatives at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, expected to be in higher education for her entire career. But when an opportunity to take a similar job at SUPERVALU presented itself, she decided to be open to it despite her initial doubts.“I thought, ‘this is going to give me a different set of skills. This is going to give me a different set of experiences,’” Coleman told moderator Romesh Ratnesar during From Day One’s September virtual conference.Coleman is now the senior vice president of talent learning and insights at 3M, where she helps employees recognize opportunities and develop their skills. She said those skills fall into two categories: functional ones, which are constantly changing, and foundational ones, such as problem-solving.“For managers, there is nothing more valuable than a member of the team who can identify an opportunity or a challenge, and at least recommend a path to solution,” Coleman said. Another critical skill that marks someone as a potential leader at a company is business acumen, according to Coleman. This means understanding how a company makes money or how a non-revenue generating function, such as human resources, adds value to the business.A third essential skill is project or process management, which Coleman defines as “the ability to say, ‘This is a win. This is what success looks like, and I have a path to get there.”Identifying Skills and Skill GapsBut how can business leaders communicate to employees the skills they want them to have so workers can demonstrate they have those skills or get help with ones they don’t?“At 3M, we’ve been really focused on upskilling, really looking at the skills that we need to drive the business forward, and enabling a process for employees to express, ‘Hey, here are the skills that I have,’” Coleman said. “That’s important, because as you’re working across teams, you have to be able to talk about the value you bring.”Romesh Ratnesar, Deputy Editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, interviewed Coleman in the opening fireside chat at From Day One's September virtual conference (photo by From Day One)3M encourages employees to ask family members, friends, and co-workers what they are best at. Coleman says it’s important for workers to take note of the skills people say they have, but also what they aren’t saying. This helps employees recognize the skills they need to develop.3M is establishing a taxonomy of enterprise skills. “It doesn’t matter where you are in the organization,” Coleman said. “Everybody needs these skills.” If an employee lacks one or more enterprise skills, 3M has curated self-paced micro learnings they can easily access.3M also focuses on core skills by level, which includes individual, supervisory, and leadership skills. Finally, there are functional skills. “I think the biggest challenge we have is we can’t be inflexible, because functional skills change too quickly,” Coleman said. “We have to be nimble and partner appropriately so that we are providing the right resources for our employees.”New Challenges: Remote Work and AIBesides rapidly changing skills, other challenges today’s businesses face in employee development include remote work and AI. “The reality is a lot of employees now want and expect to work remotely, especially early in their careers,” Coleman said.However, in-person engagement is key to career development, mentoring, and coaching. So, how can companies ensure remote workers aren’t shortchanged?3M is a global company, so employees outside the main office worked from home long before Covid. This means at the beginning of the pandemic, when most everyone shifted to remote work, “it was a bit of an equalizer,” Coleman said.For example, 3M used to take onboarding for granted, according to Coleman. However, when new employees needed to be onboarded in a remote environment, even if they lived in Minnesota, the company became very deliberate in making sure new employees could interact virtually with everyone from top leadership down to their core teams, she said.Although the increase in AI in the workplace can be anxiety-inducing for employees, “AI doesn’t replace people,” Coleman said. In fact, AI can perform essential but routine tasks, freeing up more time for impactful work, she said. Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 09, 2023

Mapping Career Growth Beyond Upward Mobility

Technology has generated new jobs in every industry. Every company is now a tech company, as they say. Shifting social priorities have created new roles too. Emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion and on environmental, social, and governance matters have introduced corporate fixtures that weren’t common years ago, like chief diversity officers and people analysts. Remote work has opened new jobs and industries to people all over the world.“It’s really hard to answer the classic question, ‘Where do you want to be in five years?” said Megan Wheeler, director of facilitation at leadership training platform LifeLabs Learning. “Things are moving so rapidly that it’s hard to have a window into the future about what kind of linear growth people want.”When it’s unclear what a career will look like in a few years, skills may be a more apt gauge of career growth. Wheeler recommends thinking of the five-year question in a different way: “What are the skills that I have? What are the skills that I’d like to develop or that I need to develop in order to move into other opportunities?”During From Day One’s September virtual conference on giving workers direction on skills and career development, Wheeler was joined by four other leaders in employee development for a discussion I moderated, titled “How Career Growth Can Be a Part of Employee Experience from the Beginning.” The group discussed how skill-building can become part of company operations and how to use coaching to reinforce new skills.Distilling Jobs Into SkillsEmployees want to learn. According to the American Psychological Association’s 2023 Work in America survey, 91% of workers say it’s important to have a job that gives them consistent opportunities to learn. Yet the relationship between learning new skills and internal mobility isn’t always straightforward.The panelists discussed the topic “How Career Growth Can Be a Part of Employee Experience From the Beginning” during From Day One's virtual conference (photo by From Day One)For any job, there is a set of competencies and skills that describe the work. The IT infrastructure firm Kyndryl undertook the task of breaking down all of its different roles into skills. The company identified 19 job families, like HR and technical specialists, for instance, and within those are jobs. Each job was then distilled into 12 to 15 skills, which vary by seniority.These breakdowns are available to anyone in the company, so workers who want to climb the ladder vertically, or scale the lattice horizontally, can see the skills they need to make the move. “It took a lot of work to build that architecture, but it does help us look at how we help people find roles,” said the company’s VP of learning and effectiveness, Mark Cousino. “The reason we made that investment is that we’re a professional services company. We match customer work with the skills of our people. By building that catalog, we also built up our entire job architecture.”Learning the Ropes, InformallyEven without a detailed map of skills, folks can still roam about the organization asking their colleagues what it takes to do their job, it just requires a culture that makes it fine to do so. “One of the greatest things about our culture is that for a very large organization, it can feel really small, because you can ask anyone, ‘Hey, can I hear about your job? Can I hear about a job on your team? Tell me about your career.’ I’ve never been told no,” said Melissa Versino, the VP of leadership development at commercial insurance provider Zurich North America.Without seeing the path, the ambitious are left to fumble around, hoping to be promoted or recognized for their work. “The point is people don’t even know what they need. They don’t find out until their review, they don’t find out unless they didn’t get the promotion or get the job,” said Kristy McCann, and CEO of talent development platform SkillCycle.McCann noted that feedback given in standard performance reviews can be vague – improve your communication skills, for example – and that workers don’t necessarily know where to go to make those improvements or what “improve” means. Further, they’re often not sure how it will benefit them. “If you’re not driving the what’s-in-it-for-me factor and it’s not connecting to their goals and what they want to do in life, then it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s always going to fall flat.”So what about overpromising on career growth? Younger talent, unaware of the work it takes to advance, often expect to be promoted in the early stages of a new job, and some employers are inflating job titles to meet those expectations. Instead, Wheeler recommended being upfront about what the company considers growth. “Speak to it at the interview process and in onboarding, being clear about what it is and what it isn’t,” she said. When what the employee wants and what the company needs are not the same, managers can develop individual development plans that match as much as possible, finding where new skills the employee wants can be “mapped onto” business goals.From Competencies to CoachingFor Versino, competencies are incomplete without coaching on how to enact new skills. “The value of training takes them so far,” she said. “Coaching actually gets them across the finish line. [It reinforces] how to make these strong behavioral changes and how to actually apply this knowledge.”Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing arm, instituted a peer-to-peer coaching program, a valuable means of ensuring career growth at scale. “We’re having senior leaders do the teaching, and so leaders as teachers is one of the programs that we built,” said Heather DeJong, who leads employee experience and leader development for AWS.But with a company so large, quality control can be tough. The training for the trainers ensures that leaders understand the core objectives and the content. “We do a lot of videos to train the trainer on templates. A lot of these leaders want to make it a little bit of their own and bring their own context and learning to that,” she said. Originality can be good for engagement, but can come at the risk of quality. DeJong uses post-training surveys, including a net promoter score, to suss out whether the learners got what they expected and needed.In Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, organizational psychologist Adam Grant writes about the importance of showing people how to get from A to B. “What we overlook is that when people can’t see a path, they stop dreaming of the destination. To ignite their will, we need to show them the way.” In other words, when workers know what skills they need to grow the careers they want, they’re more likely to commit to learning. “Competencies are very core because it helps drive empowerment,” said McCann. “Because it’s not just what you want them to do, but it’s how you empower them to be able to see where they’re at and where they need to go.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz at Work, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Wanly Chen | November 09, 2023

Transforming Organizations: Leadership’s Role in Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

In the past year, the corporate landscape faced a whirlwind of obstacles in its journey toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. From political pushback, corporate austerity, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action in higher education, DEI work has been no small task. All these headwinds have prompted some corporate leaders to wonder: should we still be pushing energetically for DEI in the workplace?The answer, simply put, is yes, says Katie Mooney, managing director at Seramount.“There’s enough breaking news right now about DEI having rollbacks and people questioning diversity and inclusion,” Mooney said. “But what isn’t in the headlines is that DEI is very strong right now because there are accountability measures in place, identification campaigns, and ways in which we’re driving this business.”As a company that provides employee-focused DEI and talent solutions, Seramount has the data to prove it. In its 2022 Inclusion Index Organizations report, researchers discovered 89% of companies provide anti-racism training compared with 73% in 2021. Additionally, 90% of companies have percentage goals for diverse representation and 67% of companies compensate for DEI results compared to 57% in 2021.The data shows that companies set more goals and initiatives for DEI than in previous years, supporting an increase in DEI participation. This DEI momentum comes from the value of the true employee experience, Mooney says. “As practitioners, we have to be focused on why DEI is good for all employees. In these volatile times, we have to center inclusion so that all of us have a great place to work.”During From Day One’s live conference in Philadelphia, Mooney and other leaders joined moderator Juliana Feliciano Reyes, a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer, in a discussion on DEI’s role in the workplace and why it remains vital to a company’s success.The Value of DEI for Employees and CompaniesCompanies benefit from DEI initiatives in many ways. In a study by LinkedIn, researchers found diverse companies earn 2.5x higher cash flow per employee in comparison to non-diverse companies. Companies that focus on diversity also have employees that are statistically more productive, and have higher retention rates.The benefits for both companies and employees are apparent, and companies need to lean into the DEI conversation willingly, David Rhoden, vice president of culture and inclusion at insurance company Chubb, said. He points to recent market research on DEI trends as a source for understanding employees.“McKinsey came out with the Women in the Workplace report and it had a huge focus on the experience of Black women. When that report came out, we began to hear from the Black women in our organization. They wanted to tell us about their experience,” Rhoden said. “So we leaned in to talk about this here at Chubb and we did some listening, surveying, and then we developed the Black Women of Chubb Collective.”The panelists spoke about “Leadership’s Role in Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” at From Day One's Philadelphia event.Creating a safe environment for employees to discuss DEI concerns and issues can also positively impact other conversations in the workplace. These employees may feel more empowered to voice their opinions on business procedures or projects, which contribute to companies making better decisions.“Tying DEI to the business is something that even the biggest naysayers can’t argue. If you have psychologically safe teams that are not afraid to speak out, then they can pinpoint when a procedure isn’t working, or a product isn’t ready to roll out,” Jennifer Brunelle, vice president of talent acquisition of development and diversity at energy company NRG, said. “So if it's not working because of someone’s ability status, for example, we’re missing potential customers.”Getting Over the Fear of Talking About DiversityTalking about diversity may be challenging and uncomfortable for leaders who may not know how to approach the conversation. However, leaders need to lean into that discomfort instead of avoiding it, Kristie Small, vice president of diversity and inclusion at supply chain and logistics solution company NFI, said.“When we talk about why leaders aren’t engaging, more often than not, it’s because they’re afraid of making a mistake,” Small said. “As HR and DEI professionals, we have to give people the grace to try and potentially fail at it and to try again.”Sponsoring ERG groups or supporting DEI initiatives can be a starting place for leaders to get involved in these conversations. From there, leaders need to be visibly involved in leading the charge, Dana Kirwin, director of employer and government relations at Medela, says. As a company that produces breast pumps, products, and support, Kirwin discusses how supporting employees who are parents requires leaders to act on their support as well.“Executive buy-in is so important. If they aren’t bought in, if they don't believe it, if they’re not talking about it, and if they’re not acting on it in their work, it’s so hard for DEI to succeed,” Kirwin said. “For example, if your company offers parental leave, that’s amazing but do the executives take it? You need your leadership team to signal that these things are okay because what you show your workforce matters.”Wanly Chen is a writer and poet based in New York City.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 08, 2023

Harnessing the Power of Workplace Community

How to create a real sense of belonging in a workplace? Creating a communicative relationship between executives and workers is a requisite step. But it’s hard to form a community at work, and it’s especially hard when your executives are sitting at HQ and employees are spread around the world. That calls for innovative ways of getting them together. This was one of the lessons from an expert panel during From Day One’s October virtual conference on how HR tech can connect, motivate, and recognize hybrid workforces. If you want people to feel like they belong to a community at work, they need to know that company leaders want them there and value them as contributors, said panelists during a discussion titled “Harnessing the Power of Workplace Community,” which I moderated. Feeling like one belongs to a community really matters. People who have a sense of community at work are more likely to thrive (both inside and outside of work), more likely to be engaged, and they’re more likely to stay with that organization long-term.“We’re still the same social animals we were in 2019, with the same needs,” said Raphael Crawford-Marks, founder and CEO of employee-recognition platform Bonusly. “There is a ton of organizational psychology research showing that you have much better outcomes for companies, and for employees, when you have friends and positive relationships and mentorship at work. And all of those things, to a lesser or greater extent, have become harder to come by in a remote environment.”For early-career employees trying to build their first professional networks and find mentorship, remote work can be an obstacle. It’s also a challenge for managers who need to engender camaraderie among employees, said Crawford-Marks. “I think a lot of companies have come to use [digital communication tools] as a crutch. Tools like Slack are really helpful when you have a lot of synchronous, high-fidelity, in-person communication going on, but when it becomes the only or the main form of communication, you start to really feel the effects of losing tone and expression in the written communication.”Panelists encouraged managers to call employees rather than messaging or emailing them all the time, have impromptu video calls, and look for excuses to bring people together in person.But creating a community at work is not as easy as ordering workers back to the office. Return-to-office mandates have inspired resentment from many workers happy with remote arrangements, and ultimatums aren’t exactly community-building mechanisms. Managers have to make in-person interactions clearly beneficial to the worker, not just the apparent whim of executives, said Ray Stevens, global head of talent management at investment firm State Street. He noted that although the company’s employee-engagement survey indicates being in the office has improved engagement for the company, he acknowledged that requiring workers to return to the office can be seen as overstepping. “It has to be positioned to show that there’s value in coming together. Here’s what’s in it for you,” he said.It helps if employers call workers back to an office with a visible, reachable leader. Some panelists recommended sending executives out to global worksites on a regular basis, while others described going as far as permanently relocating theirs.Investing in Employee Resource Groups Wind-turbine manufacturer Vestas is a multinational organization, spread across 37 states and 10 Canadian provinces. “We have office employees, we have remote employees, we have service technicians who are at the service sites, climbing the turbines repairing them, and we have two factories that manufacture the products,” said Michelle Gessaro, the company’s VP of people and culture. “Culture can be a challenge.”At Vestas, employee resource groups (ERGs) have been useful for giving workers agency in their work environments, and for creating a channel of communication between employees and executives. For instance, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on abortion in 2022, one of the ERGs came to her and asked about benefits for those who need access to health care where it had been cut off. “We already had travel benefits for other types of procedures, and we just needed to expand them to cover all employees for reproductive care,” she said. “It was a pretty quick and easy thing that we could make adjustments to on our end, then I was able to give the feedback to the ERG.”Running and operating an ERG is a great deal of work, but employers can make it worth the effort by being responsive to the members’ needs and concerns. “It shows the employees that you value their voice,” said Gessaro.Leaders should be both visible and accessible, said panelists. Otherwise, employees won’t feel that their own presence matters or that their input is being considered and acted upon.“I think leaders need to be more visible, and sometimes that involves traveling,” said Stevens. “The leaders really set the tone. What they do, first and foremost, the organization will follow.” Smaller in-person gatherings can make those events feel more beneficial and less anonymous.Communities Made Possible by Artificial IntelligenceOther lessons emerged during the conversation, most notably about the community-building capabilities of artificial intelligence. “When used thoughtfully, it can greatly enhance human communication and collaboration,” said Sheila Jagannathan, the global head of learning and capacity building at the World Bank. For one, automation can create free time by streamlining routine tasks, time that can be used for building connections among colleagues. Another creative application is office design. “AI can analyze how physical space–like conference rooms, collaborative spaces, and breakout rooms–is used, and offer insights and guide office design and layout, ensuring space fosters interaction, collaboration, and community,” Jagannathan said. Some organizations are already using AI for sentiment analysis to identify the mood across the organization, and AI also has implications for diversity, equity, and inclusion. There are “bias-detection tools, AI tools that analyze hiring processes, promotions, workplace interactions, and detect potential bias,” she said. Building the Relationship Between Executives and EmployeesTo feel like they belong to a community, workers need to feel like their input is seriously considered. “We tell them that they have a voice, but then we have to make sure that we hear them too,” said Jacqueline Fearer, who leads culture and engagement at global information-management company Iron Mountain. After the company’s annual employee engagement survey last year, Fearer learned that workers considered it a waste of time. Some asked: Where was the company’s response to their feedback?This year, to make the exercise a relational one, the the company added one question: “If you could tell the executive team one thing, what would you tell them?”Management got close to 10,000 responses. Some of the problems identified were small things, but ones that needed to be addressed, like poorly lit parking lots or perennially empty office coffee stations. Bigger matters take longer to change, but smaller items can be addressed immediately, just to show workers that you’re reading the comment cards. “Sometimes it’s those little things that really matter,” said Fearer. “Because everything else seems so huge and vast, immense and strategic, sometimes it’s just about getting more coffee in the kitchen.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz at Work, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.(Featured illustration by Aelitta/iStock by Getty Images)

Katie Chambers | November 08, 2023

Adapting Recognition and Engagement in a Changing Work Landscape

In a modern workplace forever changed by a pandemic, social reckoning, and a new emphasis on flexible employment options, half-hearted company pizza parties are no longer enough to satisfy workers hoping for authentic, personalized recognition and engagement. Employees want to be seen, heard, and appreciated in ways that mean the most to them, and when they feel recognized and engaged, a workplace culture that supports productivity, loyalty, and overall organizational success is built.How can leaders effectively implement programs that go beyond financial incentives to ensure employees feel valued and appreciated? What are some innovative approaches to boost employee engagement, especially in remote or hybrid work environments, and how can leaders measure the effectiveness of these initiatives? The answer is more complex than simply ‘no more pizza parties.’ Panelists at From Day One’s recent Philadelphia conference tackled these pressing questions and more.Employee Listening to Develop a Recognition StrategyThe first step in building out a recognition strategy is understanding what employees value most. Trevor Bogan, regional director, Americas, at Top Employers Institute, which surveys over 4,000 organizations annually, cites a study that found that 45% of employers don’t have an employee listening strategy.With employees scattered far and wide in remote working environments, organized listening is more important than ever, since casual face-to-face interactions or quick temperature checks can be harder to come by. And their experiences and desires are becoming more personalized than ever before. “What we're finding is you have to be more person-centric than people-centric, because everyone’s different. What I value in my life is going to be different than what you value,” Bogan said.Listening is key to not only understanding what employees need, but also showing them respect. “Sometimes as leaders, we really love to hear ourselves talk, to talk about ourselves and what’s going on [in the company],” Bogan said. “But the more we listen to our employees and give them that free space to be themselves – that's truly impactful.”Listening to employees connects directly with recognition, as it allows leaders to learn the methods of recognition that will be most meaningful and impactful to their team members, Bogan says. “The next hurdle,” added Elaine Becraft, head of human resources, diagnostics at Siemens Healthineers, “is to act on what they tell us.” Making employees feel heard, she says, can be just as important as making them feel happy.A Changing Workplace’s Impact on Employee EngagementIn 2020, Becraft states, “We were all ripped away from each other in such a sudden way” and forced to find ways to say thank you for a job well done through email or Zoom rather than in-person. And with that extra layer of technology came an additional layer of distance. Kate Feather, SVP, head of employee experience & talent development at Lincoln Financial Group concurs. “We had employees telling us, ‘I feel like my contributions and the work I'm doing isn't being seen anymore,’” Feather said. “That's why we elevated recognition up on our list of priorities.”The panelists discussed the topic “Building Upon Workplace Culture Through Recognition and Engagement” at From Day One's Philadelphia conference. In addition to the changes wrought by the pandemic, the political and social unrest of that period also changed the ways employees engage with one another in the workplace, says Geneva Campbell Brown, head of office of corporate secretary and lead counsel for corporate governance, Shareholder Engagement and Community Engagement at The Cigna Group. “The murder of George Floyd forced people to be thoughtful about what was happening in society at large but also in communities close to them,” Campbell Brown said. “Now we’re in the habit of bringing more of our personal selves to work and employees are looking for a space where they can be authentic.” The line between work and family life has blurred, and employees need to find ways to recognize all of these additional challenges that employees bring to work with them, Campbell Brown says.Recognition Can Build a Stronger WorkplaceEmployee recognition is a powerful tool for encouraging positive behaviors, such as adherence to company values or exceptional organizational practices. “I'm a huge believer in what gets recognized, gets repeated,” Feather said.It can have an enormous impact on retention. Feather says that in studies of employees that left Lincoln voluntarily, 75% of them had not been recognized in their employee recognition program. “There's a higher proportion of people who are choosing to opt out if they’re not being recognized.” In turn, it can also help with acquisition, making your company more attractive to prospective employees who hear about the good energy and positive environment the culture of recognition is generating. “Your employees are walking billboards,” Bogan said. “They’re going to talk about your leadership, talk about your HR initiatives, and that word spreads fast. Saying ‘thank you’ costs nothing. And taking the moment to do it – the return on that investment is huge.”Innovative Approaches to Employee Engagement and RecognitionPanelists offered several examples of how their own organizations have implemented employee engagement and recognition programs with an eye toward personalization and authenticity.VolunteerismWhen Campbell Brown’s organization found that DEI committees were not really moving the needle, she and her colleagues took a beat to listen to what actually resonated with employees. “One thing that we found just through listening is that people were so invested in their local communities, and they wanted to get together with their colleagues and do something good,” Campbell Brown said. Their desire for team building activities that also gave a purpose to their workday inspired the implementation of employee volunteer outings. This unexpected alignment of corporate social responsibility and employee engagement led to increased in-person attendance, even from normally remote workers. “If we had a volunteer event, people were more likely to show up for that than they were to show up if there was a town hall,” Campbell Brown said.Point SystemsThrough engagement surveys, Feather’s organization discovered that employees didn’t always feel appreciated and that processes were inconsistent from department to department. The company found success through a rewards system that is partially financial and partially points-based, with benchmarks aligned with the company’s core values. Employees can trade in points to support their favorite charity, take trips to Disney World, or buy merchandise. The system also recognizes personal employee milestones, such as buying a house, having a baby, or getting an advanced degree. This in turn helps workers integrate their personal and professional lives.Employee Resource GroupsEmployee resource groups (ERGs) help colleagues connect one-on-one and support each other across levels and functions, both personally and professionally. Especially in larger corporations, this can help build a sense of community. “In my ERG, I'm getting to chat with people from other departments that I wouldn't ever get to speak to otherwise,” moderator Ximena Conde, reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer said. Bogan notes that it’s important to “think beyond diverse status,” meaning having groups not based simply on marginalized identities like race or gender, but also other areas like veteran status, disability, or caregiving. “In the hope of being inclusive, we don’t want to exclude people,” Campbell Brown emphasized.Leading With Empathy and AuthenticityAs companies hone their recognition and engagement strategies, they need to do so with an eye toward compassion. Leadership coaching programs that incorporate education on unconscious bias and empathy training, says Feather and Bogan respectively, are becoming the norm, paving the way for employees to feel more comfortable bringing their full selves to the workplace without fear of discrimination or ridicule.And as a leader, bringing more of yourself to work encourages others in your organization to do the same. “It's so freeing if you can find a way to communicate around topics that are difficult, and allow people to really start to share,” Campbell Brown said. By setting the tone and providing the proper infrastructure for engagement, leaders can help employees feel more connected to and appreciated by their workplace.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.