Building a World of Accessible, Affordable Healthcare For All Women
BY Katie Chambers March 06, 2025Women’s health, once overlooked, is now receiving the attention it urgently needs. In response to growing demand, the Women's Health Coalition for Digital Solutions was formed to leverage technology and innovation, and to improve the accessibility and affordability of women’s care by working with employers to improve corporate benefits and workplace support.During a From Day One webinar, experts from the coalition and women’s health advocates discussed resources and solutions to ensure every woman has access to high-quality care tailored to her specific needs, focusing on virtual behavioral health, digital health solutions for women and families, personalized menopause care, 24/7 fertility and pregnancy support, and best practices to support women’s health and improve overall well-being.The Women’s Health Coalition for Digital Solutions was formed two years ago by partner organizations including: Ovia (pregnancy), Conceive (fertility), 30 Madison (reproduction), Evernow (menopause), Talkspace (mental health), FitOn (exercise), and Nutrium (nutrition). “All of these companies came together with a goal of creating access and creating affordability to close the gaps in women's health care,” said Natalie Cummins, chief business officer at online therapy tool, Talkspace.Among those gaps is the growing need for healthcare for women past reproductive age, as employees in their 40’s and 50’s become one of the largest demographics in the workforce. “The fastest growing benefit that [workplaces are] offering to employees right now is this menopause and perimenopause benefit. And they’re looking for something beyond just a conversation with a general practitioner–they’re looking for very deep clinical expertise that can continuously be high touch for this journey, because it really is a decades-long process,” said Dr. Alicia Jackson, CEO & founder of Evernow, which offers online menopause treatment. The cognitive symptoms of perimenopause can start as early as someone’s late 30’s or early 40’s, Jackson says, which can impact their work performance. “Their most severe symptoms are things like inability to focus, brain fog, and sleeplessness, which leads to fatigue and compound brain fog,” Jackson said. “The workplace dynamic gets pretty complicated, because it either looks like they’re not capable or they’re lacking engagement, when the real thing is that they’re going through this huge physiological change without any form of support.”Because of the stigma attached to menopause and aging, women have been afraid to speak about it, especially when facing the glass ceiling at work. Providing women with the tools they need to navigate this hormonal transition, which often happens right as they hit the peak of their leadership years at work, can support their career longevity.Providing Mental Health SupportParticularly post-pandemic, mental health benefits are also becoming a popular option. “This is more than just a women’s issue,” adds moderator Tricia Schmidt, SVP, senior healthcare strategist at Alliant. “It’s more of a family issue,” she said.And indeed, mental health support is essential across all genders, ages, and cultural demographics. Cummins highlights five key mental health trends to consider when planning benefits.First, emotional burnout and the mental health toll of caring for a family are significant challenges, especially for women. Second, hormone fluctuations can have a major impact on mental health, particularly in relation to conception, pregnancy, and menopause.Third, there has been a huge increase in anxiety and depression, which are the top two concerns clients seek help for on Talkspace. Fourth, there is growing acceptance of women speaking publicly about trauma and PTSD. Finally, digital options now provide convenient, 24/7 access to mental health support.Panelists spoke about "Building a World of Accessible, Affordable Healthcare For All Women," during the webinar moderated by Tricia Schmidt of Alliant (photo by From Day One)For all benefits, but especially those related to mental health, immediate access is crucial. “To be able to send a text message to my therapist when I can’t sleep at two in the morning is great because. There are studies that show that [opportunity to get something off my chest] relieves anxiety and probably will put me to sleep, even without a response at the moment,” Cummins said. Talkspace has 6,000 providers across all 50 states and matches a patient with a provider within 24 hours of initial intake. The digital benefits are always there but need to stay top of mind for patients to use them. Cummins says it all comes down to consistent communication and awareness. “We can’t just stop at one-time awareness or a one-time message. It needs to be a true campaign around women’s health and all the aspects around a women’s life cycle,” Cummins said.Incorporating Inclusive Reproductive Healthcare for EmployeesGiven the volatile political landscape in the United States, reproductive healthcare is top of mind for many employees. “What we hear from our patients is widespread uncertainty: uncertainty around access to critical services, and also uncertainty around how to access accurate information,” said Rajani Rao, chief business officer at Nurx, an online platform offering birth control, skincare products, weight management solutions, and more.Nurx is listening to both clinical experts and patients through surveys and direct conversations to understand how best to support them. “27% of women are not confident that their right to use contraception is secure. More than half of women surveyed are concerned about a national abortion ban, and 43% of women are concerned about changes in the state-level abortion restrictions. Just shy of 50% are concerned about more limited access to their [preferred] choice of contraceptive care, and 43% are concerned about changes to insurance coverage for contraception,” Rao said. “That, for us, is additional fuel for how we drive access.”Given the highly localized nature of some of the restrictions, telehealth may become increasingly critical in providing access to reproductive care. “For HR, when you have to manage a program across 50 states with different mandates and different laws, having a strong provider that can provide these services digitally helps you make sure that your employees have coverage,” Schmidt said.Increased Accessibility For AllDigital solutions have more expansive options for follow-ups, allowing patients access to doctors beyond the standard once-per-year consultation that may last only a few minutes. “[Evernow does] a full consultation, but then we also have unlimited care follow up, similar to Talkspace, where you can text your doctor anytime you could do a video visit,” Jackson said. Patients have the freedom to get their questions answered as they pop up any time along their healthcare journey. Cummins emphasizes the importance of having a strong navigation tool so employees can easily access all the benefits on offer. “When we have healthy minds, we have healthier bodies, we’re more present, we’re less absent, we’re more satisfied,” Cummins said, so providing a benefits navigation tool will impact all areas of business. In terms of measuring ROI, Cummins points to “absenteeism, presenteeism, work satisfaction, retention, and turnover” as stats to measure in relation to the implementation of a new benefits program. Ultimately, providing comprehensive health benefits for women is a way of ensuring economic parity. “In a year, women will have $15 billion more out-of-pocket expenses in the U.S. compared to their male colleagues,” Cummins said. “And so providing these digital solutions, it’s a really important gateway for accessibility and affordability for support.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Talkspace, for sponsoring this webinar. Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by gorodenkoff/iStock)
Aligning Learning Programs With Business Strategy for Global Workforce Agility
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza January 29, 2025Businesses are placing more demands on learning and development teams, says Jamie O’Brien, AVP of learning and development at investment platform Voya Financial. Most importantly, “keeping learners engaged in a rapidly changing environment, and aligning our learning programs with our business objectives,” she said during a From Day One webinar. The pace of change gets faster every year.“We’re no longer designing and delivering training solutions just for different adult learning styles, but also for virtual and hybrid work environments, with rapidly changing technology, and for five generations of workers,” she said.Voya’s learners are increasingly seeking an experiential environment. They don’t want to sit through lectures, O’Brien says. “They want to do it. They want to try it. They want to feel it. They want to feel like they’ve been prepared and they’re confident in their ability to come out of training and then go do their roles.”Fellow panelist Tim Gerrits agreed: Leaders in L&D now do much more than transfer information. Gerrits is the the head of learning and leadership development at pharmaceutical company AbbVie, thinks about application most of all.“As it becomes easier to find whatever snippet of knowledge you need, that’s no longer the real crux of success for organizations,” he said. “It’s not putting information into people’s heads, it’s how you get that information back out and change behavior.” Lynnette Collins, head of global L&D at office furniture manufacturer Steelcase, identified the “most difficult part, and the most critical part,” of her job: “Making the connection between those goals, our learning experiences, and key performance indicators.” Who completed the training and when is not nearly as relevant to the executives as how they’re helping the business grow.Yet it’s not easy to demonstrate the value of L&D, said Ken Matos, director of market insights at HiBob, an HR management platform. Returns may not happen right away and even if they do, learners may need help identifying just how they’re applying their new skills. As businesses become more complex, so do learning outcomes, and measurement follows suit.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the panel of experts (photo by From Day One)Ultimately, leaders have to be able to feel the difference, not just see it on paper, says Matos. “Being able to change the stakeholders’ impression of what’s happening in the organization is one of your best, most accessible outcomes, because they are the ones who said it was a problem to begin with. And if they’re not feeling that problem anymore, you have succeeded. Being able to articulate that back to them is a really powerful message.”At AbbVie, Gerrits invites those leading business functions to observe learning in progress at assessment centers. “They see what we’re doing and the transformation that’s taking place with participants, and that gives them confidence that what we’re doing–not only in that assessment center, but overall–is important for the organization.”When Steelcase’s new CEO Sara Armbruster took the role three years ago, “she introduced a long-term strategy for growth, which was new for us in the organization,” Collins said. In the first year, Collins’s team contacted the top 400 global leaders in the company to ask what skills and behaviors they believe are necessary to achieve those new goals, and what might get in the way.“At first, our measurement was really around improving leader perception on how we perform these transformation behaviors,” Collins said. “But now we’re going a bit deeper, because we want to connect it to performance. Ultimately, we want these behaviors to become the way we work to achieve our results.”O’Brien knows her L&D programs are really working when they create a buzz, and managers–or individual contributors–come asking to participate or partner in the design. She knocks on doors, too, to find out whether teams feel that they’re benefitting. If they don’t seem engaged, “that’s a chance for me to ask questions about what their goals are and get closer to what it is that we can deliver.”Business goals can change quickly–just think of how many employers rushed to incorporate some kind of AI into their workflows–and priorities may migrate up or down the list. To stay relevant, L&D needs to change along with them.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, HiBob, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., Quartz, Business Insider, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.
Redefining Skills: How Skills Assessment Data Can Give You The Strategic Advantage
BY Stephanie Reed January 28, 2025Organizations are embracing AI and cutting-edge technologies to revolutionize skills assessment, unlocking powerful insights that drive competitive advantage. With 90% of companies expecting a major shift in required skills within the next three years, staying ahead has never been more critical.Using new technology, organizations can effectively diversify their skills assessment data collection. More efficiently than before, companies can identify leadership and talent skills for talent acquisition, personalized learning, reskilling, succession planning, and internal mobility.During a From Day One webinar, a panel of talent and learning and development leaders shared their experiences of implementing a variety of skills assessments to measure skills, reskill, and improve employee performance.Using Assessments to Propel Workers ForwardLucy Beaumont, a solution lead, manager and leader at SHL, shared three ways most organizations collect data The first is using a form of self-report, manager report, or 360 assessment to obtain subjective data. Next, AI data assessments quickly and objectively sort and analyze internal data to measure and summarize employees’ current skills, skill gaps, and potential. Lastly, personalized behavioral assessments thoroughly uncover an employee or leader’s current strengths and skill gaps.Erin Freshwater, head of learning, talent, and organizational development at Hormel Foods, described the company’s innovative approach to collecting personalized skills assessment data. “Fom our leadership pipeline perspective, it’s been really important that we understand what are the skills that our leaders have in order to lead our teams and our organization into the future,” Freshwater said.Hormel Foods takes their officer-level group through 8-hour-long simulations. Then, psychologists assess their leadership skills. They identify the group’s skill gaps, assess them, give feedback to leadership development, and implement them into development programs for future company leadership.The panelists discussed "Redefining Skills: How Skills Assessment Data Can Give You The Strategic Advantage" during the webinar (photo by From Day One)Stephanie Ketron, head of learning and development director at Westgate Resorts, spoke about using data-driven and personalized assessments. First, the company assesses an employee’s inventory of skills. After their skills are rated, they proceed to individual curriculums based on their skill sets.Leaders then review an employee’s skill gaps identified through their individual assessment and design a personalized development plan tailored to their needs. Ketron emphasized the importance of avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach, noting that even employees in the same role may possess different skill sets.Westgate Resorts has seen this data-driven and personalized skill assessment approach achieve positive business outcomes. However, traditional self-report assessments still create efficient data that can be combined with data from other assessments later on.Julian Allen, director of global talent management at MiTek, discussed the continuing effectiveness of 360 assessments. After creating a strategic plan with company leaders, MiTek refers to external resources to pinpoint the skills needed to achieve business outcomes. Then, by using 360 assessments, they create individual employee development programs to learn the necessary skills.The personalization of these programs is evident, initially only for employees to progress in their internal mobility without input from managers. Now, MiTek is shifting to using 360 assessments for overall talent planning.Ultimately, companies using a variety of assessments improve their hiring processes, Allen says. “So be that job simulations, personality assessments, and multiple different tools that are out there, I think that gives us additional data to make an informed decision,” he said.Skills for Future-Proof JobsWhat are other factors employers consider when determining the specific skills employees should learn? How are employers building roadmaps for employees to learn those skills to advance in their careers?SHL provides data-driven insights to help organizations enhance their hiring, development, and talent mobility strategies. Drawing from client feedback, SHL highlights that reskilling is a critical need across all industries. Beaumont says that reskilling has become a common priority for SHL clients, particularly as industries evolve and integrate new technologies.“As soon as you start your job, it’s going to change and you’re going to have to learn something new. And then from an L&D perspective, we’re just constantly trying to get people up to speed. Whether it’s with new technologies or new ways of working,” Beaumont said.Soft skills are still relevant. However, they are developed differently. Ketron expressed how emotional and cultural intelligence or interpersonal relationship skills are crucial. Yet, these skills aren’t quantifiable. “I think sometimes those are a lot harder as a skill set to kind of measure and determine, and we put very clear behavioral identifiers to those,” she said.Paul Jung, senior director of people experience at Optum, emphasized the significance of technological skills in the healthcare organization. Their clinical key talent group sets a precedent for existing and incoming talent.Using AI, Optum assesses the entirety of company data to identify skill opportunities and gaps, aligning them with business goals, and creating talent pipelines. As AI serves an integral role in managing mass employee data, personalization and a humanistic approach to other skill development remains a necessity. “They don’t want the machines to tell them where they should go next,” Jung said.For example, at Hormel, employees work with a coach for 6-9 months after completing their behavioral assessments. This has proven effective for the company, Freshwater says. Therefore, data-driven skills assessments with peer and leader mentorship for soft skills continue to achieve better business outcomes.Moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor at Fast Company, summarized using hard data with human mentorship to redefine skills and boost development. “You do need the human component, but you do have this partnership with artificial intelligence in order to put whatever you’re doing up a notch,” Dishman said.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SHL, for sponsoring this webinar. Stephanie Reed is a freelance news, marketing, and content writer. Much of her work features small business owners throughout diverse industries. She is passionate about promoting small, ethical, and eco-conscious businesses.
Mental Health in the Workplace: Creating an Environment of Care
BY Carrie Snider January 03, 2025Untreated mental health issues cost U.S. businesses over $300 billion annually, but investing in mental health initiatives like EAPs, peer support, and mindfulness programs can significantly reduce costs, boost productivity, and improve employee well-being.In fact, the Harvard Business Review found that peer support programs improve employee mental health outcomes by 35% and of course, they increase feelings of belonging by 40% and companies with mental health incentives experience, says Lydia Dishman, senior editor of growth and engagement at Fast Company, who moderated a session on mental health in the workplace during a From Day One’s webinar.Clearly, there is a lot companies can do to help improve the mental health of its employees. Here’s how the five panelists suggested organizations create environments of care.Trends in Employee CareMore and more, employees are asking employers for needs like financial help, housing issues, food insecurity, as well as mental health, according to panelist Nicole Roger, director of clinical partnerships at Spring Health. “Creating a culture of care really makes sure that we help people and meet them where they’re at,” she said. Unfortunately, many times people have too many hoops to jump through the more help they need. It’s important to pay attention and not let employees fall through the cracks.When employees need mental health care and help paying their electric bill, or help with their next meal, that’s going to affect them as a person and as an employee. Employees are asking for more support, and employers should be ready to answer. “I’m really proud that Spring Health has been able to embed that into our platform. So not only can you see a therapist, but we’ll ask you, hey, are you having trouble paying your electric bill?” Then they can help connect them with services to make that happen, Roger said.Those in HR need to understand that they aren’t the therapists—they just need to know where the therapists are and how to connect employees with what they need. “It’s okay for us as human beings to say, I actually don’t know,” she said. “But you know what? I’m going to help. I’m going to help get you this answer. It just creates that element of authenticity.”Panelists spoke about mental health care in the workplace (photo by From Day One) The first time anyone asks for help can feel extra scary, so Roger suggested removing words like “mental health” so it feels more like a conversation. Instead ask, “How are you feeling physically? Are you stressed out? How’s your sleep?”One thing companies should consider is using vendors who use measurement-based care, so you can track if employees are getting the help they need.Checking In: Are You Okay?The first step can be as simple as asking the question, “Are you okay?” according to panelist Melinda Morimoto, senior benefits director at Genentech. “At the end of the day, our people need to know that we care about them as individuals. So what that looks like for me with my team, we start our staff meetings with a poll. How are you doing mentally? What’s your workload?” The answers will drive the meeting and help them course correct. Because the biggest challenge is leaders looking the other way. But doing nothing doesn’t help the employee that’s struggling.Genentech created a network of 400 mental health champions across the U.S. with the idea of spreading mental health awareness across the organization and reducing stigma. For the entire month of May, they wore “Are You OK?” t-shirts, but people kept wearing them after that. It offered a signal that they were in a safe space—that you can be connected to resources.“I had an employee who lost her mom and her sister and then was struggling with her dependent,” Morimoto said. “I said, ‘well, have you reached out for help and scheduled therapy? It’s free.’” The person responded that things weren’t that bad. “‘Well, how bad does it have to be before you reach out for help?’”Unmet needs can quickly escalate, so it’s vital to keep up-to-date on what employees need. At Genentech, they surveyed their people and found the number one gap was caring for aging parents. They responded to that need by including a caregiver benefit with coaches who did the homework to find options for the aging parent and offer help for the employee. “It gives them back time. It gives them back peace of mind that they're doing the best that they can,” she added.Another thing they’ve done is to embed resource groups within the business. Sometimes, Morimoto says, it’s easier to relate to someone more like you within the employee community. Not only that but making getting mental health access as easy as possible was a priority.“One of the things that we did that was really powerful is we actually put a mental health clinician right by the manufacturing floor with accessibility for drop in.” That way, there was no waiting for help, no searching for help. It was literally a step away. “I am in the moment struggling, and I want help. It’s right in that door.”Meeting Employees Where They AreJudgment-free care is key to good mental health in the workplace, said panelist Melanie Baxter, director of global wellbeing at Alorica.“We have over 140,000 incredible employees internationally, and my job is to make sure they’re cared for,” Baxter said. “I’m their landing pad.” She added that the only way to move forward is to not attach judgment or labels to people. The important part is opening up that dialogue.“I’m seeing this so much more in workplaces where the dialogue is ‘You don’t have to be the solution granter. You don't have to be all things to all people. You just have to be the landing pad or even the starting place.’”Word choice is important so people feel comfortable. In her position, Baxter likes to say, “I noticed” to open up the conversation. “I think if you can say, first I noticed this again, it removes that judgment, it removes that attachment.” It allows true feelings to emerge, she says.She also utilizes the Wellness Wheel approach, which addresses all aspects of well-being, including mental, physical, financial, social, familial, and environmental. It uses data and tools like EAP (employee assistance programs) to address the needs of employees.“When I joined Alorica, I was really gifted with focus groups, and there’s such a culture of transparency,” Baxter said. “I asked in my focus groups, what’s in the way?” Laying the groundwork and building the culture is key to being able to have open conversations. What can be in the way, however, is not having people who look like you or understand you that you can talk to.“What I have found, and what I want to encourage anyone on this call right now, is to be rigorous with your vendors,” she said. “I have found incredible mental health practitioner partners that offer gender affirming mental health care, which was something I never even knew was that hard to track down, and it’s not any more expensive. You just have to ask.” she said. “You’ve got to be willing to ask questions, willing to hear the answers, and then you’ve got to act on the answers.”Addressing Barriers and BiasPanelist DeShawna Manley, national benefits director at PriceWaterHouseCoopers, tries to understand what motivates people. “Understanding not only what someone is good at, but what they want to learn, it helps them to enable their work life to be more fulfilling,” she said.One of her jobs is helping to bridge gaps by involving representatives who employees can relate to, whether based on race, gender, or other factors. “I’ve had HR managers who could not connect, and I’ve asked, ‘Do you mind if I reach out?’ Because sometimes seeing someone on the other side of that screen that looks like you will create that connection,” Manely said. “It’s human for us to have certain comfort levels with certain people.”There’s another type of bias she sees, and that’s unconscious generational bias. It could be older leaders who don’t understand younger workers who think differently. As Manely says, it all starts with awareness. “I’ve had conversations with the more Gen X leaders, and they don’t understand the behavior of the Gen Zer,” As someone on the cusp of Gen X and Millenial, she understood. “Being able to say, I can relate to your perspective. I understand where you’re coming from. I understand that this new generation, this younger generation, they operate differently, their perspective, their needs, are a little different.With that conversation, the light bulb will go off and there is an awareness of unconscious bias that helps everyone move forward.Diversity of care is important, and finding vendors that offer access to what employees need is key. The less barriers to care, the better, she says.Engagement and AuthenticityBenefits means more now than ever, said panelist Christopher Smith, vice president of benefits at Universal Music Group. You have to engage and be authentic in order to help them. You have to leave your desk and talk to people and truly listen.“Get up and talk to some folks. The folks are your stakeholders. They are your clients. If you want to know what somebody wants, sometimes you have to ask. And that, I think, has been the secret to my success as a benefits leader,” Smith said.A big part of listening is then acting on what employees need. Even if that changes over time. “I think there is a lot of stigma behind thinking, I have a job. I'm making X amount of dollars a year, so I shouldn’t have a financial problem. It’s embarrassing to go and talk to somebody about these things, right?” Smith said. But that shouldn’t be the case. Especially when being unable to have these real discussions causes stress. “So I think being able to have real conversations and share a little bit of our humanity can go a long way,” he said.By fostering open conversations, reducing stigma, and meeting employees where they are, companies can create cultures of care that not only improve well-being but also drive engagement, productivity, and retention. The key is listening to employees, acting on their needs, and ensuring access to diverse, judgment-free resources that support every aspect of their lives.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.(Photo by Mykyta Dolmatov/iStock)
Creating an Optimal Workplace for Hourly Employees: Essential Tips for Leaders
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza November 21, 2024In an industry where employee turnover is famously high, what might keep a grocery store employee with the same company for decades?Mayerland Harris, group VP of talent at Texas retailer H-E-B, started at the company right out of college, taking her first job in store operations before moving into HR. She spent some time in the pharmacy department then held a few corporate roles where she oversaw all the centers of excellence for compensation, talent development, recruiting, and people analytics. Recently, she’s taken over HR for all store operations. Harris estimates she’s had a new role roughly every three years, and more than three decades later, she says the experience still feels fresh. Though Harris isn’t an hourly employee, the majority of H-E-B’s 160,000 employees are.“But the fundamental reason I’ve stayed all this time is the company has never really given me a strong reason to look outside,” Harris said during a From Day One webinar on creating an optimal workplace for hourly employees. “To take another job, you have to take that call from the headhunter, and you have to go on the interview, and you have to have some level of curiosity or dissatisfaction.” Harris just hasn’t felt that. “By the time I started thinking, ‘Hey, this doesn’t seem right,’ the situation would change, or my role would change, or that person would leave.”Lots of hourly workers start at H-E-B with a temporary summer job—then they end up staying, and it’s not uncommon for careers to last decades like Harris’s has. Some have been at the same store for 55 years. “I believe it is 100% the family orientation,” she said. “People will tell us they feel like when they work here, they’re a part of a family. Your [direct supervisor] is a big part of that, but so many people have best friends that are co-workers that they feel like they’re coming to, if not a reunion, at least a place that’s very, very comfortable.” Those who come from other organizations tell her they feel a genuine sense of respect from all levels of the team that they haven’t felt elsewhere.When Harris goes into the stores, she doesn’t put her title on her name tag, just her years of service. “The line employee or sweeping the floors or bringing the carts in is just as important as a manager or a leader, because it’s all about serving the customer.”Mayerland Harris of H-E-B spoke with journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza during the webinar (photo by From Day One)A good employee experience depends on having a good team. “We try to find people who are able to start and hold a conversation easily. There is an expectation that we’re talking to our customers as they’re going through the line or while we’re bagging groceries without being too intrusive about what you’re purchasing. We’re looking for people who genuinely like talking, who like interacting, especially for those roles that are customer-facing. Everything else, you learn on the job.”Growing the Careers of Hourly EmployeesAt H-E-B, even hourly roles can expand. There are career development tracks for those who want to be a specialist in their department. Hourly employees who want a chance at being a department manager can apply for a multi-week program called the School of Retail Management, where they gain both technical and leadership skills they still need for the job. Those who want to can keep going, progressing through the organization to become a top store leader or move into corporate. “We love when partners who start in hourly, non-management positions rise all the way to the top.”It helps that the company doesn’t contract with external companies for any of its store employees. That means they employ their own doctors and nurses for on-site health clinics. They also have pilots, engineers, and food scientists on the payroll. “We joke that we have every single career path in the world except for astronauts,” she said. “People see that and they feel like, ‘OK, I don’t have to be stuck here in this one role.’ There’s so much flexibility to do different things.”The operational implications for such a large organization are huge. Those who regard grocery retail as boring soon learn this isn’t the case. Front-end managers might be responsible for 500 or 600 people in a store that’s open 17 hours a day. Inventory and store experience has to flex with consumer preferences. “We’re always having to reinvent who we are, having to reinvent what we are providing. Do we do self-checkout or not? Do we provide meal solutions and all the different things people are looking for? You have to stay on top of that.” One TikTok video or news story can spike demand for a single item, and stores need to meet that need quickly. “That speed of change keeps everything pretty exciting.”Rewarding Excellent Work and Long TenureTo reward those with outstanding contributions, H-E-B has a company-wide recognition program where employees can nominate a colleague or a manager can nominate their direct report. The rewards are prestigious, she said. “You can win at your store level, your facility level, your regional level, or your division level, and then you can make it all the way up to the top person in the organization.”To get a sense of what it’s like to be an hourly worker, Harris uses the annual engagement survey to find a company baseline and identify aberrations, then address them at the store level with on-the-ground research and focus groups. “We have a whole department called customer insights, and these people are amazing at talking to customers and doing focus groups,” she said. “Well, now we’ve been using them to help us internally, because they are so good at asking questions and coming in with recaps. We use them also to spot-check and get feedback from our employees. And then we figure out what we can do to make the environment better.”One thing that makes the store environment so great is that the hourly workforce is so diverse, and that’s something employees really love, Harris said proudly. Hourly workers range from teenagers to octogenarians. “You’re not just working with people who have your same life experiences or your same background; the thing that you have in common is that store or that facility that you work in; the thing that you have in common is H-E-B.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Deputy, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Business Insider, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.
Support the Change: Why Menopause Should Be Part of Your Women’s Health Strategy
BY Katie Chambers October 14, 2024Did you know that signs of perimenopause can start appearing in women of childbearing age? Many of us are lacking crucial knowledge that can help us or our women colleagues navigate this time in their lives.Offering solutions to improve and support needs specific to women can also be an important factor to retention. But a new survey reports that only 1% of US women have menopause support as part of their employee sponsored benefits. What’s more, according to a new survey, 85% of women said they don’t know enough about menopause, and 83% experiencing menopause report that their symptoms impact their ability to work.During a From Day One webinar, panelists shared how employers can better support women experiencing the change, and the impact it can have on productivity, medical spend and retention.Often, the concept of “women’s healthcare” ends with postpartum. But Dr. Leslie Saltzman, chief medical officer at Ovia Health, says health care support for women of all ages is vital. “It’s so important to support women who are experiencing perimenopause and menopause because the symptoms aren’t just a nuisance. Evolving evidence is showing that severe menopausal symptoms, which impact a great portion of our population, also have long term health effects and accelerate cardiovascular disease and impact brain health. They’re having lots of negative impact in terms of quality of life and performance at work. We see women dropping out of the workforce just because of the symptoms that they're having,” Dr. Saltzman said.Juliet Vestal, corporate vice president, total rewards at B. Braun, says 50% of their workforce is women. “As our workforce continues to age, these are issues that we know are not being supported within the community by providers. And so we need to find solutions to help,” she said.Even younger employees are starting to ask about these topics, despite perceived taboos, says Melanie Baxter, director of global well-being at Alorica. “As a collective we stop women’s health awareness at motherhood. Opening a space of easy dialogue about any health issues when we're in the workspace can create a much happier workforce, can create longevity and can increase retention. It’s also just the right thing to do,” Baxter said. “It’s a way to communicate with our employees that, ‘Hey, you matter to us.’”Lisa Hammond, CHRO at Veradigm, says that she is answering the relatively recent call from employees to address this issue by providing webinars on the topic. “For me right now, it’s thinking about, how do we articulate menopause to our leadership, which is largely male, and help them get context for this in a way that’s not overly clinical or overly emotional, so that they can gain an understanding and become allies with us as we move through this next phase of our benefits programs and our culture internally,” Hammond said.Breaking Barriers to Healthcare AccessThere are a few issues that make it hard for women to get accurate and helpful information about menopause, says Dr. Saltzman. She cites a study from the Women's Health Initiative that “has been widely criticized [and] created a lot of fear” around the standard of care for menopause.The panelists spoke about the importance of menopause support in the workplace (photo by From Day One)This includes hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which is again now generally considered to be effective, though the stigma remains. Doctors also primarily experience “hospital-based training” tied to birth, and are less prepared for the one-on-one intimate office conversations necessary to discuss menopause. And lastly, the current shortage of primary care physicians means “we don’t have enough providers who are trained to be able to support the needs of women who are experiencing these symptoms,” Saltzman said. And when they do find a provider who can help, Vestal added, “there’s a six to eight month waiting period to get in.”Another part of the problem is the stigma and discomfort associated with simply talking about menopause. “For so many years, menopause and the symptoms were seen as, “a part of life and you just need to get over it and deal with it,’” said moderator Alice Park, senior health correspondent at TIME. “Are we getting close to really treating it as a medical condition in the same way that we treat conditions that affect men?”The unfortunate answer: yes and no. “Anyone who has experienced these symptoms themselves knows that this is not a psychological thing, and this isn’t something to be solved by dressing in layers or using a fan at night. But I still think that there’s a huge gap and lack of appropriate research,” Saltzman said. “As long as this market continues to grow, [with] more and more data supporting how important it is to treat women, there will be more and more solutions.”That means employers can help move the cause forward simply by being willing to address it. “The less we talk about something, the less people are likely to research it. My simple advice is to talk about it,” Baxter said. Since employees may be ashamed to bring it up themselves, leaders need to be proactive in making the service available to employees first, so they feel comfortable coming forward.Providing the Appropriate SupportProviding inclusive healthcare support that addresses menopause can make a workforce happier and more productive. “By not addressing these issues, people are suffering in silence and people are missing work,” Vestal said. The more employees and leaders are educated about the topic, the more they will be empathetic in their responses and in providing adequate support and planning. Additionally, Hammond says, the information will even be helpful to male employees whose partners or family members may be experiencing symptoms.A single point solution may not work for most organizations. “The experience of menopause varies dramatically from individual to individual, even when it starts,” Dr. Saltzman said. For some, it starts in their 50s, but others in their 40s, even those trying to conceive may experience symptoms. Therefore, raising awareness in general is most helpful, as is making sure there is access to healthcare providers with the appropriate training, including telehealth for easy access.Bringing in speakers is also beneficial. But be wary, as there’s a lot of misinformation. “If you’re looking for those resources, if you’re looking on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, make sure this is a licensed physician,” Baxter said.Especially given recent political developments in the U.S., panelists agree women’s healthcare education is more crucial than ever. “It’s a perilous time,” Hammond said. “We want to do everything we can within our organization to support women in making sure that, no matter what political party we are, we’re all humans. We all have bodies. We all should be able to maintain and enjoy power over our own beings.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Ovia Health, for sponsoring this webinar. Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.
How to Use Skills Data to Power Development and Achieve Business Objectives
BY Katie Chambers September 05, 2024The skills required for success are constantly evolving and organizations are struggling to adapt without clear visibility of the strengths and skills gaps in their workforce. This uncertainty leaves talent management and employee development journeys to guesswork, resulting in lost opportunities and strategic missteps. Being armed with skills data and then acting on it is a key strategy to keeping employees happy, loyal, and developing.Organizations that utilize data about their talent's skills, or catalog and organize the skills workers currently possess, as well as identify the skills needed for future roles, are actively preparing their workforce to tackle new challenges as they arise. During a From Day One webinar, leaders discussed how talent skills data can transform your approach to talent management.As a first step, companies must identify which skills are the most relevant to their business’ present and future, the panelists shared. This decision should not be made just by HR, senior leaders, and stakeholders, but by employees at other levels too, says Marquisa Nash, Head of HR, performance materials at BASF. “[There might be a gap between] what leadership thinks is important and what people think is important,” Nash said.Tomislav Vujec, director of learning at Red Hat, says it’s easier for HR to get a buy-in from business leaders when discussing employee skills as opposed to competencies. “We get to be closer to their problems and we open a door to validate what we can actually do, which is develop a skill. As opposed to risking too much by promising a business change, which often does not only depend on the skill being developed, but other factors,” he said.The rapid changes brought about by the pandemic also emphasized the need to focus on skill-building, says Didem Onem, Head of TA operations and programs at Eaton Corporation. “That made us look at our talent and skills availability and ask ‘where are we headed – and are we ready for that?’ It meant bringing a new type of talent into the organization,” she said. For Eaton, this meant an initiative for upskilling in digitization techniques so that employees would be more prepared for a digital way of doing business. Her team mapped out the new skills plan based on manager feedback, honest self-assessments, and forecasted what would be needed down the line.Those self-assessments, though, can be tricky. “Oftentimes people are not terribly good at assessing their own levels of facility with certain things,” said moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company. “Is there a way to make sure that what people are reporting is actually where they are?”The panel of industry leaders spoke about "How to Use Skills Data to Power Development and Achieve Business Objectives" in a session moderated by Lydia Dishman of Fast CompanyLarger companies, especially, must work hard to not lose track of each individual’s growth. “With 600,000 employees all around the globe, it’s hard to know who can do what and what they are good at,” said Abbe Partee, VP, head of global certified learning at DHL. So DHL created a Career Marketplace, which integrates both its learning and performance system. It includes an individual’s skills data not just from self-assessment but also manager feedback, succession planning meetings, and the combined skill profiles of their current and previous roles.“We want to build a culture of learning and continuous education,” Vujec said. That begins at onboarding and continues throughout an employee’s entire career journey, regardless of their level. It’s also important to recognize, he says, that “the foundational skills of today might not be the foundational skills of tomorrow.” In turn, the onboarding itself should serve as a mindset shift to prepare employees for continuous learning, rather than the expectation that development will stop after a few months on the job.Skills data should be something that is embraced by employees. “We know employees want to grow with the organization, and skills is a great conversation to get that going,” said Lucy Beaumont, solution lead, manager and leader at SHL. The biggest shift she is seeing is that the skills conversation during reviews is less about how employees are succeeding in their current roles, but rather where they want to go in the future. “What is your skills potential, and therefore, what is the right career path for you where can you lean into those strengths? If you do have those gaps, and they're relevant to the job you're doing or the job you want to do, how can we get around that and support that?” she said.Post-pandemic, individuals are more acutely focused on whether they are happy in their current position, so it’s important for employers to facilitate those conversations early and help workers move and grow internally, rather than externally, to boost retention.Beaumont says organizations should not only be measuring skills as they stand, but also tracking how those skills gaps are then bridged over time. While pulse surveys are helpful, they can sometimes have a tough time measuring soft skills, such as leadership. Therefore, the hard data must then be analyzed with a human approach. “We do take broad strokes, but then that aggregate view allows us to prioritize and see what it’s hinting at,” Vujec said. HR can allow the data trends to drive what areas will require a deeper, more complex dive.Nash notes this “human skills” area is, ironically, where emerging technology can be the most useful during employee surveys. “We use AI to go back into the comments to extrapolate, to see what other additional data points we can obtain to understand what skills employees are looking for,” Nash said. Then those themes are linked back to the organization’s business strategy and core values.What skills do the panelists see as most valuable going forward? All of them are tied to transformation. They include data analytics, to boost agility in reacting to needs; digitization, to make business more efficient; a digital mindset when it comes to problem solving; and an overall change in agility. And lastly, the skill of learning itself is vital. “Re-skilling potential: what does it take to be willing and able to learn new skills,” Beaumont shared, is integral in today’s rapidly evolving workforce.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.
Innovative and Engaging Approaches for Leadership Development
BY Mary Pieper August 20, 2024“The war for talent is over, and talent won.”This was a quote that resonated with Miguel Oliveira, senior HR director supporting the brand management and marketing teams at Danone North America, he said during a recent From Day One webinar.Leaders are now being evaluated “not only on the results they bring to the business, but on results from engagement, well-being, and retention,” he told moderator Lydia Dishman during a From Day One webinar about supporting tomorrow’s leaders.Amanda Grow, director of customer success for ETU, says the company has leadership training programs centered on skills related to values such as authenticity and courage, emotional intelligence, and psychological safety.“I always want to see inclusive and emotionally intelligent leaders, because that really does have a major impact on every organization and your culture and what you're trying to instill in your employees,” said Grow.Things have changed tremendously in the workforce in recent years, which impacts what leadership looks like, says Johann Laville, the chief learning officer at Merck.Remote work is becoming more commonplace, the workforce is younger and more diverse, and “technology is driving our future at light speed,” he said. As a result, leaders are listening more and focusing more on leading with humility, he says.Tips for Training Future LeadersEarly talent programs are a way companies can develop future leaders, says Minh Pham-Costello, vice president of business management at Santander. Employees can get an endorsement from their manager when applying.It’s crucial to make sure the employee is committed to the program “because sometimes you push programs to people and they either don’t have the capacity or the desire,” Pham-Costello said. It is also important to have programs that cater to senior leaders’ professional development needs.Programs for future leaders shouldn’t be one size fits all, according to Grow.“It’s great to have a global skill set that we’re trying to adhere to, but we also need to dig down and go to the level deeper and really understand how those skills show up at different role levels, different proficiency levels, and more, so that you really can personalize some of the training,” said Grow. For example, a senior leader who takes a junior-level course probably won’t find it engaging.The panel of leaders spoke about "Supporting Tomorrow's Leaders: Innovative and Engaging Approaches for Leadership Development" (photo by From Day One)Oliveira compared leadership training to trying to teach someone how to ride a bike. You can have trainees watch a movie on how to do it or “put them on a bike and have someone hold the bike to let them understand how it works,” he said.When exposing employees with leadership potential to management fundamentals, “It’s really important to create ways and mechanisms to give them visibility to what it looks like without the responsibility of leading someone directly,” Oliveira said. “I still see today many people stepping into their first managerial leadership opportunity and they still lack those fundamentals, and unfortunately, those suffering are those reporting to the individual.”How Employees Can Demonstrate Leadership SkillsAlthough organizations are investing in leadership development more than ever before, individuals still need to take the initial steps toward getting to the next level, says Pham-Costello.“Of course, other people can help you, but when you take the initiative with your career, you are not only developing your skill but also showing the organization that you are committed to the company and to your growth,” she said.Business resource groups (BRG) are essential when it comes to leadership development, says Pham-Costello. A BRG “gives you that visibility. People see you leading and influencing.”Laville said Merck has a true gig economy. This means if an employee wants to demonstrate their capability of being an effective leader and there’s something they are passionate about – whether it’s a topic, division, or product – they can apply internally, be interviewed, and be selected.That employee would then have support from the leader who releases them into the gig and the leader who would accept them “to come in and provide a new value,” Laville said.Seeking mentorship is another way for those who wish to be leaders to get to that level. Mentors are “subject matter experts that you can have some really open conversations with to help guide you on that path,” he said.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, ETU, for sponsoring this webinar.Mary Pieper is a freelance writer based in Mason City, Iowa.
Redefining Recruitment: The Advantages and Challenges of Skills-Based Hiring
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza August 12, 2024The HR industry is abuzz with a new phrase, “skills-based hiring,” but according to recent research, relatively few employers are actually following through with it. Why the gap? One major factor is inertia–hiring managers just keep doing what they’ve done in the past.For companies that hire white-collar workers, employers have been slow to look past four-year degree requirements and Fortune 500 employment pedigrees. Even for frontline workforces, where four-year degrees aren’t typically required, hiring managers may favor familiar brand-name employers, specific training programs, or familiar resume histories. The results are much the same.Now, companies are turning their attention to skills-based hiring in which capabilities and potential are given greeter credence than any professional pedigree. How skills-based hiring and talent management affects the frontline workforce was the topic of discussion during a recent From Day One webinar on the advantages and challenges of skills-based hiring.Getting Started With Skills-Based HiringNicole DeLue joined DISH Network, the satellite TV company, about nine months ago. As the new head of talent acquisition and frontline recruiting, one of her first projects has been overhauling the company’s recruitment process. Not an easy feat for a company that hires more than 800 locations. To boot, DISH hadn’t updated its hiring practices in two decades. Her goal has been to update the process into one that prioritizes skills and potential over employment history.Up against a stale process and long-held habits, DeLue evaluated the entire employee experience from application to talent development. “It was important for me to peel back the layers for the end-to-end candidate and employee lifecycle,” she said. “I wanted to take a deep dive and understand, what are we attracting for? How are we evaluating those skills? And are we actually developing those skills? Is what we’re attracting and qualifying candidates for is what we’re actually developing? Are employees being evaluated on the skills they’re being hired for?”The move to skills-based hiring helps level the playing field for applicants, and for the business, it helps solve the ongoing problem of talent scarcity. “The workforce has really changed over the past couple of years,” said panelist Lori Mix, SVP of talent acquisition at customer experience outsourcing company ibex. “Some specialized areas, like healthcare and finance, have moved to the skills space because there just aren’t enough workers.”Prioritizing skills and potential is also good for the bottom line, Mix pointed out, because it equips the company to grow and adapt in the future. “We want to have choices and give people opportunities to come into the company,” she said. “And as we grow, and are solving our customers’ hiring problems, we want to put people in that are going to be good leaders down the road. So we have to make sure we’re hiring the right skill set from the get-go.”Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza spoke with Dan Sapir of JobGet, Nicole DeLue of DISH Network, and Lori Mix of ibex during the From Day One webinar (photo by From Day One)Dan Sapir, general manager of frontline job platform JobGet, says this new approach to hiring has proven to motivate and energize a part of the workforce whose upward career potential has long been limited. “What we see in our own ecosystem is that as we expose job seekers to jobs that they had no clue they’d be a good fit for, they’re more excited to apply. They’re more excited when they go through the application process. And when they talk to the hiring team, they come off more personable. And because they’re more excited about that role, they stick around for a longer time.”Breaking Old Hiring Habits to Find the Best CandidatesSkills-based hiring is still a relatively new practice for many organizations, and many recruiting leaders have a long road of habit-breaking ahead of them.DeLue found that hiring managers at DISH were so involved in the hiring process, some were even reviewing resumes. Not only is that a time-waster, it can bias the managers, who may be inclined to evaluate candidates on past employers or jobs rather than future potential.Now, she’s waiting until the interview stage to show candidate profiles to hiring managers, and they’ve experimented with removing candidates’ names and previous employers altogether.“There are so many different ways that you can do it, but I think that it boils down to instilling confidence in your customer,” she said. “It’s about getting alignment on the skills you’re screening for, and not the profile. The minute that you let [managers] go back to ‘they worked at this company, and we just had five people a trip from that company,’ you’re going to get in that vicious cycle.”At ibex, Mix uses resumes to start conversations that can help her evaluate sought-after skills. For instance, she doesn’t let an employment gap disqualify an applicant. “There are so many life events and real-world issues driving reductions in force and employment gaps. I want to leverage the interview by focusing on what their attitude is on overcoming all those challenges,” she said. The company needs people who are good at problem-solving, are quick thinkers, have good attitudes, and possess the flexibility to overcome challenges—these aren’t skills that can be deduced from employment history.Skills-based hiring expands the internal talent pool as well, making it easier for the company to recruit and retain from within. To this end, ibex has coaching and mentorship programs that open workers to new jobs and careers with the company. “Our frontline workforce understands that they can take different paths,” Mix said. “They can pursue the leadership trajectory or they can be a subject matter expert, but either way, you know that there’s growth potential.”In frontline jobs, where turnover is typically quite high, giving workers the opportunity to move around can keep them there for longer. Career growth is a retention strategy, JobGet’s Sapir says. “There are a lot of job seekers that have transferable skills from one role to the next, and the more you can encourage them to look at other opportunities that they could be a great fit for, it actually helps make your company sticky.”Sapir pointed out that as promising as skills-based hiring is, workers and job seekers aren’t accustomed to this new way of doing things. Used to traditional job requirements, they may be self-selecting out of great positions, so companies need to budge their audience, he said. “You want to encourage more people that, if you think you’re a good fit for some of this stuff, please apply.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, JobGet, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.
Transforming Your Organization into a Skills-Based Powerhouse
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza July 23, 2024“Skills-based hiring allows us to focus on making better hiring decisions based on actual skills rather than subjective factors,” said Kristen Baller, head of talent acquisition at satellite provider DISH Network. “Traditional hiring practices often favor candidates who have specific educational backgrounds or tenure with [brand-name] companies. Moving to this model helps mitigate that bias. It allows employees to showcase their capabilities that could directly impact the roles and the requirements of a job.”Baller is part of a growing number of employers making skills-based hiring and promotion a priority. According to LinkedIn’s Future of Recruiting 2024 report, 73% of hiring professionals say skills-based hiring is a priority. Further, between 2019 and 2022, the number of companies that omit degree requirements from job postings increased 36%.There are many advantages to adopting a skills-based mentality: It grows the applicant talent pool based on relevant rather than arbitrary factors, it can improve the quality of hire, and it can promote internal mobility, giving workers a reason to invest in their own skill development and to stick with a company longer.“The importance of having consistency and scalability is important to any recruiting process,” said Kristen Cooper, head of North America solutions consulting at recruiting tech platform SHL. For skills-based hiring, “it comes down to the requirements of the job on day one versus what an organization can train its new hires on. A huge part of this is branding and marketing. It’s so important when a candidate reads a job description that it actually reflects what they’re going to be doing.”Cooper and Baller were part of an expert panel at From Day One’s webinar on how to transform an organization into a skills-based powerhouse. The group spoke about changing the hearts, minds, and processes that undergird this progressive new attitude toward workforce development.How to Break Old Habits and Adopt a Skills-Based ModelShifting to a skills-based hiring approach is easier said than done. Job descriptions, processes, evaluations, interviews, scoring, and even tech platforms have to be reimagined. It helps to involve hiring managers in the planning, and in doing so, begin challenging biases and breaking old habits.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the webinar about "Transforming Your Organization Into a Skills-Based Powerhouse" (photo by From Day One)“We’re really focusing on internal mobility and standing up practices like workshops and lunch-and-learns across the organization,” Baller said. “We invite our executive leadership to talk about the organization and the work they’re doing, but really, we ask them to focus on the skills and competencies that individuals need. That triggers the individuals attending these lunch-and-learns to think about what skills they possess that could transition into another job.” People leave the sessions energized and able to envision career opportunities they had never considered, she says.Redesigning Candidate Assessment ToolsFor many, retooling hiring practices will include new modes of screening candidates’ capabilities. The New York Times is one employer building its own assessment tools. Monica Parodi, the Times’ VP of talent acquisition, described how constructive it’s been to have those already in the organization assist with skills-based methodology and assessments.“We just finished building an iOS and an Android assessment. In recruiting, we don’t have that technical knowledge. There are great vendors and tools out there, but it’s also great when you can take your in-house talent and allow them to be a part of building that interview plan. We had them build in the ability to test their iOS-building skills and their Android skills and their coding abilities. They’re the ones who know what skills are needed to complement their team.”Not everyone will have the funds or in-house capabilities to invest in proprietary tech, but everyone can get the teams involved in identifying new capabilities that need to be added.Parodi is clear that making the change, and even implementing skills-based hiring, is an arduous undertaking. It requires forming new habits, conducting deeper and more critical research on roles, and writing requisitions differently. The process is a tough one, but a lucrative one. “That’s one thing about skills-based hiring in general: It’s a lot more work on the front end, but the rewards are worth that return on investment.”Powering Skills-Based MobilityAssisted by technology, employers are also reaping the benefits of skills-based hiring for upskilling, reskilling, and internal mobility. “Companies tend to be pretty excited about the ability to bring some science and precision to that whole process,” said Cooper of SHL.“We realized a couple of years ago that there are some pretty big gaps in the market for the talent that we need,” said Angie Lombardo, the VP of talent acquisition at engineering consultancy Arcadis. “So, we started researching different technologies that could assist us in the process. We decided to invest in a skills-powered AI tool.”Employees create a profile, and the platform helps them identify career paths and options within the company based on their skills and interests. “It helps people kind of see, ‘Oh, I could probably do this job; I never thought about it before.”Lombardo recognized that the company’s internal mobility rates were low, largely due to lack of communication, which is a challenge in a large organization with so many business units. “The right hand is often not talking to the left hand,” she described. “You have someone who has this specific experience in water or wastewater, for example, and they really want to do something in a different business area, but the divisions don’t talk to each other. They have transferable skills, but the visibility isn’t there.”Skills-Based Hiring as a Tool for Business Growth and Employee RetentionPrioritizing skills has significant implications for internal growth and mobility too. “It’s much more cost-effective to move an internal employee into a role than to have to [resort] to external hiring practices,” said Baller. “When we move to focusing on skills-based hiring over traditional qualifications, it enhances internal mobility opportunities across the organization. It promotes a more dynamic and flexible workforce where individuals are not limited by their job title or their background.”Mapping career paths and connecting the nodes with skills can help workers envision an enriching future with the company. At business consulting firm Slalom, senior director of talent acquisition Laura Sullivan is using a talent module to support internal moves.“It does a really lovely job of showing the jungle gym that your career could be at Slalom. Each level has skills and roles that are associated with it, and it helps people to see, ‘I have this skill right now, and these other roles also include these skills, so I could take my career in this direction by earning these certifications, or by potentially working on certain types of projects.’”Sullivan pointed out that skills-based career movement is especially valuable in the consulting industry, where employees are already placed on projects based on their skills and capabilities. “When people roll off a project, they’re on our bench, and the bench is a great time for people to upskill. We invest in certifications, training, and workshops to help people take on bench projects. They can learn how to help with RFPs, for instance, if that’s a skill that they don’t have yet. It’s a great way for us to give people new opportunities, and help them fill any gaps that they might have in their experience.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SHL, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.
Making All Paths to Parenthood More Inclusive For Your Employees
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza June 24, 2024At experiential outdoor sports company Woodward, the VP of talent and culture, Dan Kwong, is just getting started with family support benefits. Starting with the basics: nailing down an employer value proposition to guide the choices he will make, and underscoring current benefits, like paid parental leave. Perhaps most importantly, Kwong is taking his time to figure out what the workforce needs with two questions. First, “What are the key demographics of the talent pools that we currently attract, and that we want to attract? It’s not just the talent you currently have, but also the talent you want to grow in future years,” he said. Second, “What are the needs of each talent pool? We assume we know what people want and need. Sometimes we’re wrong.”Kwong was a part of a panel of talent and benefits professionals for a From Day One webinar titled “Making All Paths to Parenthood More Inclusive For Your Employees.” The group discussed strategies for identifying workforce needs and how to design a package that is as inclusive as possible.Kwong is careful to not make assumptions about what family structures look like or even who qualifies as family. Woodward employs a relatively young workforce, many are aged 18–24, often living far away from their biological families. Their needs outside of work aren’t necessarily typical or predictable. “This one’s pretty personal to me,” Kwong said. “Most of my family is abroad in Hong Kong; I’m a single guy in Utah. My family structure may be non-traditional or different, and my family may not be genetically or blood-related.”Woodward isn’t the only employer taking note of the diversity of needs. “Everybody’s family looks different,” said Corrinne Hobbs, the general manager and vice president of employer market at family health platform Ovia Health. “[Employers] are recognizing those differences by making sure there are solutions that support people where they are. For women’s health and family-building, it’s having a solution that’s inclusive of preconception maternity, parenting, menopause, and then general health in between. Wherever and whatever journey people end up on–and it could be two or more journeys at once.”Hobbs sees the appetite from companies for kinds of new family-building benefits, ones that encompass more employee experiences and needs. Inclusion of all workforce demographics is top of mind for employers, and for some, it’s become a differentiator.The panel included Dan Kwong of Woodward, Corrinne Hobbs of Ovia Health, journalist and moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, and Shawna Oliver of Manulife (photo by From Day One)A particular point of interest for employers, says Hobbs, is finding healthcare support for workers who live outside of major metropolitan areas, often in “care deserts,” where healthcare isn’t easily accessible. And much of the care that’s needed is for members of the LGBTQIA+ community and women, especially black women, and their family-building needs.Identifying the Diverse Needs in Your WorkforceTo design inclusively, HR teams have to know who’s working there, how they identify, and what they need. But that’s not necessarily easy. “People don’t always feel comfortable speaking up,” Hobbs said. “There’s also the element of loneliness, and that feeling limits a person’s ability to speak up.” To remedy this, tap the knowledge of your employee resource groups, says Hobbs.Kristy Lucksinger, head of global benefits and commercial real estate firm JLL, does this. She proactively asks the firm’s ERGs about their needs, and the resource groups approach her too.“We also do employee surveys to find out directly from our employees what they’re looking for and what they’re interested in,” Lucksinger said. “We’re in the process of considering, evaluating, and moving forward with a conjoint survey across the world to find out exactly where our employees’ wants and desires are.”Still, employers should allow for some margin of error when surveying workers, says Shawna Oliver, the head of global benefits and wellness at investment management firm Manulife. “As much as we put a big effort into gathering identity and demographic data about our employees, the truth is, we don’t always get 100%. Some people aren’t comfortable [sharing] vulnerable and personal information. We have to assume that there are pockets of people within every population that need every sort of benefit that’s out there.”Promoting Family-Building BenefitsBenefits teams can put together the most rock-solid communication plan and the slickest guides, but it doesn’t mean people will read them, or use those benefits.A few times a year, outside of annual enrollment at Manulife, Oliver and her team host informational sessions about benefits, beyond the basics of copays and deductibles. They could be about anything: family-forming benefits, mental health, retirement, or financial resources. Then they open up the floor for an Ask Me Anything. “It’s unfiltered,” she said. “We ask people to not share personal information, but we have a very candid conversation in those moments. It’s humbling, the amount of questions we get, from things as basic as ‘how do I find a provider?’ to ‘I used these benefits, and it didn’t work for me.’”Opening the door for employee feedback helps ensure every dollar invested in family-building benefits counts. “The total rewards pie is only so big,” said Lucksinger. “We really want to hear from our employees about where they feel the most value. So we reach out to our employees and say, ‘We understand there’s an interest here. What’s more important to you: This or that?’ It’s about offering a vast array of benefits, but investing the money where our employees see the value.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Ovia 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 Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.
How to Improve the Recruiting Process for Technical Talent
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza June 13, 2024“There’s a record number of candidates applying for roles. I think it takes a good, solid recruiting strategy to ensure inclusivity practices are followed,” said Cody Ledbetter, senior technical recruiter at O’Reilly Auto Parts, during a From Day One panel discussion on how to build an exceptional recruitment process.According to Amanda Richardson, CEO at technical interview platform CoderPad, this increase in application volume is forcing recruiters to make changes. She observes companies abandoning loosely planned, informal interviews for more conscientious decision-making. “It’s nice to see companies being a little more organized, disciplined, and clear in their hiring processes,” she said.Richardson is encouraged by candidate assessments designed to evaluate the skills most relevant to the job–rather than arbitrary pop quizzes, for instance–and happy with the return of the live interview checking both hard and soft skills.It is the confluence of mutually beneficial tech tools and human understanding, said panelists, that is changing the way employers are able to recruit and vet incoming tech talent.Using the Latest in HR Tech to Improve the Hiring ProcessArtificial intelligence has talent acquisition professionals excited for its possibilities and likewise trepidation about its power. And whether they’re prepared or not, AI has arrived in HR technology. So, what are the implications for the hiring process?The panelists spoke to the topic "Hiring Tech Developers: Building a Nearly Perfect Recruitment Process" (photo by From Day One)“I do think that [AI] will make the recruitment process significantly more efficient, in terms of elimination of manual tasks,” said Phil Yob, senior director of talent acquisition at insurance tech company Applied Systems. “I don’t think that at this point it’s solving for the personal interaction you get from working with TA or HR in the interview process. Despite all the good work they can do from automated messaging, face-to-face interaction and the human touch element are big pieces.”Further, panelists urged recruiting teams to be vigilant about the quality of the AI tools they’re using. Ultimately, the TA teams and hiring managers who use them will be responsible for whatever decisions are made. “It’s our job to understand what it’s doing and what it’s weeding out,” said Julia Stone, head of recruiting for eCommerce infrastructure services at Amazon.Assessing Great CandidatesFaced with mountains of applications, recruiters are figuring out the most efficient, effective, and scalable ways of evaluating the qualifications of those candidates. Ledbetter’s rule of thumb is that “the recruitment process should be commensurate with the level of technicality for the role.” Don’t exhaust candidates with overly complex or back-to-back assessments. By avoiding burdensome technical assessments–and limiting questions only to those most relevant to the role–employers can build trusting relationships with top developers.Given the tech industry’s reputation for being less than diverse, Richardson said she’s encouraged by new skills-based hiring practices. “I can assure you that [tech] is still lacking in diversity, but I credit people teams with doing everything they can to really fight against it. I do think the opportunities are around finding a way to assess candidates that’s different from just looking for logos or keywords.”Regarding the legitimacy and consistency of recommendations made by interviewers themselves, the panelists encouraged rigorous preparation. “It’s very important to establish what each person is assessing for,” Amazon’s Stone explained. “By putting more rigor in that structure before you’re going in, you can avoid some of that groupthink.”There may be room for more equity in the hiring process when it comes to hiring candidates from within or without the organization. Yob noted that Applied Systems makes a point of operating consistently, whether the candidate is internal or external. “We’ll give a little credence to their having been a part of the culture, but I think the best thing we can do is to motivate internally by treating them the same and continue to move them through that process to make sure we’re getting the best possible person.”Skills matter, but so does the mode of working. Employers that have called their workers back to the office are returning to the in-person interviews, the panelists said, but that won’t be necessary for everyone. The best way to evaluate a candidate is the context in which they’ll be working. “Some companies give a Slack interview–or on Teams, whatever your product is,” said Richardson. “If you can’t communicate effectively on that channel, you probably aren’t going to be successful in a remote world.” The interview format matters, she said. “Are they going to be proficient not only in the skills but in the environment, too?”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, CoderPad, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.
Developing Crucial Competencies Among Managers to Enhance Inclusion
BY Wanly Chen May 21, 2024To improve workplaces, leaders need to reevaluate how they are growing their managers and provide the proper support. In a From Day One webinar, Lydia Dishman, senior editor of growth and engagement at Fast Company, spoke with leaders about the strategies they’re taking to address skills gaps in their companies, especially those related to boosting workplace inclusion.Self-aware leaders display a higher level of confidence and empathy, resulting in stronger teams and effective leadership. Yet despite most leaders believing that they exhibit self-awareness, research shows only 10-15% of leaders are self-aware.The disparity comes from the challenge of displaying vulnerability, Khalil Smith, vice president of inclusion, diversity, and engagement at Akamai Technologies, says.“We need to be given at least an opportunity to have some of that autonomy to say, “I think that I can be better here or here,” Smith said. “It’s not a bad thing to say, ‘I do struggle with giving difficult feedback and that's not something that’s going to hold me back.’ This is different from being externally assessed because it builds the self-awareness that we need,” Smith said.By showing empathy for others, leaders can cultivate a safe work environment for others to grow, which can be a win-win situation for companies and employees. Singleton Beato, global executive vice president and chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at media group, McCann Worldgroup, says empathetic leaders can reap the benefits of a stronger team.Amanda Grow of ETU, Singleton Beato of McCann Worldgroup, Diana Navas-Rosette of Microsoft, and Khalil Smith of Akamai Technologies spoke in a panel moderated by Lydia Dishman of Fast Company (photo by From Day One)“Being self-aware allows one to understand how to present constructive and corrective feedback in a way that isn’t demeaning to someone,” Beato said. “Doing so safely helps employees to feel that they have the support of the manager and helps them to be aware of not only whatever the correction needs to be but also to feel empowered to make that correction.”Leaning on Newer Learning MethodsWhen compared to traditional learning methods, researchers found immersive learning like VR training to yield better results and also positively impact employees’ performance. Amanda Grow, director of customer success at learning company, ETU, says learning simulations can also provide opportunities for employees to learn skills that may be difficult to learn in traditional settings.“One of the key elements in learning simulations is teaching people how to work through situations that they don't feel comfortable in,” Grow said. “Simulations have the ability to bring some of that emotion to life and make you feel uncomfortable or make you feel anxious.”During these simulations, employees dealing with challenging emotions have an opportunity to self-reflect on their emotions in a safe space, Grow says. “We want to teach people how to reflect and understand their internal processes,” Grow said. “That's going to be valuable if we want employees to improve their self-awareness.”Research found employees who have personal development opportunities are more engaged and have higher retention rates, showing how learning can play a large role in how employees perceive their work and growth.Whether it’s through traditional learning modules or providing a safe environment for employees to learn, leaders play an instrumental role in bridging the gaps. Diana Navas-Rosette, general manager of global diversity and inclusion solutions, communities, and activation at Microsoft, says that Microsoft is leaning on newer technology to offer personalized learning opportunities.“Simulations stand out as probably one of the most innovative solutions that we have in our portfolio right now. They are immersive and allow learners to practice the skills realistically and safely,” Navas-Rosette said. “A learner navigates through a simulation and then gets a report at the end that tells them what they did well and where they have areas of opportunities for them to grow. Employees can always come back and practice if they want to, allowing it to be a continuous relationship with a solution for them to build that skill set.”Wanly Chen is a writer and poet based in New York City.
How to Provide Fertility Benefits Without Breaking the Bank
BY Mary Pieper May 10, 2024Infertility impacts one in every six couples who are trying to conceive, according to the World Health Organization. “That number is staggering,” said Jenny Carillo, president of Ovia Health, who spoke in a recent From Day One webinar.“We’re seeing the average age of people who are trying to initiate their family building efforts increasing,” she told moderator Lydia Dishman. “People are now trying to conceive in their 30s and 40s, when they’re becoming less fertile.”However, a new report from Ovia Health suggests only 15% of employees have access to fertility benefits. “This benefit is very difficult to justify in terms of return on investment, and the reason why is that it’s crazy expensive,” said Arturo Arteaga, the senior director of total rewards at VCA Animal Hospitals.However, employees now see providing fertility benefits as their employer’s responsibility, says Kim Duck, VP of global benefits at News Corp. “I think it’s ramped up very, very quickly, where it used to be nice to have and now it is expected,” she said.That discussion began in the United States, but Duck said she was surprised how quickly it spread to global employees. “It’s just exploding everywhere,” she said. The Case for Fertility BenefitsOffering fertility benefits can be a difficult decision for employers because it serves only a small group of employees, says Arteaga. “You have to balance providing that benefit for a few or think of something else that can impact more people,” he said.However, 80% of the employees at VCA Animal Hospitals are women, so “it is something we need to do,” Arteaga said.Lydia Dishman of Fast Company moderated the panel on providing fertility benefits without breaking the bank (photo by From Day One)Even if a company offers fertility benefits, employees who use them still need to spend a lot of their own money to access care, says Arteaga. “But just imagine if you didn’t have the company helping you,” he said. “It’s just impossible for the majority of people.”For companies with difficulty recruiting new employees, fertility benefits can be a big advantage, says John Von Arb, VP of total rewards for Essentia Health.“We rely on our benefits as an employer of choice, and things like that encourage and incentivize individuals to come to us or to stay with us as we move forward,” he said.Fertility Benefits and the Continuum of CareHistorically, women’s reproductive health has been viewed as fragmented stages, such as conception, pregnancy, post-partum, and menopause, says Carillo.However, “the reality is this is a continuum of one’s life, and these periods of one’s life are connected to one’s whole health,” she said. “So, if we think about it from a whole health perspective, we’d like to anchor to the thought of prevention. And when you think about prevention, you’re able to really think about what preconception care looks like.”Carillo said helping employees be in a healthier place so they can conceive naturally is cost-effective compared to assisting them with fertility treatment costs.Providing benefits for young families doesn’t end after conception, says Duck. Some News Corps business units offer 20 weeks of parental leave that is gender agnostic.Essentia Health offers childcare support for mothers returning to work. Von Arb said this support is not just for day-shift employees, but also for those on the evening and overnight shifts. “All of those go with the broader context of family benefits,” he said.Talking to Employees About Fertility BenefitsInclusive language and inclusive perspectives are critical when talking to employees about fertility benefits, says Carillo. It’s important to be inclusive to men and the LBGTQ+ population seeking these treatments.Sometimes the male half of a heterosexual couple is only tested for infertility after healthcare providers have exhausted all the options for the woman in the relationship, says Arteaga. “I think that’s a cultural shift we have to change,” he said.Fortunately, younger generations are more open than older ones when it comes to discussing infertility, according to Von Arb. “Nothing is off the table,” he said. “I do think that it becomes a little easier for us to address some of these issues as we move forward, and frankly to communicate them a little more effectively, as there’s not a taboo around them.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Ovia Health, for sponsoring this webinar.Mary Pieper is a freelance writer based in Mason City, Iowa.
Skills-Based Hiring: Getting Started and Overcoming Common Objections
BY Katie Chambers March 19, 2024It’s never been easier to put skills-based hiring into practice. The tools and the resources are there–and the potential benefits are abundant. And yet, some leaders and hiring managers are skeptical.“One of the major positives about the skills-based approach is that it adds more science and rigor to the hiring process,” said Christopher Rotolo, vice president of global talent at Mitek. Adding science, Rotolo says, adds objectivity, which can remove some of the bias and “increase the validity of the whole hiring process.”“The fact is that over 60% of people don’t have a college degree. But that hasn’t stopped employers from benchmarking candidates that way,” said moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company. Dishman moderated a panel of leaders during From Day One’s recent webinar about Skills-Based Hiring: Getting Started and Overcoming Uncommon Objections.Unconscious bias can easily creep into the hiring process when looking at a candidate’s resume, which can reveal indicators like elite educational opportunities, prestige, race, and even generational wealth, none of which are necessarily predictors of career success. Hiring almost exclusively on skill can help employers dial into what really matters.Rather than focusing on degrees, says Amanda Richardson, CEO and head of people at CoderPad, “You have to dissect the role into the skills that are needed, working with the hiring manager and people who are currently in the role. The most important part of the conversation is not just ‘What are the skills?’ but ‘What does good look like?’” This approach requires more in-depth conversations between hiring managers and department leaders to get a stronger sense of not only what success looks like, but how previous successes can be communicated during the interview process.“I find that taking a practical approach [means] literally saying, ‘What does a great answer sound like? Does this person really know what they're talking about?’” said Stacey Olive, VP of talent acquisition and employer branding for Medidata, Dassault Systemes.“Because there’s not an empirical objective test for everything, we really have to go based on our conversations with people.” This means hiring managers need to prepare upfront so they can infer if they’re hearing “flowery language” merely alluding to past success, or if a candidate actually has lived experience that will be beneficial to the role.Focusing on skills-based hiring isn’t just a great way to reduce unconscious bias, it can also make the hiring process quicker. “A little bit of upfront work on understanding and aligning on the skills and the level of the skills needed will actually make a much faster hiring experience,” Richardson said.Semoneel Bamboat, VP and global head of diversity, inclusion and talent acquisition at Capri Holdings, shares that while her organization has a rubric within which they score talent competencies on a scale of one to five, her team does not let the skill scoring fully dictate the conversation.“While we have numbers and rigor around it, nothing is set in stone,” she said. “The purpose of that really is so we can cast this wide net. We don’t want to be that specific, because we don’t want to then lose sight of someone that might not fit that exactly.” Skills-forward hiring should be used to identify previously untapped candidates, not a blanket way to eliminate unusual or creative choices that could be an interesting fit.Richardson adds that getting too technical in the taxonomy can overwhelm the conversation, especially as hiring managers try to parse the subtleties between junior and senior versions of the same role. “I've seen the situation where developers start arguing about the nuances of ‘What does it mean to be very proficient versus mildly proficient?’ And I think you can lose the forest for the trees pretty quickly.”Copying and pasting old job descriptions when looking to fill a role is no longer enough. Instead, there should be periodic check-ins to make sure descriptions are up-to-date as the nature of the work, and therefore the role, continues to evolve. Part of this can be solved by shortening and simplifying the job listing. “It tends to be a lengthy laundry list of desires and needs. Instead, employers should aim to distill it into ‘What is the required skill for success?’” Olive said.With an eye toward DEI, Bamboat’s organization uses short external job listings with neutral language, keeping the more elaborate and specific job description for internal use only among the hiring team. “We take a lot of the details out to be able to cast that wide net,” she said.“We never want to post the exact job and be very specific about those requirements, because we feel like we’re decreasing our talent pool.” Bamboat shared the well-known study that showed women tend to only apply for jobs where they feel they will fit every single benchmark. Shortening the list of requirements can make it more inclusive. Once candidates make it to the interview phase, the hiring manager can discuss the specific details from the full listing to gauge if it’s a fit.In conversation moderated by Lydia Dishman of Fast Company, the panelists discussed the topic “Skills-Based Hiring: Getting Started and Overcoming Common Objections” (photo by From Day One)Pamela Rodas, global senior director of talent acquisition at Telus International, hires for a company with more than 3,000 types of job profiles, all of which are changing rapidly as her organization embraces hybrid workplaces and remote opportunities. In turn, she and her team must change how they assess skills. For example, her newer sales development hires may not have been exposed to an in-person environment where they could hone their technique. Therefore, she finds herself hiring more for soft skills or what Dishman prefers to call power skills, especially as the post-pandemic corporate environment has higher than ever expectations. “All of our clients want to go faster. So forget about skills, do you know how to do the job and do it in less time?” Rodas said.Trying to identify those more amorphous qualities, like being a fast learner, in a candidate can be a challenge. Panelists offered two solutions. The first is reviewing case studies. “To identify these characteristics that lead to outstanding performance, you study what those outstanding performers do,” Rotolo said.The second, is conducting actual testing during the hiring process. “Work simulations can be helpful, whether that means programming together for two hours or sitting and doing a sales demo. What are those real-world experiences where you can actually test the proof points?” Richardson said. Just having a great conversation in an interview is not necessarily enough.But the interview process can still be helpful if you are asking the right questions. “The research still says that behaviorally based questions are the most valid. And there’s really two types: ‘Tell me about a time when’’ past experiences, or situational questions,” Rotolo said.Rodas believes it’s also important to have an honest conversation about the nature of the role and pay attention to the applicant’s response. “The recruiter can [now] spend more time with the candidate talking about how they would endure the type of workload we’re going to put on them. In any type of business today, that’s worth 10 times more,” she said.This also means asking the right questions internally too, to ensure there is no unconscious bias at play and that a candidate’s competency is still at the forefront. “We have an opportunity now to ask [hiring managers], ‘What's the basis of your decision?’” Olive said. “You have to understand and politely point out where you think you see bias happening.”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.
The Long-Term Shortage of Talent in the Post-Industrial Age: How Companies Can Respond
BY Katie Chambers December 19, 2023In the early industrial age, companies had a hierarchy built around manufacturing and machinery. But now workplaces are organized much differently. Their new priority? The talent. We’ve entered an era where the shortage of workers, obsolescence of skills, and new levels of employee agency will present employers with historic challenges. Most companies are not ready.The new Intelligence Age is a time when skills, employee creativity, information and AI will define our companies. In a recent From Day One webinar about “The Long-Term Shortage of Talent in the Post-Industrial Age: How Companies Can Respond,” speakers explored three strategies for success: rethinking the organization as dynamic rather than static, rethinking management with human-centered leadership, and rethinking HR as no longer an expense center, but rather a function like R&D that must build and invest in the company's people.All told, this means we need to redesign our companies around the person and shift to a new model for work. The time to act is now, experts say.The Changing Power Structure in the Labor MarketThe renowned Josh Bersin, founder & CEO of The Josh Bersin Company, says that with Baby Boomers retiring and declining fertility rates, there will be smaller generations coming forward to replace them. Employers will have a high demand for skilled workers but a much smaller talent pool, he says.“If you look at the supply and demand of workers and the labor force, it’s absolutely different from what we’ve seen in the past,” said Sania Khan, chief economist and head of market insights at Eightfold, an AI-driven talent intelligence platform.This could signal tough times ahead, especially in an age where companies are defined more and more by people and ideas than by machinery and products. “Scarcity of talent is one of the biggest challenges out there for companies,” said moderator Steve Koepp, From Day One’s chief content officer and co-Founder.Bersin notes that his company is getting consistent feedback from employers post-pandemic that they are having trouble sourcing new talent and with the retention of what is “a highly empowered workforce. We have employees saying, ‘I'm going to quietly quit. I'm going to work my wage. I'm going to do what I need to do. I don’t care what you say. You don’t like hybrid work? Tough luck, I’ll go find a job where I can work remotely.”Bersin predicts this is a long-term trend, and companies need to get smarter about finding and keeping their people. This is especially true in industries like healthcare, which is facing a major labor shortage despite a recent BLS report predicting 54% of new jobs will be in healthcare due in part to that same aging population that is decreasing the workforce.A Renewed Focus on Employees and ProductivityWith technology changing rapidly and more and more roles relying on it, companies will need to prioritize upskilling and reskilling opportunities to keep their workforce up-to-date and competitive. “Companies will need to focus on their employees,” Khan said, noting that companies that don’t prioritize training are already experiencing higher employee turnover.Another way to curb turnover is to take a hard look at workplace policies and make sure they are serving employees personally to make the organization more attractive, whether that is through flexible hours, hybrid options, and even AI assistance, Khan says.Bersin’s organization just finished a report on the prevalence of the four-day workweek or work time reduction. “This is becoming a big deal because employees want flexibility. We’re finding that this idea creates job productivity, and forces companies to redesign jobs,” Bersin said. “There are things that we’re going to do that seem unnatural now to deal with this labor shortage. In the future they will be commonplace. That’s just one example.”The recent webinar featured Josh Bersin of the Josh Bersin Company and Sania Khan of Eightfold (photo by From Day One)This changing definition of productivity, a focus on “revenue per employee” rather than hours worked, will also serve working parents well, Khan says, as they manage to get more work done in a shorter period.“Hiring more people isn’t necessarily more productive,” Khan said. Companies will start to measure their success by how efficiently they are utilizing their human resources to generate revenue, a focus on output rather than the size of the team. “The companies that are really good at productivity are good at human resources. They’re good at training, facilitating workshops, redesigning jobs, flattening the corporate hierarchy, changing the role of leaders, and democratizing career development,” Bersin said. “These things that might have felt like ‘nice-to-haves’ ten years ago are becoming critical to becoming productive in this new economy.”Reimagining a Skills-based HierarchyIn the information age, employment has been less about job titles and more about the work, Bersin says, with employees taking on tasks and using their skills for objectives far beyond their stated job description in order to accomplish the mission of the day, week, or month. “These rigid job descriptions, titles, and hierarchies are getting in the way of reorganizing and redesigning the company to be more efficient,” Bersin said. He anticipates an existential change in which the titles of managers and corner office perks will be deprioritized in order to get the work done.In turn, companies will be looking less at what skills prospective employees currently have and instead look at adjacent skills that show an employee has the potential to be upskilled to be the right fit, Khan says. A focus on skills, says Bersin, can also pave the way for automation. Employees can be allowed to utilize the top of their skill set if their lower-level, less skilled tasks can be automated.“If you look at the needs of an organization, you can put employees in specific, goal-centric projects,” Khan said. “Instead of just having you siloed to one department, you can now move around to where you’re needed based on your skills.” This would also allow employees to be well-versed in the whole enterprise, rather than just one area, so both the individual and the organization benefit. And tools like Eightfold can use machine learning to help companies analyze what skill areas are lacking and fill those gaps with talent.How Leaders Can Adapt to the New Workforce“Leaders have to understand this labor shortage existentially and operate in a company where transformation and growth isn’t an episodic thing–it's never-ending,” Bersin said. “The new model of leadership is, ‘can you build a company that can move people around, that can develop people, that can hold people accountable, but also give them the opportunity to move when you need them into a new place?’ Those are different kinds of leadership skills.”And with the hierarchy flattening, workers need to be prepared to sometimes be leaders and other times be more subordinate depending on the current project. “We have to democratize the concept of leadership.” Those with flexibility and an appetite for innovation will be most attractive to potential employers, Khan adds.And in a talent-driven company, HR will become more and more essential, and will be called on to understand a wide variety of skills, roles, and changing corporate models to operate within skills-based planning, Bersin says. Gone are the days where HR will be associated with conflict resolution and complaints. Instead, HR is becoming a forward-thinking, technology, and data-driven career path.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Eightfold, for sponsoring this webinar. You can read more from Josh Bersin on the post-industrial age here.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.
How Innovative Employers Are Making Their Benefits More Inclusive
BY Carrie Snider December 04, 2023Company benefits have never been one-size-fits-all, but today the employee landscape is changing even more rapidly than ever. The more varied the workforce, the more varied their benefits needs are going to be.That’s certainly true for Liz Pittinger, head of customer success at Stork Club. In the last three years alone, family planning and fertility benefit needs have drastically changed.Pittinger spoke to this at a From Day One’s webinar along with three other panelists. Lydia Dishman, senior editor of growth and engagement, at Fast Company, moderated.Millennials are further in their careers now and want company benefits to better reflect the changing workforce as well as align with diversity, equity, and inclusion, Pittinger says. That has opened the way for Stork Club to create a more inclusive path for people to start families.“People are waiting later and later to start their families, so you have single women in their 30s and 40s, who are concerned about fertility preservation,” Pittinger said. “Then there are same sex couples who have typically been excluded from a health plan and fertility solution.”Companies now can’t afford not to offer these inclusive benefits. Especially if they want to attract and retain the talent they need.“I think it's really important to ground ourselves on why DEI is important,” she added. The answer: because it’s important to employees who are searching for and staying at jobs for different reasons than previous generations. According to a study by Fortune and the Institute for Corporate Productivity of 1,200 HR professionals around the world, overperforming organizations are those that focus on DEI. “In other words, company culture, even over compensation,” said Pittinger.That is to say, however, not every company needs to offer every type of benefit. Organizations must cater to their workforce, their unique makeup, and their unique needs. “It’s about understanding the company goals and demographics,” she said. “Some industries just traditionally run heavier on single women in their 30s and 40s. You may have a large LGBTQ community.” It goes back to understanding their needs. How? Be in close contact with them, offer surveys, get feedback from the hiring team and managers.Then, once HR managers understand the gaps, they need to make changes, circle back and make sure their people know what’s being offered.Growing Need for Mental Health BenefitsWhen reporters at the Los Angeles Times had to stay out of the office due to Covid, they felt the disconnect. They were doing their jobs, telling the hard stories, but didn’t have that natural way of talking things out with colleagues.Nancy Antoniou, SVP of strategy and CHRO at the Los Angeles Times, recalled how difficult that time was. Rather than expressing and sharing, the reporters were internalizing what they were seeing.“We had a situation where an employee called our EAP (Employee Assistance Program) vendor, and the story that they were sharing about what they were experiencing during one of the protests was so impactful to the EAP counselor, that the counselor themselves started breaking down,” Antoniou said. “It was a role shift for the employee, where they felt like they had to now counsel the counselor.”With that information, they now had the responsibility to do something about it. So they implemented a peer-to-peer support group, and hired clinicians to train employees. It’s really made a difference in how they share and work through the emotional side of the job, Antoniou says. “Having the ability to talk to your peer who has potentially experienced something similar is where that inclusiveness and belonging came in,” she added.The bottom line is you have to listen to your people, and then you must follow through and give them what they need. “There's no greater disservice than taking a survey and asking employees to share their opinions and thoughts about our culture or offerings, and then doing nothing with it,” said Antoniou.Putting On Your Listening EarsOf course, there are benefits that everyone needs. Kristy Lucksinger, head of global benefits at JLL, said that during the pandemic many people were reactively addressing health issues. More recently at JLL, they’re trying to close that gap and help people focus more on preventative care. One tool to accomplish this has been virtual health care.“We truly believe that virtual care is absolutely critical in this environment, ensuring our employees really know and understand how virtual care works; and when it's appropriate to use virtual care versus when it’s not,” she said.In a conversation moderated by Lydia Dishman of Fast Company, the panelists discussed the topic “How Innovative Employers Are Making Their Benefits More Inclusive.”Relaying benefits information to employees is key. One way they do that at JLL is training managers to recognize symptoms or indications among employees so they can help them take the next step.An employee came to Lucksinger with personal issues at home, specifically an adult child with mental health concerns. “They were dealing with their gay son who needed some mental health services provided to them because they were experiencing a couple of their friends who had just committed suicide.”Any parent with stressed children is also stressed themselves, she added. Acknowledging that hardship, and the impact on the employee’s life, were important first steps. Next was to ensure the employee and their child got the help they needed with a professional with experience in the LGBTQ+ space.“Just having had that conversation with this employee, you could just see the relief in that employee,” explained Lucksinger. “We are trying to go that extra mile to ensure that our employee experiences go above and beyond.”Take the Proactive ApproachThe key takeaway from the panel was thinking outside the box. Straying away from the traditional approaches to company benefits and incorporating the values of DEI into offering the benefits people really need. And it all goes back to listening. Sometimes employees will come to you, but you also need to proactively seek them.In the case of Lisa Singh, managing director of global benefits at Silicon Valley Bank, they met with their military and veteran employees to get their specific feedback. The employees gave their thoughts on experience and processes, which Singh said they took into consideration and made adjustments to their policies. Education goes a long way, too, Singh added. At the bank, they hold mental health safety trainings and offer other ways to educate so employees are better equipped to help themselves and others. They hold regular webinars about different aspects of health, which is an opportunity for the company to let employees know about their benefits. One piece of key advice to make sure this kind of change happens? Take matters into your own hands to best serve your employees.“Your healthcare vendor may say, ‘yes, you’re competitive. You have fertility coverage, don't worry about it.’ But we really need to look under the hood at that,” she said. “If we don't ask the questions, if we don’t work with our consultants, even push our consultants, then we’re going to have these gaps that we don't know of, and we’re not going to be meeting the needs of our diverse population.”Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.
Tech-Powered Ways to Recognize Your Team
BY Mary Pieper December 04, 2023When Magdalena Bugallo, director of total rewards experience at VCA, opened an ecard on Boss Appreciation Day this year, she was moved to tears.“There were words of appreciation from my team, and for me that was amazing because I built this team from scratch. We had been getting to know each other for the past year. And it filled my heart and made me cry,” Bugallo told journalist Lydia Dishman, moderator of the recent From Day One webinar titled “How Tech Can Boost Engagement and Recognition.”In this new hybrid and remote work era, using tech to recognize others can be as simple as that. This is good news because employees who think their company will recognize them are 2.7 times more likely to have high engagement at work, according to Zippia.But business leaders also need to know which technologies and practices are motivational and informative versus fatiguing or counterproductive.Recognizing Team Members in the MomentOrganizations are already using communication tools to effectively recognize employees immediately, instead of waiting for their performance review or a big corporate event.Supriya Bahri, vice president of global total rewards at Roblox, says whenever one of her direct reports has a work anniversary, she writes one or two short paragraphs on the team’s Slack channel to acknowledge the event. Those individuals have begun to do the same for their direct reports.“If it’s the first anniversary, it’s a three or four-line story about how we met and how we’re so excited looking at how far we’ve come,” Bahri said. “And if it's the year three anniversary, it’s reflecting back on the year and thanking them for it.”Microsoft Teams has a function that VCA uses to celebrate employees in a team chat or via a private message, says Bugallo.“It has visuals like a unicorn that means, ‘You’re amazing,’” she said. It also allows managers to recognize employees when they display values such as leadership or courage, Bugallo added.Recognition For AllEveryone is different regarding how they like to be recognized, and respecting that difference is critical, says Katrina Hall, director of human resources at VSP Vision.For example, Hall had a team member she wanted to recognize for the extraordinary way she faced adversity. Hall planned to praise her on a company-wide platform, but the employee told her she disliked recognition on the platform and found it disingenuous. She told Hall, “the people who really appreciate me will tell me directly. I don’t want the fanfare.’”On the other hand, “I have other people on my team that need that larger recognition,” Hall said. “You have to lean into your team and ask, ‘How do you want to be recognized? What’s important to you?’ In knowing that, then you hit the mark every time.”Everyone’s Voice MattersOne essential way to recognize employees is to make them feel like their opinions matter, which can be challenging to accomplish in a hybrid workforce, says Bahri.During Covid, everyone worked remotely, so “we were all a box on the screen. It was leveled,” she said.Now some employees are physically present in a room while others are still boxes on the screen. Bahri says some in the latter group weren’t actively participating in meetings, so she told the team leaders to “watch out for the quieter people, and as we are asking for input from the room, if we haven’t heard from employee A and employee B, let’s ask them, ‘Hey, we haven’t heard from you. How do you feel about it?’”Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth & engagement at Fast Company moderated the webinar (photo by From Day One)Barhi also recommended companies take advantage of Zoom’s breakout room feature to allow remote workers to meet in smaller teams “because some people are more comfortable discussing an idea among three people versus 15.”Employee engagement and recognition can be challenging for large corporations with team members across the globe.“We’d like to have a little bit of fun. Who doesn’t?” said Seema Bhansali, vice president of employee experience and inclusion at Henry Schein.That’s why the Henry Schein Games began. Employees were randomly split into two teams: Team Henry and Team Esther, Esther referring to Esther Schein, co-founder of the company. Each team was given the opportunity to engage through competition and surveys on topics such as how they volunteer. The company set up a specific website for the games where employees can check the leaderboard, post pictures, and engage with each other. A few Henry Schein sites even held field days for in-person competition.“It was amazing to see the transformation from some of the most serious people in our organization, just getting into the fun and chatting on teams with one another,” Bhansali said.The company also has various clubs where employees worldwide can bond through shared hobbies such as gardening or gaming.“It’s an appreciation for the team to say, ‘Hey, jobs well done,’” Bhansali said. “You also need to unwind. It’s a focus on wellness and connection in a time when we are a little bit disconnected because of the way that we work.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Achievers, who supported this webinar.Mary Pieper is a freelance reporter based in Mason City, Iowa.
Using AI to Revolutionize Hiring for Top Talent, While Avoiding the Pitfalls
BY Matthew Koehler November 15, 2023The influence of AI on our world is profound and ongoing, though its effects may be more understated than the sensational headlines suggest. Instead of the Matrix abound, AI is enhancing the work of human hands by simplifying or eliminating rote tasks, and making it easier for companies and workers to focus on more important tasks.“AI is a job transformer, right? What it is basically doing is automating things, like high volume, repetitive tasks. And it is giving us more time to think and do something that we’re good at like problem solving,” said Ankur Saxena, SVP & head of strategic operations and talent at Mphasis.One of those areas of work where AI is improving processes, and will continue to streamline on both the client and user end, is in hiring and talent acquisition. But there are many pitfalls, namely in how AI carries human biases. During a recent From Day One webinar, Matt Charney, talent acquisition leader at HR.com, spoke with professionals in-the-know about AI and how it affects talent acquisition.The Genetics of Bias in AI“There was one very famous article about Amazon creating an AI hiring bot, and it failed miserably because it was trained on data. The data was from all the people who are working in the firm. Being about 70-80% males, they unintentionally created a sexist AI hiring tool. It kept on selecting only people who are males,” said Saxena.The matching of resumes to job descriptions has been a practice for over 20 years, with a historical feedback loop embedded in the machine learning and AI processes, says Dan Finnigan, CEO of Filtered.To overcome bias Saxena says organizations need to look at the data AI is getting trained on, because the people training the AI carry their own inherent biases. Next you have to monitor the output so you can understand the results you’re getting. He likens this to going to the gym and maintaining an exact regimen but never seeing any increases and positive changes in your abilities. You have to change your workout to see different results.The full panel of speakers from top right: Dan Finnigan of Filtered, Ankur Saxena of Mphasis, Alec White of Computershare, Madeline Laurano of Aptitude Research, and moderator Matt Charney of HR.com (photo by From Day One)Madeline Laurano co-founder of Aptitude Research turned the discussion to ethical AI and how it should be defined by transparency and specific use. “Ethical AI is pretty much defined by transparency. And are these providers going to be transparent with their algorithm? Or are they going to be transparent with the methodology that they’re using? Are they constantly re-evaluating it?”Focusing on ethics, Charney directed the panel to think about two questions. First, will AI reduce bias going forward, or is automation bias simply replacing hiring bias? And within an organization, who is responsible for making ethical decisions behind AI-driven processes?“I firmly believe that AI and recruiting is by definition biased, and maybe significantly so,” Finnigan said. He says that earlier in his career with Hot Jobs, product people found candidates using unseeable fonts to game the algorithm, and basically create a marketing document for themselves. On the company side, hiring managers would do the same, adding in things to make the job more appealing.“And so it is biased by definition. It's just like the way we read news on social media; it's an echo chamber. So I would argue it's a bias accelerator so that we don't have to take the time to really try to figure out what's in the resume, or for the candidate to really figure out what's in the job description.” Finnigan says that the power of generative AI should be one that double checks bias and includes a process that is better at matching verified job skills, instead of just looking for patterns in applicants it's been trained to favor.AI Is Still in its InfancyUnfortunately, there aren’t a lot of companies out there that use AI very well for the hiring process, according to Laurano. She referenced Amazon's crash and burn with AI recruiting as a cautionary tale that’s still scary to a lot of talent acquisition leaders.Charney turned to Alec White global head of talent acquisition at Computershare, which is in the early stages of that journey. White is working on the applicant tracking system. “We started with some fundamental things like digital interviewing, and self scheduling of interviews. And that, from the very beginning, felt natural. It’s the feedback loop that we’ve talked about.” White says that based on their metrics, their process doesn't “feel off putting to candidates, but like they are interacting with something human.”“They could interview with us at midnight, with a digital interview, and then the system would tell them, ‘Hey, this is what is next’ and respond to questions and send them information that was customized to their role,” White continued. He says by personalizing the application process it doesn’t feel like a black hole with an automated email at the end saying not you.Defining the Perfect AI Recruitment Tool“I completely see it as an enhancer. I see AI as providing tremendous value to TA professionals, whether that’s being a campus recruiter all the way to a TA leader. “There’s lots of value in a lot of these use cases where AI can come in and improve the recruiter experience,” said Laurano.She referenced research her firm did in early 2021 that looked at the recruiter experience. There were 14,000 job openings for recruiters that January, and the research found that they were wasting their time on tasks like managing job boards, manually advertising jobs, scheduling interviews, and more, instead of connecting candidates with jobs. “AI can provide tremendous value in a lot of these use cases for recruiters. And I think recruiters that better understand and get excited about AI, they can get excited about generative AI."“If you view a human as an algorithm, and you view AI as an algorithm, what do you trust as having less bias? We bring these biases into our organization, and it’s hard to unlearn those. But with AI, you can unlearn things, you can retrain it, and you can reduce bias in a way that you really can’t do with humans," Laurano added.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Filtered, for sponsoring this webinar.Matthew Koheler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.
How Innovative Companies Put Advanced HR Technology to Work
BY Matthew Koehler November 14, 2023What are the most important HR technologies right now? Skills management, learning experience platforms, and internal talent marketplaces, according to a 2023 Gartner survey. Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company cited these findings in a recent From Day One webinar. HR leaders will have to persuade key stakeholders to adopt the new technology, justify investing in HR tech, and figure out a roadmap for rapid tech transformation, which isn’t easy.“Yet, while nearly half of the HR leaders surveyed said that driving better business outcomes was their top priority, implementing these tech tools needed to bolster the strategic focus hasn’t quite caught up,” Dishman said.Managing Talent“The pandemic was definitely a mode where we saw a dramatic push to get employees in all the countries we operate in,” said Jason Radisson, CEO and co-founder of Movo. “From a tech space, we’ve seen the pendulum swing from talent acquisition technologies to workforce management technologies.” Now he says there’s more focus on using technology to manage the workforce. Like mobile apps, for example, being used to not only gather data on their frontline workers but allow for frictionless interactions.“If you're asking what the future looks like, it’s a mobile application. If we could talk to somebody on Saturday and have them working Monday morning, that’s an ideal world. Or talk to them on Sunday and have them download the app, do the hiring paperwork and get to work. That’s really what we were going for.”Simon Taylor, head of organizational effectiveness at Gap, Inc., honed in on what drives decisions in the management space. “What are the core questions we need to answer? And then what’s the data that’s going to enable us to be able to answer those questions?” Taylor said one of those major sets of questions is around understanding the pain points because that’s where there’s opportunity to come up with solutions.“There’s always a need to continuously focus on what those questions are, revisit them and then modify them over time to ensure that you’re answering different questions as the business model evolves and the market evolves,” said Eyad El Hindi, vice president of HR technology & operations at Catalent Pharma Solutions.Reflecting on lessons learned about frontline workers during the pandemic, Dishman pointed out that “a happy worker makes a happy customer.” Workers who feel supported by their company have better morale, and better worker morale means better customer service. Better customer service can lead to bigger positive feedback loops in terms of revenue.Dishman moderated the panel about “How Innovative Companies Put HR Technology to Work” with panelists Simon Taylor of Gap, Eyad El Hindi of Catalent Pharma Solutions, and Jason Radisson of Movo (photo by From Day One)A big part of that morale boost is how well companies integrate technology to enhance the work life of the employee. “From a skill standpoint, it's really thinking through, what are the skills that we need for these individuals to be able to be successful to provide a positive customer experience to feel comfortable and confident on the floor and engaging with customers and serving them?” Taylor said.El Hindi touched on the fact that as companies adopt AI technology, they will need a “more dynamic workforce” to manage the use of those technologies. “I think the key thing is acquiring talent with that skill. But then how you sustain that overtime is another dimension, right?” El Hindi said.Looking at hiring, Dishman pointed out that the AI technologies the panelists talked about were supposed to eliminate bias in the hiring process, which they don’t always do. “Are there good use cases for incorporating AI tech tools, particularly when it comes to recruiting and retaining workers?” Dishman asked.“You hit the nail on the head in terms of the journey on the TA side with bias and the promise of removing bias” said Taylor. He emphasized that even though many companies are beholden to the technology they use, their using that technology, experimenting with it, and exploring its limits is also an important part of the journey. How you have meaningful insights in hiring quality candidates based on a job profile using AI is really the question companies are trying to answer, says Taylor.“I think what is underpinning that in some respects is the volume of work that happens on the TA side with our field organization, and how can we use that to compliment, not to replace our recruiting team. To be able to help make sure that we’re really putting the net out as wide as we can to be able to attract the right diverse candidates” Taylor added.Stepping Into the Unknown“The most important thing for us to make sure we’re getting right when it comes to change management and driving adoption with these kinds of things, is getting that sponsorship secured upfront. And when I say sponsorship, I mean the leaders that provide that legitimacy and role modeling, and getting them on board first,” Taylor said.El Hindi added that when deploying new technologies you have to have a clear understanding of what’s in it for them. Ensuring that the people who will use the technology “understand the corporate benefit to why it’s being adopted, both from a productivity cost perspective” is key, he said.“You understand that I have an individual personal benefit to what's been deployed. It’ll help me run my organization better. It’ll help me get greater insights into the workforce that I oversee, empower me to do more with technology,” El Hindi said.This isn’t surprising to Radisson who says the heritage of HR is conservative “because it’s focused on compliance,” which usually makes it late to advancements in technology.“So if we all agree on what the future should look like, and then you take that gap with the senior team or with your operating team, you really have to pick it apart and look at that gap and decide what the actions, use cases, and implementation of technology is going to be in order to fill that gap. And then you get people working concretely on things,” said Radisson.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Movo, for sponsoring this webinar. Matt Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.