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There’s a New Benefit in Town: Psychedelic Therapy. Are Companies Ready to Embrace It?

Especially since the pandemic, companies have been trying to increase access to quality mental health care for their distressed employees. For good reason: Nearly one in five Americans are currently being treated for depression and three out of four workers report feeling burned out, according to Gallup. At the same time, there’s been rising interest in an unconventional approach to treat mental maladies: psychedelic therapy. Many researchers believe that psychedelics, paired with psychotherapy, have the potential to transform health care.The prospect that psychedelics could become mainstream has inspired entrepreneurial interest. One company, Enthea, has become the first to offer psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) as an employee benefit for U.S. companies. Launched last year with $3.3 million in seed money, led by Tabula Rasa Ventures, Enthea now has seven customers signed on—including Dr. Bronner’s, Launchbox, and Black Swan Yoga—and 50 more in the pipeline, according to Sherry Rais, Enthea’s co-founder and CEO. To be sure, advocates of PAT will face a complicated road ahead, since psychedelics vary widely in their properties and are covered by a crazy quilt of state and federal regulation, but assertions of PAT’s beneficial effects are being supported by a growing field of scientific research.How Psychedelics Can Help It takes time for our brains to change longstanding patterns. Psychedelics, including ketamine, psylocibin (a/k/a magic mushrooms), and MDMA (a/k/a ecstasy) can speed up the process and create profound changes in perspective. How? Taking psychedelics has the potential to change one’s brain for the better. They silent repetitive ruminations, promote neuroplasticity, and can surface new emotions and memories.When used under the guidance of trained clinicians, research has found that psychedelics may help “patients to achieve meaningful improvements in function, symptomatology, and overall outlook in a relatively short amount of time,” according to a review published in 2022. Here’s how PAT works: the patient takes a measured dose of a psychedelic substance under the supervision of a clinician. A trained therapist prepares the patient for the experience, which can last one to several hours, and helps them make sense of what comes up during and after, a process called integration. “It’s not just as simple as taking a capsule and hoping for the best,” said Paul Hutson, director of the Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in a December 2022 presentation.By quieting the hum of worries and concerns that plague one’s brain, anxieties may soften. New cell growth and connections help make some of these changes more permanent. Meanwhile, new emotions can be processed and new insights into the past or patterns of behavior can be explored. These developments can lead to feelings of relief and often long-term change.“I felt like I let go of a lot of anger and resentment towards my parents,” a cancer patient in a psylocibin trial at New York University explained in a paper published in 2017. “I mean, I thought I had already done that, but I really hadn’t, and I kind of saw them more as, like, these flawed human beings who did the best they could,” the patient said.“Psychedelics are mind manifesters,” Alex Belser, a psychedelic researcher and psychologist at Yale University, told From Day One. “Some aspect of the mind is being manifested that had not been present before. The challenge is to transform altered states into altered traits.”A Healthcare Entrepreneur’s JourneyFor nearly a decade, Enthea co-founder Sherry Rais traveled the globe working on poverty-reduction programs in the developing world. One of her conclusions: You can’t solve poverty without also addressing mental health. And to address mental health, you need effective, low-cost, and accessible treatments. She started to look for novel solutions and was “blown away,” she said by the research on psychedelic medicines. But she realized that implementing these treatments in the developing world would be premature, she told From Day One.Sherry Rais, Enthea’s co-founder and CEO (Company photo)Instead, she and her partners founded Enthea as a public benefit corporation, deriving its name from the term entheogen, which describes substances that can produce changes in consciousness, perception, and mood. Besides offering PAT as a benefit for employers, the company plans to initiate programs for underserved communities, such as formerly incarcerated individuals. Said Rais: “Access and health equity are extremely important to Enthea’s mission.”Over the next few years, Rais hopes to be working with hundreds of employers, millions of employees and to have increased awareness about and acceptance of psychedelic therapies, which at the moment is rarely covered by insurers.What’s In It for EmployersWorkers are struggling, and they expect their companies to help. A recent workplace wellness study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) found that 79% of employees agree with the statement, “Your employer has a responsibility to make sure employees are mentally healthy and emotionally well.”According to an EBRI survey, about 61% of employers offer mental health benefits and despite the uncertain economic environment, they are not likely to cut back in benefits of this kind. A healthier workforce, after all, is a more productive workforce—and a less expensive one. Workers who rate their mental health as fair or poor report four times more absences than their colleagues with good or excellent mental well-being, according to a Gallup survey.Will employers embrace PAT as a new offering? Paul Fronstin, PhD, director of health-benefits research at EBRI, is circumspect: “Most employers don’t want to be first,” he told From Day One. “They will wait on the sidelines to see what others are doing and how it’s working out.” And he added that ultimately, companies want benefits that help their bottom line. If PAT prevents workers from requiring expensive in-patient hospital stays, it could be a win-win for employees and employers. Psychedelic Properties ExplainedThere’s a lot of hype around psychedelics and a lot of time and money being poured into investigating them. These mind-bending drugs, which include ketamine, MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine), psylocibin, and LSD, can help soothe suffering in people with terminal illnesses, veterans struggling with PTSD, individuals with treatment-resistant depression and even those grappling with persistent addiction. However, most are not legal or FDA approved.Ketamine, an anesthetic that can also alleviate depression, has a leg up on the others: it’s legal and has been used safely in surgical settings for more than 50 years. In 2019, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a version of ketamine, Spravato (esketamine), for treatment-resistant depression. Many clinics use ketamine off-label to treat a range of a ailments (beyond the approved use of treatment-resistant depression) from mild depression to anxiety. Some companies sell ketamine lozenges via email and then monitor patients via telemedicine. The FDA recently issued an alert about the dangers of treating psychiatric disorders with compounded versions of ketamine. MDMA, which was developed in 1912 to control bleeding and became celebrated in the 1980s as a “club drug,” may be effective at treating a range of mental health issues, and is gradually gaining traction for therapeutic use. In 2017 the FDA granted Breakthrough Therapy status for MDMA as a potential treatment for PTSD; this status allows clinical trials to be conducted to test MDMA’s safety and efficacy. The following year, the FDA granted the same status to psyilocibin. An important study published last month showed that MDMA-assisted therapy was effective at reducing symptoms of PTSD. The drug is on track to be an FDA-approved drug in 2024. If approved, “MDMA-assisted therapy would be the first novel treatment for PTSD in over two decades,” Berra Yazar-Klosinski, the senior author of the study, told the New York Times. “PTSD patients can feel some hope.”Psychedelics, except ketamine, are illegal on the federal level for recreational use, but states and cities are making their own laws, the pattern followed with the decriminalization of cannabis. In 2020, Oregon approved decriminalizing small amounts of psychedelics and the supervised use of psilocybin in a therapeutic setting. Colorado passed a ballot measure to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms and to create state-regulated centers where participants can experience the drug under supervision. Several cities in California–Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Berkeley–have decriminalized psylocibin.Enthea, as this time, offers only ketamine-assisted therapy to its customers. The company has a credentialing process to ensure that the clinics providing the therapy meet high standards of care, Rais said. According to Enthea’s website, a typical ketamine session is one to two hours in length and patients will experience “a sense of detachment from normal reality and self. This may foster increased creativity, purpose, and perspective. It can also enhance feelings of tranquility, insight, inspiration, and gratitude.”Once MDMA receives regulatory approval for therapeutic use, Enthea will offer that therapy as well. Said Rais: “I really believe people need access to these medicines.” Lesley Alderman is a psychotherapist and journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. In her therapy practice, she works with individuals and couples. She writes about mental health topics for the Washington Post and has been an editor at Money and Real Simple magazines and a health columnist for the New York Times.(Featured photo by Mathia Alvez/iStock by Getty Images) 

Lesley Alderman | October 16, 2023
Leading With Purpose and Inclusion to Reflect the Next Generation’s Values

Dan Figurski has four children, three of whom recently entered the workforce. “While interviewing, they asked about the companies’ beliefs and DEI efforts,” he told journalist Delores Edwards, executive producer of Basic Black, GBH News during a panel discussion at From Day One’s Boston conference.“Pay did not seem to be high on their priority list,” Figurski, president of KinderCare for Employers, continues. “When I graduated, I only cared about pay. I had to pry it out of them.”While the story was told half in jest, it certainly drives home the point that for Millennials and Gen Z, pay isn’t as much of a priority as culture, DEI, L&D, and other aspects of organizations. Figurski is mindful of that in his line of work, where he oversees 30,000 educators, 90% of whom are under the age of 28. “If we don’t adjust the hiring process to meet incoming talent, we’re going to miss it entirely,” he reflects.Creating a Purposeful CultureCreating a purposeful culture involves different steps. “First,  listen to your employees. Find out what they want and what empowers them,” said Paul Francisco, senior vice president and chief diversity officer at the financial services company State Street.“Make sure we understand who we are,” echoes Amy Van Aarle, executive vice president, marketing and communications for EF Education First. “It’s really about going deep. What do we do well?”For David Fineman, who is the global leader of workforce planning, people analytics and process enablement at the software company PTC, there’s a creative process behind the act of building a purposeful culture. “PTC also means ‘power to create,’” he says. “When you think about creating, you’re creating around different areas: services that benefit stakeholders, meaningful communities, training the next generation of employees.”The panelists discussed the topic “Leading With Purpose and Inclusion to Reflect the Next Generation’s Values” at From Day One's Boston event.“I think alignment is incredibly important, and it’s never perfect. You’re always coming together, coming apart,” says Van Aarle. The lack of perfect alignment can be offset by purpose. “Purpose is really important,” says Marissa Vargas, vice president of DEI at insurance provider Liberty Mutual. “At Liberty we even have a Chief Purpose Officer.”Finding the MotivationOnce it’s been accepted and acknowledged that money is not the first motivator, investing in growth and development becomes paramount. “How can they add skills and grow as professionals? How do people build on that technology base?” says Fineman.Learning and development also means accepting the fact that job hopping is no longer seen as a red flag. “Now, as people have the liberty to change jobs frequently, we have to think about talent mobility,” says Fineman.“Insurance is not always seen as the most glamorous industry,” says Vargas, noting that their challenge lies in attracting the newer generations, with Gen Z being the most eager to bring their whole self to work. “Another way is through letting them know of our commitment. We have a very active ERG, and that’s a great way to cross generations.”At the heart of all of this is transparency. “Everyone wants to politicize DEI, and what we do is stay focused on what matters,” says Francisco. “We have to think of this work as critical. It’s not a nice to have, it’s part of how we do business. We all want to make sure we have a way to put food on the table, but it has to be in a way that’s impactful and for the greater good.”Staying the CourseOne way to make an impact regarding attracting new candidates is actively broadening your talent pool. “Broaden the population of schools—HBCUs, technical programs,” says Fineman. This serves as a foundation for an already vibrant intern program, where “The first interview was not with a hiring manager, but someone who was testing for value. I was one of these ambassadors, and interviewed for that purpose.”This resonates with Francisco, who grew up outside of the United States. Once he moved stateside, he experienced a warm welcome, which led him to end up playing American football. “My experience, in terms of belonging, was just so impactful, that I wanted to feel the same upon joining the workforce,” he says. That was not the case.“I ended up creating a platform, talking about things we didn’t take for granted, and a sense of community we created throughout.” Ambassadors for culture are, in Francisco’s opinion, able to fill that void, and these can be embodied by middle managers, who are at the center of company culture. “I haven’t seen companies invest in them: how do we do that better?” he asked.Van Aarle comments on the obsolete nature of having all the answers.  “When I first started managing people, you were supposed to have all the answers. But the truth is, you need a ton of help. I wish I knew that I didn’t need to know everything”And, on that note, Figurski advocates for “an environment where you can be wrong. Years ago, if I was wrong I was punished,” he says. “Now people understand it’s a journey. You have to meet people where they are.”Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Boston and Milan.

Angelica Frey | October 12, 2023
Chronic Kidney Disease: Its Rising Prevalence and Cost to Employers

Kidney disease is a leading cause of death in the U.S., yet most people who have chronic kidney disease (CKD) don’t know they have it – until its latest stages, CKD is often symptomless. It’s preceded by other conditions, ones that can be prevented.Chronic conditions like CKD cost employers in the U.S. $36.4 billion a year in employee absences, and as symptoms progress and create more health problems for the patient, the healthcare costs to employers increase exponentially.CKD often flies below the radar for many HR leaders, said Scott Vold, chief commercial officer at Renalogic, a CKD care and dialysis cost-management program. “Yet dialysis consistently ranks as a top-five expense for self-funded plans, and year-over-year, commercial plans spend about $100 billion on chronic kidney disease–related care.”During a webinar hosted by From Day One, titled “What Employers Need to Know About Chronic Kidney Disease: Its Rising Prevalence, Its High Cost, and How to Manage It,” Vold was joined by Eric Bricker, an internal medicine physician and chief medical officer at AHealthcareZ, and Alyssa McGonagle, PhD, associate professor of psychological science and organizational science at UNC Charlotte and the author of a forthcoming book on chronic health conditions in the workplace.The group discussed the effects of CKD and other chronic health conditions on employees and companies and why it’s so important to encourage prevention, early intervention, and a culture that supports employee health. The Deadly, and Often Undetected, Threat of Chronic Kidney DiseaseThe Centers for Disease Control estimates that one in seven adults lives with CKD. Why so common? Three out of four cases are the result of type-two diabetes or high blood pressure (hypertension), and both are prevalent in the US. But most don’t know they have CKD until the disease has progressed to deadly territory. As many as 90% of people who have CKD are unaware because CKD itself is painless until it’s not. “It’s symptomless,” said Bricker. “Our bodies are so amazing that you can actually damage the vast majority of your kidneys before you ever realize it.” By the time symptoms are detected, much of the damage has been done – damage that is permanent.The expert panel on kidney disease, clockwise from top: Scott Vold of Renalogic, moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, Eric Bricker, MD, of AHealthcareZ, and Alyssa McGonagle, PhD, of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Image by From Day One)It’s common for patients to be diagnosed in stage three, said Vold. Physicians don’t typically screen for CKD exactly, but they do screen for hypertension and diabetes. “In other words, a lot of people aren’t diagnosed until they’ve lost about 40% of their kidney function,” he said. By the time a person reaches stage five, or end-stage renal disease, they need dialysis or a kidney transplant just to survive. The National Institutes of Health estimates that two in every 1,000 Americans live with end-stage renal disease.“More than two thirds of the time, someone who starts dialysis does it in an emergency context,” said Vold. It often follows a major event, like a heart attack or stroke, maybe a sharp blood-sugar crash. “The ambulance is called, and they start dialysis with a catheter in their neck in the intensive care unit for a few days, and then get discharged to an outpatient facility. It’s a wildly horrific way to start dialysis. It’s a terribly expensive way as well.”What It’s Like to Live and Work with a Chronic Health ConditionChronic health conditions like CKD pose a substantial obstacle to being present at work, physically and mentally. They can limit one’s daily activities, said McGonagle, and contribute to anxiety and depression, and the medical attention required to treat long-term conditions can cut into work schedules.The diagnosis of a chronic health condition can lead people to reevaluate their careers or question their professional identities, and there’s the stigma too, McGonagle explained: “Some people fear that if they disclose a chronic health condition, they’ll be passed over for promotion, or they’ll be unable to continue being employed because their employer doesn’t want them to be costly on their medical plans or to take days off from work.”The mental toll shouldn’t be underestimated. “Those with diagnosed chronic kidney disease are three to four times more likely than the general population to have depression,” said Vold, citing an article in Frontiers in Pharmacology. In fact, depression rates among patients with CKD can be as high as 100%, the article says.Chronic Kidney Disease and Its Cost to EmployersIn addition to the cost of lost productivity and retention of workers who live with chronic health conditions, such illnesses make a significant dent in employer health plans. Not only is dialysis a healthcare cost for employers, since 2008, the cost of dialysis to self-funded plans has increased by about 400%, according to numbers from the American Kidney Fund.Yet some employers may not be aware that they have workers battling CKD. Before those patients go on dialysis, the treatments aren’t necessarily coded as kidney disease interventions but as cardiovascular disease interventions, according to Bricker. “Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you start getting billed $300,000 a year for somebody on dialysis and think, ‘Where did this come from?’ That person was always on your plan. It’s that their claims were being coded with cardiovascular disease, not dialysis and not kidney disease,” he explained.The cost of treating CKD increases as the stages progress, but some costs grow exponentially. The price of outpatient care, for instance, triples between stages one and five, per a 2021 study.Dialysis itself introduces complications, like infections and wide swings in blood pressure, and “dealing with those complications, not only on an outpatient basis but also on an inpatient basis, becomes hugely problematic,” Bricker explained.How Employers Can Support Workers with Chronic Kidney Disease Chronic kidney disease, like most chronic conditions, is a disability and should be treated like one in the workplace, said McGonagle. Many who live with long-term health problems have common needs, like flexible hours so that they can attend doctor’s appointments and an environment that makes it possible and safe to do so.McGonagle recommends coaching, mentoring, and training – “anything that can help them work through some of these issues around managing their time, managing their work and their health, and communicating with supervisors to get the accommodations that they need while being judicious about their health.”Environment matters too, she said. “Leaders being non-stigmatizing and supportive can help workers feel comfortable disclosing that they have an issue for which they need support. It’s really a win-win for the company, when the employee gets the assistance they need, they can perform at their best.”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 of dialysis in process by Nadezhda Buravleva/iStock by Getty Images)

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | October 12, 2023
Wading Into the Culture Wars, Corporations Fortify Themselves with ‘Social Issues Working Groups’

When Hamas launched its attack against Israel last week, the mobilization that followed was not only a military one, but a corporate response as well. Global businesses moved swiftly to protect their employees in harm’s way, sending workers home, donating medical supplies and food, and setting up relief funds. Many also made public declarations of their position on the war. “We stand with our employees, their families and the people of Israel during this time of great suffering and loss,” said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Condemning the war but acknowledging that the underlying conflict is politically fraught, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told employees in a memo: “The dynamics in the Middle East have always been difficult and complex. But these attacks are terrorism and violate our most fundamental of values.”While the attack was a tragic surprise, the phenomenon of corporations being compelled to take a stand on complicated issues, both at home and abroad, is becoming almost routine. In handling these situations, the stakes can be high. Household brands with solid reputations–like Disney, Bud Light, and Target–can be suddenly cast in a different light among large groups of stakeholders.Corporations now see these spectacles as major risks to be prepared for, like natural disasters, so many of them are creating a new kind of corporate function that brings together leaders from multiple departments including HR, communications, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). The emerging role is the “social issues working group,” which can go by different names but is essentially a way to pull together an organization’s experts to anticipate emerging issues and help the company formulate the best possible response when situations escalate and headlines break out.How do they work in action? When the Human Rights Campaign issued an emergency declaration this summer following a wave of anti-trans legislation in the U.S., the accounting firm  Baker Tilly was quick to consider its employees’ safety. Their advisors travel all over the world, including to states where anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment was deepening, so the company convened its Societal Issues Management Working Group, a cross-functional team of representatives tasked with responding to social issues.“Our first task was to send a note to our LGBTQ+ team member network, Pride, to let them know that we were aware of the emergency declaration and how we aimed to respond,” Shane Lloyd, the group’s leader, told From Day One. “Our second task was to update our travel policy to include information to allow our team members to ascertain travel risk as a component of their planning. Our last task was to inform our leaders to ensure they were aware of how to support team members who raised any safety concerns surrounding work-related travel.”The response was swift: The team had already been monitoring public events, and the infrastructure to care for its employees was well established since forming the group in 2022.Both consumers and employees have come to expect companies to weigh in on a wide range of public events and socio-political issues – like voting rights, climate change, racial equity, pay equity, support for the LGBTQ+ community, and reproductive healthcare access – a plethora of issues that have become politicized enough to divide people into principled, even enraged factions.But highly public fiascos have some companies approaching such matters with caution. In every corporate blunder is a cautionary tale about how to engage in this kind of discourse. The goal of these new task forces is to prevent public backlash and respond quickly, thoughtfully, consistently, and firmly. Here are some guidelines for how they operate:Approach Social and Political Matters with CautionMotivating corporate involvement in public matters is what Wharton School of Business professor Stephanie Creary calls “‘social authorization,” or outside forces that license a company to take action on an issue. It’s what spurred Nike to back pro football player Colin Kapernick in his protest against racial injustice and Gillette to run an ad campaign espousing the values of the #MeToo movement.Social authorization has been an especially motivating force since the summer of 2020 – when workers and consumers looked to businesses to change the way they interact with society amid racial justice movement and the spread of Covid – but responding to external pressure is not without complication, risk, and incredible stress on the part of corporate leaders. Some that have waded into the unpredictable waters of socio-political discourse have faced an angry public, and it has cost them the trust of their employees and their customers. In 2021, Georgia-based companies Delta Air Lines and the Coca-Cola Co. faced pressure from both the left and the right to take a firm position on a state voting rights bill. When the companies publicly opposed, Senator Marco Rubio accused them of being “woke corporate hypocrites.”Companies that pledged to cover abortion access following the Dobbs decision in 2022 were caught in both the culture wars and legal battles.In April, when Bud Light sponsored one Instagram post and one Instagram story from Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender social media influencer, the brand’s partnership with a member of the LGBTQ+ community enraged far-right Bud Light drinkers, and the demographic vowed to boycott the beer in videos encouraging violence against queer people. In response, Anheuser-Busch’s CEO Brendan Whitworth released a public statement distancing the company from Mulvaney, betraying the trust of the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. In June, retailers Target and Kohl’s were caught in a similar battle over the display of Pride Month merchandise.In July came a precedent-shattering case that employers are still processing: the Supreme Court’s decision ending affirmative action in higher education. Thirteen state attorneys general responded by sending a letter to CEOs, warning them against using DEI in hiring decisions. The corporate landscape is riddled with mines. In attempting to save face with one segment of consumers, companies alienate another and become entangled in a war between cultural, social, and political opinions.Take a Position and Stand FirmlyAlison Taylor, clinical associate professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and the author of the forthcoming book: Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World, believes that some CEOs lean on public statements only to stave off reputational risk. Executives often feel pressured to take on political matters for PR, responding to the loudest agitators on social media. The result is often shallow and poorly coordinated positions.Taking a position and then reneging, or even gently backing away, is how companies get in trouble, Taylor told From Day One. “It’s not necessarily that you made the call in the first place and experienced the backlash. It’s if you then look like you have no moral compass, and you’ll respond to whoever’s yelling at you – that’s how you make the situation worse.”Some companies choose to stay out of politicized issues to avoid being accused of “virtue signaling,” or paying lip service to vulnerable groups for the PR boost, which is what happened to many companies that made public statements about systemic racism in 2020.Increasingly, employees and consumers expect employers to enter public discourse on thorny matters. Public trust for business is greater than its trust for NGOs, government, and media, according to Edelman’s latest trust barometer report. And though trust for businesses is highest, people say they still want more involvement from businesses on issues like climate change and economic inequality.Yet the public is obsessed with corporate hypocrisy, said Taylor. Once a position is taken, that position must be defended. “You’re going to have to answer questions about political spending and decision making and your internal commitments. It’s very dangerous to say something about the end of Roe v. Wade if you don’t have a robust diversity strategy and you’re not providing reproductive rights.”Though there is some debate about whether rage against corporate involvement is damaging to businesses long-term, ABC News reported that after months of dipping sales, Bud Light lost shelf space at retailers like Walmart and 7-Eleven, “demonstrating the longevity of an anti-trans consumer movement that erupted in April.” In July, the company laid off roughly 380 workers. The drama surrounding Target and Bud Light led the Wall Street Journal to write in June that “companies that embraced social issues are having second thoughts.” But many leaders aren’t having second thoughts. The people who lead DEI and ESG initiatives do so often because they care deeply about these issues.Those who don’t want to stand back are steeling themselves before backlash happens, even before newsworthy events occur, with their newly emerging social issues working groups designed to respond to public events quickly and consistently. Don’t Wait to React. Anticipate Controversy as It BrewsIn 2021, the consulting firm Deloitte set up the Responsible Business Practices Working Group, a cross-functional team of 20 representatives from across the company – including HR, DEI, the general counsel’s office, risk, crisis communications, client services, government relations, and from Deloitte’s foundation.“We make sure that we take care of our people first,” Deloitte’s chief purpose and DEI officer Kwasi Mitchell told From Day One. “Be that through specific evaluation of our policies or outreach to those communities directly. We also think about the people who have been impacted in society, so we might make a donation to an organization that is helping those directly impacted. And lastly, we are thoughtful with respect to our communications with our employee resource groups that may be impacted.”Though they are prepared to be reactive, the hallmark of social issues working groups like Deloitte’s is that they are proactive, ever-studying what’s going on in politics, social matters, health, and law. If you’re not working this way, said Mitchell, it’s easy to fall into traps that so many companies do.“We have not been in any situations where someone can say ‘We didn’t think about that,’” said Lloyd at Baker Tilly. “I like the emphasis on process, because there’s an assumption that companies are responding to all manner of societal issues.” But it’s impossible to respond to every controversy, he said. There’s enough going on in the U.S., and multinational companies will be pulled in all directions.Lloyd, who is also the company’s head of DEI and societal impact, believes that some issues that have been highly politicized still require a company to take a stand. Earlier this year, the company sponsored a report by the think tank Coqual about gender in the workplace, which specifically addresses the physical and psychological safety of transgender people.Devise a Repeatable Process for Responding to Every Issue and EventDeloitte’s process is rigorous as well, a five-question framework adapted from a Harvard Business Review article: What would our internal stakeholders think? What would our external stakeholders think? What is the overall cost to society? Would the company’s core values be challenged if we did not act? And finally, can we actually influence the issue? The question of influence is one corporate leaders are grappling with. The expectation that businesses will involve themselves in public debate is still new, and many companies are still trying to figure out how, and if, they have the weight to change anything. “When you think about the history of business and the history of separating business from societal issues, the fact that companies are starting to hire someone called a director of employee activism helps us to understand that this is a tide that is turning,” Wharton’s Creary said in a 2022 interview. There are matters to which Deloitte has chosen a light touch, like voting rights. The team decided that it might sign a public letter or make a donation, “but we haven’t put the infrastructure in place to impact that issue longer term.” Mitchell learned through multiple surveys that politics is a topic Deloitte employees prefer to leave outside the office, so their involvement in political matters has been lean.In considering an issue, Mitchell’s team answers each question in the HBR story and awards an overall score, then debates the course of action with the CEO. With a diverse group and systematic analysis, they present better proofs for their decisions. “As we analyze things and put it in front of our CEO and his core leadership team, they can see that we brought the full perspective of the firm,” he explained.That formula seems to leave most people satisfied with the process, even if some don’t get the result they hoped for. At least everyone feels heard and there is consensus reached on how the decision was made. “What’s been really interesting is that people say, ‘I don’t necessarily agree with where we landed, but I understand where we landed,” Mitchell said.He estimates the team has worked on 40 or 50 topics over the last two years, including voting rights and reproductive rights. Before the working group was formed, Mitchell said opinions came from all directions, and it was difficult to understand if it was a reflection of the whole community, or just a vocal minority. “You also have a fair number of people who don’t feel that empowered, who might have a distinct [point of view] who would not necessarily elevate that to leadership right away.”Take a Position You Can Support Inside and Outside the OrganizationThat these groups are cross-functional indicates maturity in corporate coordination. Corporate America has developed dozens of functions – PR for messaging, HR for culture, government affairs for lobbying – but it’s a mistake to separate these functions, said Taylor. “If you’re going to commit to something like transgender rights, then you’ve got to be prepared to reflect it in your culture, your HR decisions, and your leadership. If you’re being discriminated against, it’s not just political, it’s personal. It’s about culture. It’s about HR. It’s about political spending. It’s about values.”Look for Outside Help When You Need ItWhile some companies assemble internal teams, others look outside the organization to bolster response plans. One such organization is Open to All, a nonprofit coalition of businesses that commit to inclusion of all people.Calla Rongerude, Open to All’s managing director, estimates that one-third to one-half of Open to All members have internal DEI councils, but attrition in DEI teams has driven leaders to their organization. “DEI budgets are shrinking, roles and departments are shrinking, and so are resources both in staffing and budget, but then you have this really heightened, polarized political environment. ​​I’ve been working on nondiscrimination for almost 20 years, and I’ve never seen it this volatile before,” she said.Open to All is set up to act quickly. When a new law is passed or a Supreme Court decision handed down, the organization assembles its policy contacts to brief members on the implications and dispel bad information stirred up in the chaos.“We also have our coalition of nonprofit organizations that can come in when there is a big moment – whether it’s Pride backlash, anti-trans legislation, affirmative action, or Dobbs – and talk about how companies can meet the moment,” said Rongerude. “They’re not just guessing in a conference room. They can actually talk to people who are doing this work on a public policy level.”Members of Open to All come together for purpose, setting aside business matters. “We have Gap and Levi’s and American Eagle. They’re all selling jeans, but when they’re working with us, they’re talking about how they can revamp their loss prevention policies so they’re eliminating bias at the returns counter. They put the competition aside.”Acknowledge the Limits of Social Issues Working GroupsAs effective as these task forces can be, and as reassuring it may feel to have one, there are limits. A social-issues working group can’t eliminate risk, Mitchell is emphatic about that. “Large organizations will always wade into some aspects of risk with respect to the way they operate their businesses or how they respond to a specific issue,” he said. “What this group helps you do is be thoughtful on a wide range of the risks that you might wade into.”The processes these groups exercise produce confidence and consistency, Mitchell said. It compels the business to ask how its decisions will affect employees, clients, and public stakeholders. “We try to have it framed from all of those lenses, just to make sure that we’re consistent in our actions on a daily basis.”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 Washington Post, the BBC, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife, among others.(Featured photo by Leo Patrizi/iStock by Getty Images)

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | October 11, 2023
A Community-Based Learning Plan for a Distributed Workforce

It was a grand plan for corporate learning and development. Before the pandemic ended travel and confined everyone to their homes, global energy firm Baker Hughes was ready to conduct 72 in-person, five-day learning events in 2020. Details were planned and tickets booked, said Sean Conley, the chief learning officer at global energy firm Baker Hughes. Of course, those in-person events didn’t happen.In the earliest days, no one knew how long lockdowns would last, but Conley knew he needed to find a new way to deliver skills and training to the company’s 55,000 employees. A fan of social media, he was inspired by its ability to scale and how it affords everyone the chance to collaborate, learn, and share. Using platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, Conley designed a program that lets employees be students, coaches, and teachers. “It needed to be a safe environment for people, and it needed to be fun,” he told me in a fireside chat at From Day One’s September virtual conference on giving workers direction about career development. In the grand finale session, Conley shared his community-based approach to learning and its success at Baker Hughes.Designing a Community-Based Approach to LearningConley’s learning community provides three ways for employees to get involved, summarized by the acronym LED: Learn, engage, lead.Under learn, folks access e-learning courses and curricula they complete on their own. With engage, employees can chat with other learners or get coached. Deliver is an opportunity for employees to teach what they know. Participants choose their learning plans – nothing is prescribed, but everyone has an open invitation. The experience is also gamified: Workers can earn badges by learning, engaging, and leading, and many do so. “Our evolution is to let the learners guide the community and run the community,” he said. Meanwhile, his team collects data on how many people participate and at what time, in what regions to optimize the program. “It engages people, and we have scalability now. When we did in-person learning, the population that could go was very small, but now the population is so great and so grand that we’re able to touch more learners now.”Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, left, interviewed Sean Conley of Baker Hughes during the From Day One September virtual conference (photo by From Day One)As for quality control, Conley said he’s been successful simply trusting employees to deliver what they know and deliver it well. His team might offer guidance or advice, and presenters get feedback from the audience, but vetting and coaching everyone who wants to lead isn’t feasible in an organization as large as Baker Hughes. Driven by what they know, people tend to rise to the occasion.Developing Talent Across Business SegmentsThe company has two primary business segments: one “old school” and one “new school.”“We play in the entire energy space,” Conley described. “One of the businesses is very traditional – that’s the oilfield business – and you’ve got this other business that is investing in looking at new technologies. But the reason we’re one organization is because those businesses work together. The new energy frontier that’s out there helps our traditional business step up that game, and the traditional business also says ‘Here’s how we develop that talent.’”Conley says it’s a challenge to get people thinking about how knowledge from one business segment can be added to the other, but he’s found that community-based learning can help. “We have to knock those walls down,” he said. “We were four business segments about a year and a half ago, and now we’re two business segments, so we’re constantly in transition and transformation as an organization.”Succession planning is always on his mind, he says. Cross-pollinating highly skilled workers across segments is one way to get great employees into vacant positions. “Leadership skills are transferable, but sometimes those technical skills aren't. So in order to do that, we have to make sure we’re developing the technical side of folks as well – giving people exposure and getting them to work closer together.”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 | October 11, 2023
The Future of Employee Engagement and Social Good in Companies

Companies are expanding their social corporate responsibility (CSR) initiatives at rapid rates. An estimated 90% of companies on the S&P 500 index published a CSR report in 2019, compared to just 20% in 2011.From increased employee engagement and retention rates to more loyal consumers, CSR programs and initiatives yield great benefits for companies internally and externally. In a recent From Day One webinar, David Grubman, VP of CSR sales at the CSR platform WizeHive. asked leaders their thoughts and predictions for the future of the rising field.Increased Demand From Incoming GenerationsA recent Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey indicated that 55% of millennials and 46% of Gen Z members believe that environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives are important in companies. With millennials and Gen Z employees making up the majority of the workforce in coming years, these employees will fuel the demand for ESG and CSR initiatives.The demand for ESG and CSR initiatives, however, begins far before employment, says Alex Budak, a UC-Berkeley faculty member, social entrepreneur and author of Becoming a Changemaker. At Berkeley, Budak notices that the conversation about social change is a shared core value for his students, pointing to a key generation shift in how companies are being evaluated.“[Social impact] is a huge determining factor for students. I remember when I was first entering the job field and social impact was something that mattered to me, but not to many of my peers,” Budak said. “Now, I can’t remember the last time someone didn't think about it. Now, they want companies that have that. It’s table stakes today in order to be a competitive company. Whereas maybe a few years ago, you didn’t have to.”In 2022, a groundbreaking 14.3 million volunteer hours were recorded, a 61% increase from the previous year. The growth of CSR participation is already evident, with employees’ demands fueling the growth, says Ben Sampson, co-founder and CEO of WeHero, now part of WizeHive. “Employers are going to continue putting demand and pressure on programs like this and we know that is going to continue. We also know that there’s going to be increasing regulatory demand and pressure for companies to do this.”Leveraging AI in CSR InitiativesWhen AI emerged on university grounds at UC-Berkeley, Budak did not fret over students using it. Instead, he wanted students to embrace it.The efficiency of AI not only allows students to have extra time to engage in social impact work but also develop deeper research into these programs, Budak said.The full panel of speakers, clockwise from top left: Ben Sampson of WizeHive, Alex Budak of UC Berkeley, moderator David Grubman of WizeHive and Tessa Edwards of Edwards Social Impact Consulting (Image by From Day One)“We use ChatGPT as a tool to help us source changemakers. It’s amazing what it comes out with,” Budak said. “There are opportunities to use artificial intelligence to conduct deeper research and find some of those hidden gems that are doing wonderful community-based work, but aren’t getting elevated to the same standard as the big name organizations.”In companies, the use of AI is also becoming more common to help increase workflow efficiency. In a 2022 study on AI usage in global companies, 50% of respondents reported they had adopted AI in at least one business area.Companies can also leverage AI in their CSR efforts to generate new opportunities for employees. With the integration of AI into employees’ location, interests, and calendars, the technology will soon be able to help identify better fit opportunities for employees in a fraction of the time, Tessa Edwards, consultant at Edwards Social Impact Consulting, predicts.“The possibilities of the predictive tools of AI can help companies determine which volunteer program resonates best with their employees or what time of year would be best,” Edwards said. “On the individual level, AI may be able to look at employees’ calendars and say, “Here is an event, I see you're available on this day. Can you join it?” Even though those are little operational pieces, I do think that those nudges make an impact on an individual employee.”Increase in Micro-ActionsWorldwide, work-life balance is a priority for Gen Z and millennials, with roughly 30% of Gen Z and millennials in full-or part-time work reporting they are very satisfied with their work-life balance, compared to 20% in 2019.This, however, may pose a challenge when engaging these employees to volunteer. “They’re very protective of their time and they’re very mindful of that,” Sampson said.“Volunteering used to be like a standard donation or working at your local food bank, but the ways that people are donating and giving back in those formats are changing dramatically,” Sampson said. “Today, instead of a full day of volunteering, people are doing micro-actions which are small acts of kindness. [We need] to be able to track and measure the impact of those in the number of ways that people can give back and volunteer.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, WizeHive, for sponsoring this webinar.Wanly Chen is a writer and poet based in New York City.

Wanly Chen | October 10, 2023
Removing the Obvious (and Not So Obvious) Barriers to Unlock True Upskilling

Ninety percent of corporate leaders know they will face a skill gap in three to five years, according to a report from McKinsey & Company. The challenge is giving workers a sense of urgency about addressing their own skill gaps.“The world is changing with new demands. We see this every single day. Skill development has not kept up with the pace of change,” said Steve Gilman, co-founder and CEO of OneRange, during a thought leadership spotlight session at From Day One’s September virtual conference. OneRange’s mission is to ensure employees receive the right resources.Workers are also aware of the skill gap. A PwC report found that 77% of employees know they need to upskill and do it today. However, many company leaders say that although they offer employees online courses they can take at their desktop or allow them to go back to school to build their skills, their workers aren’t engaged, Gilman said.So, what’s the disconnect, and how can businesses overcome it? Gillman said the key is to remove barriers to upskilling so all employees can participate and unlock their true potential.The Problem of Low Engagement One reason employees aren’t participating in upskilling opportunities is a mismatch of professional development content, says Gilman. Steve Gilman, co-founder and CEO of OneRange led the session (company photo)“If you think about everyone’s diverse functions, their needs, their flexibility, where they are in their careers, the advancement level of everyone, there’s no possible way that one format or piece of content could satisfy everyone,” he said.A lack of time is another barrier to taking advantage of professional development programs. Employees might say, “It’s difficult to find time for training and upskilling. It gets in the way of my sales process,” or “It’s the end of the month. We’re trying to close this out. How can I possibly work on soft skills?” Gilman said the obvious answer to this issue is flexibility and making sure people can get the resources they need to work on professional development in a way that fits their schedule, which may be different than other employees because of the time of work they do or the fact they are in a different time zone than everyone else. Managers also must be aware that barriers to upskilling impact employees with less power and fewer resources disproportionally, says Gilman. “We often talk to enterprise companies that have reimbursement type programs, right up to a certain dollar amount (for professional development),” he said. However, “not everybody’s able to access those dollars, flip the credit and wait for reimbursement.”What Talent Leaders Can Do Democratizing learning is one of the most important ways for companies to ensure everyone has access to professional development, according to Gilman. He said decentralizing discovery is an essential way to accomplish this.“Where do I find those elements that helped me get used to the tech stack that my company operates on?” Gilman said. “If you can centralize it, you’re more often going to get the utilization that you need from people looking for anything.”To make sure internal skill development content is flexible and personalized for employees, company leaders should consider personal interests, cultural context, job roles, learning styles, and schedules.Another critical step is to streamline approvals for employees to access the outside tools they need, whether it is grad school classes or professional conferences.Managers have a key role in aligning what employees want and need with what the company needs, says Gilman.“Those are the folks that know that work functions the best, the folks that can identify the next skills that are needed, and also have the unique ability to tie it to company strategy,” he said. “They are able to give recommendations and learning pathways, things like team-based learning to get that culture going. And then learning should be instilled throughout team meetings, regular check-ins quarterly, and annual reviews.”At OneRange, “we have seen the barriers, whether they are obvious or not, within your organization,” Gilman said. “But if you concentrate on them, and you believe your role is to make sure you take them down, you’ll have your hands full, at least for some time before you start to feel the impact. But when you do, everything gets easier and better.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, OneRange, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.

Mary Pieper | October 10, 2023
Taking a Holistic Approach: College Planning as an Employee Benefit

Modern workers expect more from their employers when it comes to employee benefits. Rather than looking at just the individual, employees want benefits that include the whole family. Post-pandemic, working parents are faced with a myriad of additional financial, emotional, and psychological strains, from the increasing overlap of work and home to the uncertainty of college and beyond. These stressors can have a direct impact on employee outlook, productivity, and even retention.Forward-thinking corporations are developing a more holistic and personalized approach to employee benefits that address the unique needs of employees and their families as a unit. This includes consideration of college and career planning needs for employees’ children.In March 2023, Empowerly, a data-driven education technology company that provides personalized college and career guidance to students and their families, conducted a survey of 1,000 working parents of teenage children in partnership with SurveyMonkey. The study gained valuable insight into their perspectives on productivity, well-being, and college career planning for their children. Following the survey, Empowerly released a summary of its findings, demonstrating the need and the impact of supporting employees as their families navigate the college admissions process.How College and Career Planning Affect the WorkforceHelping teenagers prepare for college and post-high school careers is mentally and emotionally taxing for parents, who are worried not only about their children’s well-being but also the logistical and financial ramifications of sending them into the next phase of their lives. The results of Empowerly’s study supported this: 95% of parents indicated experiencing stress or nervousness related to the topic within the last year, with over 50% reporting that they were usually or always stressed about it at any given moment.Empowerly’s study highlights the importance of supporting whole families and looking beyond individual employee benefits (photo by Empowerly)The planning process also takes a toll on children’s mental health. That stress is, in turn, absorbed by the caregivers. Over 50% of parents stated that they could see the negative impact on their kids. 29% of parents indicated that they spend between 6-15 hours per week thinking about their children’s mental health, with 6% thinking about it even more than 15 hours per week. It is a constant source of concern. Such constant distraction is bound to have an impact on their work focus, productivity, and commitment.The sheer amount of effort involved in helping children transition post-high school ends up taking up hours of parents’ time and attention. According to the study, 25% of parents dedicate between 6-15 hours per week helping their child with college and career planning – and a whopping 88% of them have done at least some of it while at work. Corporations that provide college and career-planning can help offset some of this effort, bringing employees’ time and attention back to the workplace in the process.The Positive Impact of Offering College and Career Planning BenefitsEmpowerly’s study demonstrated that there is a need and desire for employers to provide the parents in their workforce with benefits that could lighten the load of college and career-planning stress. When participants were asked to rank a selection of similarly priced voluntary benefits, “College & Career Planning for My Family” came in at a close second behind “Financial Wellness Courses.” (The other options included “Identity Theft Protection,” “Nutrition and Fitness Counseling,” and “Discounted Legal Services.”)Providing such a benefit doesn’t just spread good will among the workforce, it also makes a corporation more attractive to current and potential team members. 71% of working parents said it would positively impact retention, 74% said it would positively impact recruiting, and 74% also said it would positively impact their decision to recommend their employer to a friend. Building out an employee benefits program that incorporates the whole family makes a workplace more enticing as employees feel cared for in the ways that matter most to them personally.Boosting Employee Satisfaction, Productivity, and RetentionThe stress and time-consuming preparation that goes into college and career planning for teens can have a significant impact on working parents’ performance at work, causing distraction, a dip in productivity, and even a disruption to their overall commitment to prioritizing their job.By providing free college and career planning for families as a voluntary benefit to employees, corporations can alleviate some of this additional work and stress, allowing employees to focus on their jobs and feel seen and supported by their employer, increasing retention and recruitment in the process. This sign of understanding and respect for the employee not just as a worker, but as a caring member of a family, can have a lasting positive impact on the organization as a whole.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Empowerly, for supporting this sponsor spotlight. 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.

Katie Chambers | October 09, 2023
The Hidden Costs of Menopause: How It Affects Workers–and What Employers Can Do to Help

During the Great Resignation, organizations all over the world decried the loss of talent and expertise, as well as the difficulty and cost of replacing it. But another great resignation has been happening all along: Every year, 20% of women going through perimenopause or menopause (a period that extends from their 30s through their 50s or 60s) leave the workforce, costing businesses around the world hundreds of billions of dollars in lost knowledge and replacement costs. About 20% of the workforce is going through perimenopause or menopause at any given time. By the end of the decade, the estimated cost of menopause to businesses in lost productivity will be $150 billion annually. Maven Clinic, a comprehensive health platform serving women and families, found that there could be an extra $2,100 in healthcare costs annually for those transitioning through menopause, including $400 in pharmaceutical costs. For an organization, the economic toll comes from loss of workforce expertise and leadership. It can cost up to twice the salary of a lost employee to replace them. There is loss of diversity, lower productivity — Maven says up to 14 days of missed work — and increased turnover. How do employers address this? Here are 4 steps to demystify menopause and insulate your people and organization from its impacts, drawing on a report from Maven on the hidden costs of menopause:Know what it is: Menopause is defined as the cessation of menstruation for 12 months, but the impact can begin years prior as perimenopause, when hormones begin to fluctuate, and last years past its onset. That means some women will experience symptoms from their mid- to late-30s through their 60s, when they are in the prime of their work life. Know the impacts: There are dozens of symptoms associated with menopause. The most common are hot flashes and night sweats (known medically as vasomotor symptoms); sleep disturbance, brain fog and memory lapses; mood disorders like depression and anxiety; vaginal dryness and changes in libido; headaches and nerve disorders like tingling extremities; digestive disorders and changes in taste; joint and muscle pain; and dizzy spells. While the symptoms themselves are troubling, the changes in hormones also lead to medical issues, including increases in LDL cholesterol (the bad one), increased risks of osteoporosis, and increased risk of cardiovascular events.Maven’s new report on the hidden costs of menopause and how employers can support workers Stress can make all of these symptoms worse, and a recent study found that 6.7% of women reported an increase in symptoms during the pandemic. Know how to help: Education is key, not just for women experiencing menopause, but for their colleagues and managers as well. Only a third of people going through menopause feel supported by their managers, many of whom know nothing about menopause, its symptoms, or their impact on work.Make simple environmental changes. Access to fans, desks away from sunny windows or heater vents, and access to a cool relaxation room can help with vasomotor symptoms. Flexible work arrangements – hybrid or full-time remote work, or flexibility to start earlier or later – can help with issues related to sleep disturbances. Wellness programs can help everyone, but those going through menopause can benefit from reflexology, yoga, walking programs, or aromatherapy. Those modes were found in a recent review study to improve insomnia significantly. Stretching and exercise also improved quality of sleep. Evidence was inconsistent related to depression symptoms, but it could help.Provide access to expertise: Most gynecologists report being “barely comfortable” helping patients through this time – or even talking about it to them. Only a fifth of residency programs feature any instruction on menopause. The lack of education leads to women being told to get a hobby, see a psychologist, or wear layers. Health-insurance plans often don’t fully support the specialized help that a woman needs to get through this time.Maven has a network of menopause specialists that are available 24/7 to help patients manage their symptoms, through coaching or second opinions. They also facilitate setting up support groups – something that 2/3 of respondents to a Maven survey said helped them manage symptoms. Will all of this help? There is limited data on the return on investment for menopause-support benefits, but what is there seems to underline the benefits. A review study released in June found that cognitive behavioral therapy, yoga, exercise programs, and menopause education improved symptoms significantly. The first of those showed a special benefit in presenteeism. Awareness programs significantly improved knowledge and attitudes throughout organizations. The study authors noted that there have been some small studies on limited populations that showed improved work outcomes related to implementing menopause support programs. The population is aging, and it is already difficult to find and retain experienced talent. Creating a menopause program or benefit can help organizations avoid turnover, improve engagement and productivity, and make the workplace better for everyone. Editor's Note: From Day One thanks our partner, Maven Clinic, for supporting this sponsor spotlight.Lisa Jaffe is a freelance writer who lives in Seattle with her son and a very needy rescue dog named Ellie Bee. She enjoys reading, long walks on the beach, and trying to get better at ceramics.

Lisa Jaffe | October 05, 2023
Emergency Savings: How Employers Can Help Workers Be Financially Secure

Money is routinely cited as the top cause of stress in America, and stressed employees aren’t leaving financial worries behind when they come to work. Financial stress is associated with increased absenteeism, lost productivity, and a greater likelihood of departing for a new job. Employers frequently offer financial wellness programs to address their employees’ needs. But with nearly four out of 10 Americans unable to afford a $400 unexpected bill without borrowing money or selling something, education alone may not be enough to alleviate the problem of stressed and distracted workers. At From Day One’s September virtual conference on creating a health work environment, best-selling author and financial educator Suze Orman, who co-founded the workplace emergency savings program SecureSave in 2020, explained why. “When you don't have enough money to pay your bills, you don’t care about learning about money at that point in time. That is not what is going to help you,” she said in a conversation titled “What Is the Goal of Money?” The primary goal of money, Orman said, isn’t the stuff you can buy. It’s financial security. “When you're insecure, it's very hard for you to be happy or productive.” Given the messages Americans hear about how hard it is to manage money and how much help they need, it’s not surprising so many are insecure about their finances and do nothing out of fear of making mistakes, Orman noted. Financial education, including workplace financial programs, have a role in teaching Americans to manage money. Financial advisor and SecureSave co-founder Suze Orman, left, and finance journalist Ellen Stark (Image by From Day One)But first, she added, employers should help workers with the pressing need for a pool of savings set aside for emergencies. “When you have financial stress and you go to work, rather than sitting there doing what you’re supposed to do and be powerful in your job, you’re sitting there worrying about, Oh, my god, how am I going to pay my bills this week?” said Orman. “The only way for you to feel secure is to have savings.”With a workplace emergency savings account (ESA), employees can have small amounts of money deducted from each paycheck to fund an account for unplanned expenses, ideally reducing the chance they’ll resort to credit card borrowing or tapping their retirement savings early. These plans can be tied to a 401(k) workplace retirement account or operate outside of it, as SecureSave’s plan does. The SECURE 2.0 Act, passed in 2022, made it easier for employers to automatically enroll workers in emergency savings accounts tied to their workplace retirement plans — an important milestone for these plans. While most companies don’t yet offer ESAs, Orman noted, an increasing number are adding the option to their benefits menu, and when they do, employees are embracing them. When an employee sees how an ESA works — the ease of use, that they can get their money whenever they want, the portability if they leave the company, that the account is FDIC insured — every single person wants one, Orman asserted. “We even had one company that within one week had 100% adoption.”In another positive sign, employees enrolled in SecureSave appear to be using the accounts as intended. “The greatest feedback that we get is that 90% of the people who put money in, they check it all the time, but they don't take it out,” Orman said. Over time, having liquid savings in an emergency account may make workers more inclined to contribute to a retirement account. “I have no doubt that a lot of these people who have never contributed to their 401(k) plans before because why they’re afraid that they couldn’t get the money out if they needed it, they will now also start to put money maybe for the first time in the employer-sponsored retirement accounts,” Orman said. “They will work hand and hand together.”After decades of educating Americans about managing their money, Orman considers enabling emergency savings the most important work she has ever done. “If we can change the savings rate of every single person in America today, and that can be done with the help of all the employers that are out there, we can change the personal happiness and security of the whole world,” Orman said. “Once you start to save and you see you have money for the first time, you start to get as much pleasure out of saving as you did spending. And when that happens, everything in life starts to change for you.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SecureSave, who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight.Ellen Stark is an executive editor with Foundry 360 at Dotdash Meredith, where she creates relevant and engaging content for major financial services companies. Previously, she spent more than 20 years as a writer and editor at Money magazine and Money.com. 

Ellen Stark | October 05, 2023
How an Iconic Brand Cultivates Its Workplace Culture for Modern Times

“I am in service of Main Street, not Wall Street,” said Christine Kinahan, Welch’s chief people officer. Kinahan was interviewed by Callum Borchers, workplace columnist for the Wall Street Journal during the opening fireside chat of From Day One’s Boston conference.Kinahan became Welch’s chief people officer after almost 15 years at Schneider Electric, and a year-long stint at product design company Shark Ninja. “When Welch’s came knocking, I had no idea what a cooperative was. I learned it was owned by 700 families.” This caused a drastic shift in mindset, but Kinahan is used to shifting gears.Kinahan is a polymath in the HR space. She has a master’s degree in political science from Villanova University, work experience wherever Schneider took her, including Rhode Island, Tennessee, Shanghai, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Southern France, and is certified to drive a forklift.Moving between states, countries, and continents taught her how different cultures approach work. She also came to understand the frustration frontline workers experienced when their bosses lacked understanding around what they do. “That’s the perfect case of why I learned how to drive a forklift,” she said to Borchers. “We were having so many issues in attracting and retaining talent and getting them to understand the test–you have to take a test for PIT (powered industrial truck). We were struggling with the recruiters on how to bring people in quickly.” The best way to understand this gap was to learn the skills that were a pain point.Kinahan and Borchers kicked off the event at the Artists for Humanity Center in BostonWelch’s is still dealing with talent shortage. “I think the talent shortage is still very real. We’ve been slow to adapt, we have to change the mindset of hiring managers to skills-based hiring more, lowering requirements more, investing in L&D more. I want to see more investment in technical schools,” she continues. “You don’t need the classic credentials if you have the requisite skills.”Kinahan recommends starting by understanding who your hiring managers are, and if they’re trained to hire correctly. What are the cultural differences in your company, from a value perspective, that you need to work out very quickly? She endorses the Who hiring method, saying it has helped her understand who people are.The hiring process moved to a scorecard model, which entails the core competencies, the values, and what’s needed for the job. “I tend to build a scorecard for very critical roles,” she says, acknowledging that it’s labor-intensive. She then expands it with the following criteria: What are we able to coach? What can be seen as a growth area? What are we able to accept that this candidate may not change in that area? “We’re hiring full-blown adults that have already materialized into certain behaviors that we might not be able to coach out,” she reasons. “There has to be that acceptable threshold.”A good start is accepting that making everybody happy is impossible, and adaptability is key. “Equity is so important, and taking the time to really listen, it’s important for us as leaders to be there and it’s important to show gratitude and appreciation to those workers who have to be on the line,” she said.“We’re also responding to the market of employees. It’s more of a gig economy, and some don’t want to work 12 months, some just want to do 8 months. We bring seasonal workers in, from a business perspective. Without that ability to adapt, we would be struggling for sure.”Still, she hasn’t felt this energized in quite some time. “Yesterday we spent all day with our sales team. We had about 30 people of all different levels, talking about what we wanted to focus on for the next few years—we wouldn't have been able to do that as effectively in a hybrid environment,” she told Borchers. “There were so many of those water cooler conversations, so many opportunities for us to get consensus and alignment,” she said. “We’re a CPG company, we have to be there to test it, see it, make it happen.”Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Boston and Milan.

Angelica Frey | October 05, 2023
Why Improving Frontline Jobs May Be Your Company’s Ticket to Success–or Survival

In the midst of several years of environmental, social, and economic upheavals, including the lasting effects of Covid on the workforce, consumers and workers have been pulling companies toward conscious capitalism. And while companies have been pulled, that isn’t the denouement of this story. Recently at a property summit in Australia, Tim Gurner expounded upon the need for there to be pain in the economy and for companies to flip the script on workers. Namely, workers should be afraid and feel lucky for their jobs, not the other way around. This seems to be the opposite direction of where companies should be going according to Zeynep Ton, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and author of The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone’s Work. “A good job could mean different things to different people. Right sense of belonging, achievements, purpose, recognition are all the ingredients,” Ton said, but there are “minimum conditions that all companies should have.” “Those minimum conditions are first, very obviously, being treated like a human with brains with a heart, not just a pair of hands. And then the second one is for pay to be high enough so that people can take control over their lives.” Ton was interviewed by Editor in Chief of the Harvard Business Review, Adi Ignatius. They spoke at a recent From Day One fireside chat in Boston. Market Rate Pay vs. the Good Jobs Strategy Taking a step back, Ignatius pointed out that Ton actually wrote two books about jobs, her current one The Case for Good Jobs and her previous The Good Jobs Strategy. In The Good Jobs Strategy, Ton used the low cost retail market as an example of how companies make a choice on two different ways to operate. Companies can choose to offer low wages, have low productivity, and high turnover rates. This is a “bad job strategy” according to Ton.“The other world is to pay employees a lot more than competitors do, offer them better benefits, and design the job for high productivity, high contribution, and operate with low employee turnover, great customer service, and more,” Ton said. Ignatius brought up the fact that a lot of CEOs “care about the planet” per se, but don’t pay mind to labor issues. “It’s always amazing to me that some leaders talk about conscious capitalism, but when it comes to their frontline workers,” Ton said, are “completely fine with below subsistence wages” and all the problems that arise from it. She points to generations of business leaders being taught that “market pay is the right pay” and says the market pay mentality is driven by the idea that “labor is just another cost of production that is just like any other input.”  “And when we think about inputs to production, the right pay is the market pay. So because people are just another cost, we should pay market wages. And paying market wages is so dominant, that people can’t even imagine operating any differently.”Zeynep Ton, author of The Case for Good Jobs was interviewed in the grand finale session in Boston (company photo)Using Costco as an example, Ton says co-founder Jim Sinegal comes to her classes every year to address students and his message is: Of course, you pay people more. “Because you understand that when people can’t focus on the job, turnover is going to be high. And now there’s so much research that shows that low pay is associated with all sorts of health costs. It even lowers cognitive functioning, low pay is equivalent to a 13 point reduction in IQ.”Ton says the resistance to higher pay is short-sighted. Low pay and high turnover leads directly to high turnover costs. “We have worked with organizations, frontline organizations, and we’ve seen turnover levels, anywhere from 40% to 400%. So the direct costs are recruiting, hiring, onboarding, time to productivity training. Those costs can be 10 to 25% of the total labor payroll spent annually.” Turnover costs pale in comparison to other financial costs, like lost sales, mistakes, lower productivity, lower quality. Why isn’t higher pay being adopted?Ton gave three reasons why she believes leadership is resistant to making the better pay change.“There’s a lack of imagination that there could be another world. And one of the things that makes imagination very difficult is a lot of organizations make their decisions, looking at just numbers. And oftentimes, they work in silos, and they look at the history and what happened in the past. And that prevents them from imagining any other possibility going forward,” Ton said.Secondly, leadership has a long laundry list of priorities, with board members and stakeholders being top priority and high turnover and the cost of high turnover being much lower. “The investors and board [are] not asking you about what’s your turnover? What’s your cost of turnover? How good is your customer satisfaction?” Given all that leadership has to deal with, accepting high turnover, and its costs, are simply easier.“The playbook for a good job strategy is harder than the playbook of pay as low as possible. In the good job system, you pay high. You design the work, which means you cross train your employees. You empower them to make decisions. You make their work better. You pay attention to staffing levels, so they can come up with improvement ideas.”The third reason these changes aren’t more commonplace is both a lack of conversation on the topic and a misplaced lack of trust between management and staff. “When they are stuck in their own vicious cycle of poverty, because pay is so low, they have all sorts of problems, cognitive problems, health problems. They’re not performing well on the job.” Ton says management incorrectly equates this to a lack of capability on the part of the worker. “Well, I can’t trust you, because you show up late. I can’t trust you, because you just yelled at the customer. So how am I going to empower you to make decisions? How am I going to invest in you?” Ton said.AI as an AnswerBefore stepping off the stage, Ignatius asked Ton what she thought about AI’s impact on labor. “I think it really depends on how we use technology, right? Technology doesn’t have an effect. Technology’s effect on work and workers will depend on how we use our imagination to deploy technology,” Ton said. Turning to the example of Sam’s Club, Ton described how they were able to use technology to better utilize staff, raise salaries, and improve the customer experience. She gives the example of purchasing a tire for your car several years ago versus now, a process that used to take 20 minutes or more. “Now with technology that processes just a few minutes. That means that the associate, instead of wasting their time looking through different manuals, can focus on the customer. They can ask you for ID. What are you using your car for? What performance are you most interested in? Do you want a low cost?” They are now better advocates for their customers. “And because their job is a lot more productive. Sam’s Club can pay them more.”So what should business leaders talk about the next time they find themselves at Davos, for example?“Instead of talking about other things, people at Davos should be talking about pay. And make sure that everybody makes a living wage,” Ton said.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 | October 04, 2023
The Future of Work Is Here: New Workspaces and New Workflows

2023 marks important milestones in technology and workplace trends. LinkedIn is 20 years old, Google is now 25 years old, as is the iMac computer, which revolutionized the design of desktop computers and modern workstations.These anniversaries are important in understanding workplace trends, as they go hand in hand with technology developments. During a recent thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Boston conference, Matthew Confer, VP of Strategy at Abilitie, listed quiet hiring, AI, loud quitting, hybrid work, remote employees, non linear workdays, and boomerang employees as the trending topics in workplace trends, as found on TikTok.And, perhaps counter to the trends of asynchronicity and location flexibility as observed in the last three years, companies are mandating returns to office.“Zoom brought people back to the office this year and it was not lost on the media,” said Confer. As of 2023 only 30% of Americans work from home, the National Bureau of Economics Research reports. Full-time work from home now only applies to 12% of the workforce. 58.7% of Americans work full-time on site, and that is reflected in the search trends: lunch options, backpacks, and how to make a presentation.There’s less flexibility than in 2020, but there’s still flexibility within reestablished constraints. Companies are offering “work from anywhere” weeks, a set amount of time when you can work from anywhere, without it compromising your PTO. “This was rolled out alongside a more stringent requirement to be in the office,” said Confer.Matthew Confer of Abilitie led the thought leadership spotlight sessionBut while workers might be in the office physically, more and more of their tasks are taking place virtually, especially with developments in AI. ChatGPT surpassed 100 million users in two months. To compare, the telephone only reached this number of users 90 years after its introduction.At work, ChatGPT helps with tasks such as writing and refining an email, design ideas, searching for information and analyzing data, and drafting blogs. The language model is now sophisticated enough that it scored in the 97th to 99th percentile of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking.In a survey of 31,000 people, 49% are worried about AI. Still, of those surveyed, 70% would still use it as a tool. It’s not all dire, it’s a matter of using it sensibly. “The buzzword of next year will be responsible AI,” says Confer.When it comes to delegating, AI could help tremendously in meetings. Meetings can spend too much of a company’s time (and dollars). “Over half of remote workers say that the vast majority of meetings just could have been an email,” says Confer.Shopify decided to cancel meetings with more than three people that were set up as recurring, requiring organizers to manually re-book these time slots if they were needed. They added a widget that would show an estimate of how many company dollars the meeting would cost. Organizations should think of how to implement AI in their stead if meetings are still important to the company. The technology could dial in, give you a summary of the meeting, and inform you of your priorities.“Technology is amazing, it moves unbelievably fast,” says Confer. “People are creative, and there's absolutely no idea and nobody has a prediction about what the ideal home office will look like in the future.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Abilitie, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Boston and Milan.

Angelica Frey | October 04, 2023
Generative AI Is Forcing Employees to Be Agile—Companies, Be Ready  

It used to be that if you had a “smart” job, you were safe. Manual labor could be replaced by a machine. But get an education, work with your brain, and you’d be set.Well, that’s not the case anymore. Presenting at the From Day One Conference in Boston, Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, said new data points toward a big shift in how people do their jobs, all thanks to generative AI. The thing is, it’s potentially going to impact pretty much every industry. Especially top wage earners who had previously been less replaceable. AI is changing that. “We’re all in the same boat,” Maggioncalda said.Back in 2017, a report from McKinsey & Co. showed AI would have a minor impact among the more educated. But the report, updated just a few months ago with new data about AI, changed dramatically. Now it’s the opposite. “Fasten your seat belts, because things are changing,” Maggioncalda said. Not that every job will be automated, so to speak. But many jobs will have to be done differently. Adapting RolesCoursera’s co-founder Andrew Ng once said, “Artificial intelligence is the new electricity.” While it’s not necessary for everyone to become electricians per se, knowing how to apply AI in job roles will be key, which is where HR comes into play to assist employees. “It will be far less dependent on technical expertise,” he said. “It’s going to be much more about understanding jobs, understanding people navigating through change.”Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, led the thought leadership spotlight session in BostonCoursera works with governments and businesses around the world to help them help their employees rise to the challenge of how generative AI is changing the global market. What they’ve come up with is targeted training for existing employees, while also moving to skills-based hiring. Finding new ways to assess whether people have those skills to open the aperture of who’s qualified for a job. “There’s a whole range of potential implications of this impact. And there’s different occupations that will be most impacted by this,” he said. In particular, business and legal professionals, STEM professionals, community services, creatives, office support, anyone who deals with language, images, audio or video, will all be impacted. “As one of my colleagues said, it’s one of those situations on the plane where they say, fix your mask before helping those next to you, because L&D is going to have to figure out how to educate people differently.”CEOs Take NoteMcKinsey & Co. estimated that generative AI will impact production by the trillions. Nearly every single software tool is going to have AI built into it that can be used in a different way to help increase productivity by automating and augmenting certain tasks, says Maggioncalda. “Depending on how you respond to it, it can be an opportunity or a threat,” he said. Companies can use technology to better serve customers and increase productivity, and everyone’s got to be on board from the top down, including the CEO.One of Coursera’s largest clients is a pharmaceutical company whose CEO recently created a global generative AI initiative for the company. Three people lead that initiative, including the CLO, the CTO, and the head of strategy. They report to the C-Suite once a month on generative AI. Maggioncalda asked the CLO, “When’s the last time you presented to a CEO?” To which the CLO responded, maybe once a year. But now they’re talking to him once a month. That’s how important generative AI is to this global company, specifically their strategy to use it.Specifically, the changes are in how people do their jobs, and that requires strategy. Training. Shifting. They can even use AI to accomplish these things – an inception of AI, if you will.“Learning is going to be far more personalized and interactive than anything we’ve ever seen,” Maggioncalda said. “The ability to take and tailor training programs far more effectively than anything that you’ve ever seen before.”Language translation is a huge part of it. Coursera has translated 2,000 courses into seven languages, building up to 4,000 courses in 14 languages. The potential to change things on a global scale is huge.Training vs. DegreesCurrently underway is Coursera’s Generative AI Academy to assist with workforce transformation, helping people of different job roles figure out how to adapt to generative AI. “So, if you’re a digital marketer, here’s what you need to know, if you’re an IT Helpdesk, here’s what you need to know, if you’re a software developer, here’s what you need to know. It will be very role specific, and it will be changing very quickly,” he said.There’s so much more in the works, Maggioncalda added, and it’s going to change hiring and training for a lot of companies. In fact, hiring people without college degrees won’t be an issue; if they’re agile and adapt to the company training, employees can have more equitable access to the knowledge and the skills as well as the credentials.Essentially, Coursera can help companies create program templates from building blocks that already exist, saving time and money and bringing the company forward quicker. One of their customers wanted to build a reference program that different company managers could customize. Curating content, using AI, is what will help companies train their people.Using AI to help employees learn how to use AI? Now that’s the wave of the future.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Coursera, for sponsoring this thought leadeship spotlight. Carrie Snider is a Phoenix, Ariz.-based journalist and marketing copywriter. 

Carrie Snider | October 03, 2023
How Workers–and Their Employers–Can Build a Healthier Relationship With Work

While covering the labor beat for publications such as The Atlantic and Wired, journalist Simone Stolzoff observed how work had become like a religious identity for many people. But it wasn’t until five years ago when he decided to leave the newsroom to join a design firm, that the concept became personal. “It really threw me for an existential loop,” he told moderator Steve Koepp during a fireside chat session at From Day One’s September virtual conference. “Maybe some of our listeners have been in a similar sort of career crossroads where it didn’t feel like you were choosing between two jobs as much as it felt like you were choosing between two versions of you.”That’s what prompted Stolzoff to write The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work. This book, which comes at a time when millions of workers are realizing they want to create better boundaries between their jobs and the rest of their lives, casts light on ways employees and their managers can take new approaches to help workers flourish on and off the job.Stolzoff advocates for focusing on work while on the clock, but also understanding the importance of going home when the work day is done. “I think so many people, myself included, can fall into the trap of letting work, expand like a gas and fill all of our unoccupied space and kind of perpetually stay in a state of half-work with one eye open on our emails,” he said. However, he added, “we are more than just workers. We are also friends and parents and neighbors and citizens. And those identities need investment in the same way that our professional lives do.”How Did Work Become an Identity? Conflating work and identity is nothing new in American culture, according to Stolzoff. “You might say that capitalism and the Protestant work ethic were the two strands that intertwined to form our country’s DNA,” he said. “But I do think there is something about the past 40 or 50 years that has really made work more central.”Steve Koepp, From Day One co-founder and chief content officer, interviewed Simone Stolzoff in the grand finale fireside chat session (photo by From Day One)One reason why people’s relationship to work in the United States is so fraught is the consequences of losing your job are severe, according to Stolzoff. For example, many employees have their healthcare tied to their jobs, and an immigrant’s ability to stay in the U.S. is often contingent on their employment status.There’s also the popular concept of the workplace as a family.“I really think the ethos behind trying to create a family-like work environment is often well intentioned,” Stolzoff said. However, familial love ideally is unconditional, but relationships in the workplace are conditional by definition, says Stolzoff. “Your work can be your family until they let you go, which is something that so many people found out during the pandemic,” he said.How to Achieve a Healthy Work-Life BalanceIt’s up to company leaders to take the first step in creating a culture that helps employees keep their work life separate from their personal life and identity, according to Stolzoff. “I think too often companies can have great policies or ideas in place. But if the CEO or your boss is responding to emails at 10 p.m. or answering Slack messages on their vacation, that culture is going to trickle down to the rest of the company,” he said. It’s crucial for companies to recognize employees who live outside the office and not contact them after hours, according to Stolzoff. He also said managers should help people connect with their intrinsic motivation and find their reason for working, beyond just accomplishing the daily tasks on their to-do list.For some workers, that reason might be using their job as a vehicle for changing the world. However, other employees’ motivation might be providing security for their families or supporting themselves so they can do what they love outside of work. And none of these reasons are more noble than the others, according to Stolzoff. Finally, companies and employee benefits form an atmosphere of trust, which empowers workers to “get their work done how and when they see fit,” Stolzoff said. “I think the best managers are able to understand their employees as individuals, and to cater to the work style that works for them.”Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.

Mary Pieper | October 03, 2023
A New Era of Fair, Data-Driven Performance Reviews

Performance reviews play a crucial role in promotions and pay raises, but research shows that 60% of manager’s ratings are based on their own idiosyncrasies. The study further notes that only 20% of the typical rating is based on the employee’s actual job performance. How can companies make performance reviews more fair and accurate so the best employees receive the recognition they deserve and don’t leave out of frustration? And how can leadership teams identify employees who need additional support to succeed?In a From Day One webinar experts from Confirm, an all-in-one people platform that truly reflects each employee’s impact and influence, answered these questions and more. Organizational network analysis (ONA) is at the center of what Confirm does, CEO Josh Merrill told session moderator Anna Maltby Patil. “It’s a really effective tool for surfacing things like, who are the subject matter experts that are enabling the people around them to get their work done? Who are the people energizing the workforce? Who are the people making an outstanding impact? And in some cases, who are the people creating concern as well as causing problems?” Merrill said. ONA ensures that decision-makers at a company see this crucial information, according to Merrill. This is why the most innovative businesses are now using it, he said. Why Is the Current Performance Review System Broken?The U.S. military created performance reviews after World War I, and companies began using them in the 1920s. Today’s performance reviews still use the traditional four-point or five-point scale, with managers determining if an employee meets, exceeds, or falls below expectations.“It’s interesting that even today, modern companies, tech companies, and large organizations, are still using these methodologies that were invented 100 years ago to make crucial performance decisions,” said Confirm president and co-founder David Murray. “In many companies, 80% of their money is spent on payroll, maybe more. And yet, the set of tools that we have to identify top talent are very limited.”The workplace has changed drastically over the past century, and the traditional performance review model no longer works, according to Merrill.Anna Maltby Patil, top right, moderated the discussion among Josh Merrill and David Murray (photo by From Day One)“In the 1920s, work was solitary, it was repetitive,” he said. “We didn't have computers, we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t even really have telephones. Today, we work in networks. If you weren’t using Slack, Teams, or Zoom before the pandemic, you’re probably using it now.”Many interactions that once happened in the office where a manager could observe them, such as one employee constantly helping another get their work done, now take place through messages in Slack. This means supervisors may not be aware of the situation, “and that’s where performance reviews have really started to break down,” Merrill said. How ONA Fits the Modern Workplace The idea behind ONA is to make interactions between employees more visible so they can take that into account during performance reviews instead of relying solely on the opinion of a single manager, according to Murray. He said this is not a new idea but a twist on an older one. 360 reviews introduced the concept of incorporating feedback from an employee’s peers. American companies began using these reviews in the 1980s, but Murray said they aren’t effective.“People pick the people that are going to say good things about them,” he said. “And yet we expect that CEOs and executives are going to trust that data, that somehow these pre-selected folks are going to say the critical feedback that needs to be said.”Companies that use the ONA method ask each employee within the organization four questions: Who do you go to for help and advice, and why?Who energizes or motivates you at work, and why?Who do you see as an outstanding contributor?Who are you concerned about that needs additional support or attention?Merrill used a real-life example, with the names of the employees changed, to illustrate how ONA is more fair and accurate than the traditional performance review model. In this case, Tracy and Michael have worked for a company for the same time, but have different supervisors.Tracy is a source of help, advice, energy, and motivation to the people around her. She’s making an outstanding impact. On the other hand, Michael has very little influence. No one’s really going to him for help and advice or identifying him as a source of energy or motivation.Tracy’s manager wants to give her an ‘exceeds expectations’ rating on her performance review. Still, company officials tell the manager too many employees are getting that rating, and not enough promotions are available. Therefore, Tracy’s supervisor downgrades her to ‘meets expectations.’ However, Michael’s manager ‘likes him just fine’ and gives him a ‘meets expectations’ rating, Merrill says. “If all you had were those manager ratings, you would treat Tracy and Michael exactly the same,” Merrill said. “But when you bring in the ONA data, that network data from the people around them, now you can go, ‘Oh, these are totally different contributors in this organization, they need to be on different paths.’”Overcoming Performance Management BiasSome companies use ONA to identify bias in performance reviews so they can take action to solve the problem.“As HR professionals, I think we’re all aware of the biases that exist around our organizations and within our leadership teams,” Murray said. “But something we don’t always face is that if you want to address a bias problem, you need to measure it.”When employees feel included, they are connected to those around them, according to Merrill. This means their colleagues are more likely to name them as sources of help or advice.When company leaders take ONA data on who employees consider top contributors and layer it with demographic information, they can tell where inclusion is and is not happening.Confirm did a study of multiple companies to see if the gender of an employee had an impact on performance reviews. ONA data found that gender was a non-factor in who colleagues identified as a source of help, motivation, and impact.“But what we then found was, if you are male, you are about 20% more likely to be rated higher by your manager than what our network data would predict,” Merrill said. “That’s a really important bias to be able to call out.”One concern some people have about the question “Who energizes or motivates you at work?” is the answers might skew toward a company’s more extroverted employees. However, Murray said ONA “actually surfaces quiet contributors, those introverts that don’t always get recognized by their manager.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Confirm, who supported this webinar. Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.

Mary Pieper | October 02, 2023
The Equitable Employee Experience: How Total Rewards and Career Development Go Hand in Hand

Jason Cerrato, senior director of product marketing at Eightfold, a talent intelligence platform, discovered a downward trend in companies during the pandemic: women at every level were leaving their jobs at high rates, with working mothers bearing the brunt.In the early months of the pandemic, one in four women in the U.S. lost or left their jobs due to lack of childcare, nearly twice the rate of men. The pandemic exposed the gaps in companies’ benefits, with demand for childcare, once deemed a luxury benefit, to become a necessity.Demand for childcare support wasn’t the only change benefits packages saw: mental health benefits and workplace flexibility have also become a talking point for job seekers as well. In a panel discussion during From Day One’s Boston conference, moderator Janelle Nanos, business reporter at The Boston Globe, spoke with Cerrato and other industry leaders on how the pandemic reshaped the world of benefits and what leaders must do to keep their workers supported.Ditching the One-Size-Fits-All ApproachWith an increasingly diverse workforce, companies need to offer benefits that cater to different demographics and life stages. “The benefits landscape has drastically changed in the post-Covid era because of the diverse demographics coming into the organization and the level of awareness that the employees have,” Shahina Islam, vice president of HR at IT service management company Zensar, said.“The focus used to be mostly just compensation, but the conversations happening in the post-Covid era are now ‘You’re offering me compensation, but what else can I look forward to if I join you?’” Benefits should be made to serve every employee, however, that’s not the case. In the U.S., only 61% of employees are satisfied with their benefits.The disparity calls for greater scrutiny and a problem HR leaders need to be constantly working to solve, says Shawna Oliver, assistant vice president and head of global benefits & wellness at insurance company Manulife Financial Corporation.“We presume that everybody was having this delightful experience with their benefits. But Covid gave us the permission to say that’s not what happened because we started getting real about the things that we talked about,” Oliver said. “Everybody in this room has a different experience when they go to see their provider, their clinician, their specialist, their mental health provider. And I want everyone to ask themselves, is that what you want from your benefits? To me, when I offer a program, I want everyone to have that really amazing experience when they cross that line. And if that's not happening today, it’s my job to work with my team to make sure it does.”Data from benefits usage can tell a compelling story for companies, Oliver said. Employee engagement is among some key metrics that can provide data to help companies improve benefit offerings.“We all look at claims data, we look at engagement, we’ve counted how many people are using value, return on investment, but who here really looks at who’s not using your benefits? That’s just as meaningful,” Oliver said. “If you have pockets of employees with commonalities that are not using your benefits, there’s something wrong with your benefit. Look at your data, look at who’s not using your benefit because it’s really those two combined that’s telling you the full story about what's going on in your program.”Including Employees in the Benefits TalkIn transitioning to a post-pandemic workplace, employees are making sure the benefits that came about during the pandemic are here to stay. Today’s employees are learning to vocalize their needs more than ever, with employees contributing to the conversations.Janelle Nanos of the Boston Globe moderated the executive panel discussion.As Head of Technology at C&W Services, a facility services company, Jodi Enggasser discusses the success she found from involving workers in the benefits conversation. Straying away from the traditional top-down approach and leaning into a discussion forum allows workers to discuss their needs more openly, Enggasser said.“The decision that was coming from executive leave or leadership was going to be pushed down on us. It didn’t let us have a say or a choice,” Enggasser said. “But now you can raise your hand to be part of a council where that council has a slice from the various types of populations in the company and you have an opportunity to review the types of benefits. It helped us feel like we were a part of the process and like we were part of the solution.”Supporting ManagersManagers are often the ones interacting with employees the most and can learn of problems and conflicts workers may be dealing with. For managers to best serve employees, managers must be trained and equipped properly, Jess Marble, director of Care for Business, said.“Your managers are on the front lines of your workforce. They’re the first to hear about a child missing school or a parent being sick. They’re the first to identify some of those triggers that are going to be disruptive to the workforce,” Marble said. “If you empower managers to have the tools to help employees get started on solutions, it’s going to benefit you as an employer because managers are going to be empowered to come to you and ask for solutions that will address some of the pain points that they’re hearing in the workforce.”The benefits of providing employees with adequate resources and substantial support not only lead to increased employee satisfaction but can increase work productivity and employee retention as well. By removing obstacles for the employees in and out of the workplace, companies are also investing and supporting employee’s career development as well, Cerrato says.“We build a process that helps with the career side of this career development and sometimes it’s just the visualization of that and making that a reality [for employees],” Cerrato said. “But sometimes that’s not what’s holding that person back. Sometimes it’s the availability of work, the schedule, or returning to the office. When we start to combine these worlds and have some of these, “How are you doing?” conversations, then we’ll be able to have career development conversations.”Wanly Chen is a writer and poet based in New York City. 

Wanly Chen | October 02, 2023
Building Upon Workplace Culture Through Recognition and Engagement

Global pharmaceutical company Takeda takes its Japanese roots to heart, infusing its mission and vision with traditional Japanese values such as integrity, fairness, perseverance, and honesty. Company leaders set the tone for this culture, valuing trust first and foremost, followed by reputation and then business success. These core values are also embraced by Takeda’s employees who, despite being scattered across several continents, in various manufacturing plants, offices, and remote working environments, remain committed to the “Takeda-ism.” Company culture is integrated naturally from the top down.Amina Lobban, head of HR business excellence global manufacturing, supply & quality at Takeda shared insight into this culture in a panel discussion at From Day One’s recent conference in Boston. Lobban says that the company appoints “values ambassadors” to whom fellow workers can voice concerns that are then trickled up through ethics and compliance. Having employee advocates working side-by-side with colleagues is just one strategy to make workers feel seen, heard, and appreciated.The panel explored how a workplace culture that supports productivity, loyalty, and overall organizational success is built when employees feel recognized and engaged. Experts from five successful organizations discussed scalable strategies for bolstering workplace culture.Taking a Much Needed Pulse CheckThis is where new technological advancements and software comes in, automating data collection to further employee engagement. Regular surveys allow employers to get a sense of how the team is feeling about workplace issues, company culture, recognition, career advancement, and more. Alexis von Kunes Newton, head of global talent development & performance at online retailer Wayfair, notes that leaders should cross-reference that data with demographics to see trends that might indicate deeper issues tied to culture and identity. “We ask questions about whether they have a sense of belonging,” Newton said. “Can I come to work feeling like I don't need to hide a part of who I am?”Surveys with open text questions can help employers gain insight into issues they might not have otherwise been aware of or have known to ask about. Newton says Wayfair likes to ask, “What’s one thing you value about your role or team?” and “What’s one thing you would change?” both of which not only help employees feel seen and heard, but can also drive strategy for adjustments to corporate culture.Jacqueline Fearer, head of global culture & engagement communications at enterprise information management company Iron Mountain, shares that her organization has asked “What’s one thing you wish the CEO could know?” – with surprising results! “We got almost 10,000 comments,” Fearer said. Easy fixes like “the lights are out in the parking lot, there's no coffee in the kitchen” that helped employees feel appreciated, to bigger company-wide cultural concerns like “we need to know the strategy better” or “I don't even know why I'm answering this because nothing is ever done.” The latter lit a fire under management to begin taking even the smallest of concerns more seriously.Surveys can help leaders bridge the gap to understand and connect with employees with wildly different personalities and performance styles and learn how best to support them. Matt Stone, senior solutions consultant at Attuned, describes an otherwise beloved employee whose communication style was different from his own. “Because of the methodology of a survey, I had better data to understand another human being who's not like me a little bit better, and give him more of what he needs to feel recognized and respected.”Using Intentional LanguageThe language used by corporate leadership can have a trickle-down effect on employee morale. Certain words that are part of hyper-modern corporate jargon, for example, may not play well outside of the United States, where nuance or a sense of irony can be lost in literal translation. Iron Mountain used to brag about “obsessing over our customers.” Fearer pushed back on this notion. “Obsess is not even a good word in North America,” she said. “So, if you have someone in Singapore or China who wants to please the CEO, and they look up the word ‘obsess,’ it's not going to go well.”This careful choice of phrasing extends to how employee recognition is discussed – or not. It’s vital to call a professional development opportunity exactly what it is. Networking opportunities, educational programs, and promotions are all forms of professional development, but employees may not realize that is what is happening and report it as a missing element of corporate culture if it’s not spelled out. “You have to name it,” Fearer said. Such educational opportunities and promotions, Newton notes, are an important form of employee recognition. “Career development is highly correlated with overall employee engagement and retention,” Newton said.Takeda even offers a career navigator program that can match current employees with other open roles across the company, increasing retention by encouraging those that might want to change their pathway to do so without leaving the organization, Lobban says. Takeda also provides visual career pathways (digitally and even laid out on the walls and floors of its manufacturing hubs) so that employees can visualize the map of their career advancement at the organization.Paris Alston moderated the executive panel discussion at the Artists for Humanity center in Boston.A Personal Touch Goes a Long WaySession moderator Paris Alston, co-host of “Morning Edition,” GBH News, points out that sending out finely tuned employee surveys is helpful, but not enough. “Even though we have this reliance on technology, there are some things that can be lost,” Alston said.One-on-one conversations are meaningful, shares Deborah Merkin, CEO and Founder, GiftCard Partners, a company that provides workplace incentives. “It’s saying, ‘you did a good job.’ It’s saying, ‘thank you,’” Merkin said. This makes a difference especially for companies that are particularly small or fully remote. Fearer shares that one team leader at Iron Mountain sends handwritten postcards to the homes of employees who are excelling, which also means their spouse or children may see the praise too.Establishing a Culture Across a Hybrid WorkforceModern employees value a sense of belonging in their daily work life. “Belonging is developing or creating an environment where people feel like I can be who I need to be at work, people understand the challenges that I have, and I'm accepted for that.” Lobban explained.This can prove a little challenging in a remote working world. Companies with a hybrid model can encourage remote workers to occasionally come in for in-person meetings or community days, while in turn also respecting certain employees’ needs and desires to work mostly outside of the office, if that is what they choose. It all comes down to finding a balance of maintaining personal connection while also respecting each person’s individual identity, preferences, and needs. In a post-pandemic world, companies where remote work is possible should consider, Lobban says, giving “that flexibility for people so that they can live their life and be successful at work at the same time.”When it comes down to it, leaders and employees need to practice self-awareness and self-acceptance when developing a workplace culture that works best for their team, recognizing when something is wrong and having the humility and dignity to fix it. By developing strategies that incorporate compassion, listening, and relationship-building, companies of all sizes can build a workplace culture that makes employees feel respected and drives the company’s mission forward.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.

Katie Chambers | September 29, 2023
Why Sleep Care Is an Employer Matter

At the acme of hustle culture, sleep deprivation was worn like a medal. Heidi Riney, MD, and chief medical officer at sleep healthcare provider Nox Health, is happy to see the bad habit fall out of fashion. “People would brag about not getting enough sleep, that they were able to achieve so much on just four hours’ sleep.’ Other times, the boast was, ‘I got eight hours, and I can’t believe I spoiled myself.’”Burnt out and hungry for work-life balance, workers have replaced “hustle” with wellness, and though it’s less common to boast about getting little sleep, people are still doing it, and their wellbeing, inside and outside of work, is suffering.From Day One hosted Riney and her colleague, Shannon Cyr, a behavioral scientist and SVP of Nox’s sleep care telehealth services, for a recent webinar on the benefit of sleep healthcare—and why it’s a workplace matter. They discussed the connection between a lack of sleep and worsening chronic conditions, emphasizing just how important sleep hygiene is.What Happens to the Sleep-DeprivedWe cheat ourselves and our health when we don’t get enough sleep, Riney explained. Our ability to concentrate suffers, so does muscle repair and recovery, and our immune system. Short-term, lack of sleep inhibits our memory, the ability to pay attention, our appetite, and the way we metabolize food. “Sleep is a very active process where a lot of incredibly important functions happen when we sleep, a lot of restorative functions,” she said.Dr. Heidi Riney, pictured, led the webinar alongside Nox Health colleague Shannon Cyr (company photo)Sleepiness and fatigue—or that feeling of moving through mud—show up after just one night of poor sleep, “and if you have a safety-sensitive job, that can be very challenging,” Riney said.If we’re sleep deprived for long periods of time, cognition, the ability to problem-solve, and the ability to make decisions can be impaired. Riney called sleep deprivation the silent partner to chronic diseases, often increasing the risk of “type-two diabetes, chronic systemic inflammation—which has been linked to things like cancer, heart disease, hyperlipidemia, or high cholesterol—increased risk of anxiety and depression, increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.” Sleep is so important to systemic health that in 2022, the American Heart Association added sleep to its cardiovascular health checklist.“When sleep is treated adequately,” Cyr explained, “then those chronic conditions that may be present in our patient, it seems to slow the progression of that chronic disease. In some cases, it also reverses some of the symptoms of those chronic diseases.”Generally, sleep-related costs constitute just a small portion of total healthcare spend for employers, but, according to Riney and Cyr, members who have sleep disorders often cost twice as much as those without, and constitute a substantial share of total healthcare spend.“Sleep disorders represent a hidden, overlooked, but remedial gap in care,” said Riney. “They represent a significant safety, health, and productivity issue for every employer.”Changing Sleep BehaviorCyr noted that improving sleep is often a matter of behavioral change—Nox tends to use behavior modification as its first-line therapy—and the results are not only quality and quantity of sleep, she said, but also quality of life.Nox Health’s model of proactively contacting members about their quality of sleep—Are you feeling more productive? Less fatigued?—makes it easier for members to track over time changes in sleep quality.That’s especially important for patients who work in transportation, Cyr said. “We want to make sure that they’re not accident-prone, they’re not working while sleepy and while they are driving heavy machinery.”Riney noted that a patient pushing their primary care provider to talk about sleep can prompt the doctor to start asking other patients too. “You can bring it up and say ‘I don’t feel like I am sleeping at my best,’ then list two or three symptoms that you’re experiencing.” It’s not a typical topic of conversation at the annual health check-up, they said, but you can make it one.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Nox Health, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Quartz at Work, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife, among others.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | September 28, 2023
From Day One Celebrates Its Fifth Anniversary

Half a decade ago, the news was erupting daily in an avalanche of headlines about Corporate America. A lot of those headlines were about scandals. About mistakes and injustice. These were not just mainstream media headlines, but also major stories emerging from digital media and social media. In fact, it seemed like for the first time everyone suddenly had a voice, and many of these voices were shouting. Many people within these companies were already committed to making positive change. But corporate values issues are often complex. They are typically interwoven with other business priorities, history, or plain old inertia. “Companies were being held accountable for their behavior in new and important ways, and it seemed like there was real, and possibly permanent change happening,” recalls From Day One CEO Nick Baily. “But then what? Even once you agree on a new set of values, there’s a lot of work to do in making them real.”  This was the historical turning point the three founders of From Day One were contemplating when they launched, exactly five years ago this month, the organization’s very first event, a one-day conference of hundreds of business leaders at BRIC House in Brooklyn, a place not previously known for business conferences. From the start, it was designed to be something different.The idea was that the country needed a “forum on corporate values,” a gathering of professionals to talk about the relationship between companies and their employees and communities. In other words, their stakeholders, rather than just their stockholders. The founders–Baily, Erin Sauter, and me–felt certain that we didn’t know the answer to these pivotal questions, but we felt equally certain that there were many people with inspiring, practical insight on these topics, and that bringing them together into the same room would be a positive first step.The first event was a hit. Speakers from companies including IBM, NBCUniversal and Condé Nast offered fresh ideas on “building a more purposeful team” and “setting your values and following them.” Sponsors ranged from AT&T to Con Edison to Eileen Fisher. Attendees, for their part, asked: What will you be doing for an encore?The three founders decided to bring the Brooklyn-bred idea to Chicago, Boston, and beyond. Five years later, From Day One has hosted 45 one-day conferences from Seattle to Miami. The pandemic produced an existential moment of doubt for the company, but necessity proved inspirational. From Day One has hosted more than 60 virtual conferences and 220 webinars. All told, more than 72,000 professionals in HR and related fields have attended From Day One’s events. This year, Inc. magazine recognized From Day One as one of America’s 5,000 fastest-growing companies. The audience at a From Day One conference in Atlanta; featured photo: a panel onstage in Seattle (Photos by From Day One)Since the company has taken a journalistic approach to its conversations, it has never lacked for topics. History-making events of the past five years provided fuel for conversations that From Day One’s founders never could have expected. To start with, the pandemic brought the remote-work revolution. As Harvard professor Tsedal Neeley told our virtual audience: “I am 100% convinced that, if we do this hybrid right and with courage, and we set our policies based on need and not fear, we’re preparing for the digital revolution that’s right around the corner.” She was prophetic about the challenge of getting it right.The murder of George Floyd inspired a push for racial justice in Corporate America that would prove to be fitful, but the conversation was groundbreaking. “All of a sudden, I was talking about this, and our employees’ eyes were opened. We’ve never really talked openly about racism before at work,” Hoai Scott of NBCUniversal told our audience in Los Angeles. As the pandemic eased, the pent-up demand for more rewarding and meaningful work triggered the Great Resignation that sent companies into a frantic search for talent, which has only somewhat eased. “Comparing where we are now to where we were pre-Covid, I think the employee is going to retain a lot of power,” AT&T executive Ben Jackson told our Dallas audience last year. In turn, the need to retain workers inspired a major push among companies for better learning-and-development programs. “Our vision is–and it’s very lofty–we want to redefine what education means in this country, full stop,” Walmart’s head of L&D said in a From Day One fireside chat.What may be the most consequential development of From Day One’s short life is a debate about not only the future of work, but the meaning of work in our lives. To be sure, our colleagues at Harvard Business Review, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, have been at this awhile. But recent years have turned this philosophical question into a competitive news beat for business reporters and thinkers like Anne Helen Petersen, who has spoken to From Day One’s audience about both of her recent work-focused books. She was early in raising the prospect that a flexible approach to work arrangements “could actually help us decenter work, just slightly, from its place of prominence in our world.”To offer such a vigorous schedule of events to talk about these issues, From Day One now has a team of 18 full- and part-time employees who’ve developed diverse areas of expertise in finding inspiring speakers, developing an engaged audience, staging well-run events, and helping sponsors grow their businesses.What’s next? From Day One is planning a rich assortment of live and virtual events for the rest of 2023 and all through 2024, including a conference next week in our neighbor borough of Manhattan. We hope you’ll join us for the next chapters of our story.Steve Koepp is From Day One’s chief content officer. 

Stephen Koepp | September 20, 2023