The HR Digest April 2021

WORLD’S MOST

HR LEADERS

Editor’s Note

April 2021

We are delighted to bring you the April issue of The HR Digest. We were really encouraged by the role HR leaders played in becoming the voice of bold decisions in the face of uncertainty due to COVID-19 disruptions. The choices HR makes today will likely define its impact on the path to recovery and its role in the coming days.

Our cover story shines a light on the work of the world’s most powerful HR executives from some Fortune companies. It’s pretty insightful to see how diverse opinions get across industries or even geographies. Their take on upskilling, pay equality, agile tools, mobility, and diversity has made the cover story an enlightening experience.

We’ve also recognized best-in-class organizations for fostering workplace cultures that enhance productivity and give a competitive advantage.

Happy reading!

Cheers!

As ever, we look forward to your feedback (editor@thehrdigest.com, @TheHRDigest on Twitter, Facebook.com/TheHRDigest).

The Team Editorial

Design

Anna Domanska Editor-in-Chief

Kevin Paul Sr. Graphic Designer

Priyansha Mistry Editor Anna Versai Sub-Editor

Project Management

Diana Coker Sub-Editor

Tony Raval Project Director

Jane Harper Content Writer

Jay Raol Project Director

Marketing

Advertising

Jason Miller Sr. Project Director

Jay Raol Director – Ad Sales

Technology John Hancock Head-Web Department

Finance Control R R Baratiya

Le Manh Coung Sr Software Coordinator

Julia Hunt Magazine Production

Contents April 2021 HR Drift UK Supreme Court declares Uber driver as workers in landmark case / p.8

Leadership Insights Building the Next-Generation Leaders / p.26

Q&A With Jane “I want work-life balance. I didn’t come into this job expecting 9 am – 5 pm, but I also didn’t expect consistent 9 am-5 am either.” / p.34

Employee Benefits Thriving in a Post-Pandemic World / p.41

Cover Story World’s Most Powerful HR Leaders / p.50

Legal Hub Families First Coronavirus Response Act: Extension & Expansion of Payroll Credits / p.108

HR Tools & Technology The Big Shift: Demand for future work skills in 2021./ p.114

Success Story A Call to Action: Unlocking the benefits of a multigenerational workforce / p.120

Recruitment Point Reengineering the Hiring Process / p.128

Workplace Culture Celebrating the World’s Most Admired Companies! / p.136

Training & Development Well-paying jobs that one get without a college degree and with a respectable certificate program / p.154

HR Events Top picks of virtual conferences and professional events around the world. / p.166

REGARDS? OR IS IT ‘THANKS’?

HERE ARE THE WORST EMAIL MISTAKES From cringey sign offs to annoying email faux pas, these are the worst email mistakes everyone makes.

Work collaboration may have moved on to work-sharing apps that collate, use calendars, schedule appointments, and whatnot, but a vast majority of workers still use emails to communicate officially.

And when using this method of communication, there are bound to be some pet-peeves that people have about how people write and what email etiquettes to follow.

A study conducted by Perkbox Insights, an employee experience platform, of 1,928 employees found that nearly 75% of respondents preferred emails as a way of communication around the office. The time spent by the subjects in perusing their emails was on average one to two hours.

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According to the survey, the most accepted form of address for starting an email was “Hi”, with nearly half agreeing it was the perfect greeting.

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The other email clichés that seem to disagree with people are: Confirming receipt’ / ‘confirming that I have received this’ – 16%; ’Per our conversation’ – 15%; ’Please advice’ – 8%; ’Thanks in advance’ – 7%; ’Hope you’re well’ – 6%.

Source: Perkbox Insights

The study found 6% spend between 2 and 3 hours on emails, while a 15% spend 5+ hours checking and sending emails each day!

31% check their emails outside of work ‘every few hours’, while 8% check ‘every hour’ and another 8% do this ‘constantly’. Most had definite ideas on how emails should be written.

WORST WAY TO BEGIN AN EMAIL: NO GREETING AT ALL! Starting a formal email directly with no formal greeting was regarded as one of the worst email mistakes. Nearly 53% said that not greeting the recipient is the worst way to start an email. This is followed by the impersonal ‘To whom it may concern,’ with 37% thinking this is unacceptable to use. ‘Hey’ takes third place (28%).

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WORST EMAIL SIGN OFF: “LOVE” The worst sign-offs were quite obviously “Love” and “Warmly.” Others in the list included “Best,” “All the best,” “Sincerely,” “Cheers,” “Talk Soon.”

MOST ANNOYING EMAIL CLICHÉ: “JUST LOOPING IN…” Besides these forms of email greetings, some annoying clichés seem to trigger people.

Examples: Just looping in..’, with a huge 37% stating that they find it annoying when the phrase is used in an email.

One-third of the people interviewed for the study disliked the phrase ‘as per my last email,’ followed by ‘any updates on this?’ (24%) and ‘Just checking in’ (19%).

It seems people do not like to be prompted or prodded for a task.

WORST EMAIL FAUX PAS: BLIND CC’ING Then there are the email faux passes that people inadvertently do. Foremost is CCing people unnecessarily.

This is annoying as it floods and crowds an email inbox unnecessarily.

Using capital letters for emphasis. Putting Xes for kisses— Why?

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UK SUPREME COURT DECLARES UBER DRIVER AS WORKERS IN LANDMARK CASE The UK Supreme Court has ruled that drivers employed by Uber are workers and not contractors or self-employed and entitled to minimum wages and holiday pay. The ruling is a significant landmark in employment cases. Thirty-five Uber drivers had filed a case in 2016 arguing that they were not self-employed but very much ruled

by Uber as it controlled their customers, dictated fares and much of their time, including ratings and more. In a long-running legal lasting three rounds, Uber had finally appealed to the Supreme Court.

Lord George Leggatt, one of the justices of the Supreme Court, said the decision was arrived at unanimously. “Drivers are in a position of subordination and dependency in relation to Uber such that they have little or no ability to improve their economic position through professional or entrepreneurial skill,” he said as he handed down the ruling.

The ruling entitles them minimum wage and holidays. It also said they were considered as working for Uber as long as they were logged into the app.

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The 35 drivers who brought the case against Uber are now set to take it up with the employment tribunal to determine their compensation.

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This is a win-win-win for drivers, passengers and cities. It means Uber now has the correct economic incentives not to oversupply the market with too many vehicles and too many drivers,” James Farrar,

App Drivers & Couriers Union’s (ADCU) general secretary.

Paul Jennings, a partner at law firm Bates Wells, which represented the Uber drivers, said there were at least 15,000 claims from other drivers that had been waiting on the decision. “The judgment goes to the very heart of their business model and could lead to a significant increase in claims,” he added.

The decision will hit the cab-hailing business hard in one of its biggest markets. More so, as thousands of other drivers are preparing to bring a class-action suit against the company.

Another fallout will be on other gig economy modeled businesses who might now face similar lawsuits. In the UK, there are two types of employment statuses — “employees” and “workers”.

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Uber is being challenged by its drivers in multiple countries over whether they should be classed as workers or selfemployed. Proposition 22, funded by gig companies like Uber Lyft and DoorDash, was passed by California voters recently. It allows these companies to continue to classify its gig workers as contract workers.

Proposition 22 was floated in response to the AB-5 gig workers’ bill that protects independent workers’ rights.

In August last year, the gig companies had lost an appeal over the assembly law in the Supreme Court.

They argued that they were just the facilitators between the drivers/workers and the customers, and they were not their employees.

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NORWAY’S WEALTHIEST SOVEREIGN FUND PUSHES FOR GENDER EQUALITY ON COMPANY BOARDS Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, one of the world’s largest oil investment fund with $1.3 trillion in assets, wants more diversity and gender equality reflected on the boards of companies it invests in.

The wealth investor has suggested that companies with fewer than 30 percent female directors should set targets to increase the numbers. “The board (of a company) should have a diversity of competencies and backgrounds,” read a new policy document from the fund. “Boards where either gender has less than 30 percent representation should consider setting targets for gender diversity and report on progress.” The Norwegian fund published a white paper on “board diversity” on Monday, saying directors should have a “diversity of competences and backgrounds.”

The fund owns the equivalent of 1.4 percent of every listed company in the world. Its gender and diversity policy document was collated in 2018 itself but was not made public due to fears of the imposition of Nordic values on the world. Moreover, the state government was not comfortable with the proposal, revealed an official.

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Norway was the first country in the world to introduce gender quota for boards in 2008.

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Norway was the first country in the world to introduce gender quota for boards in 2008. Public companies are required to have at least 40 percent of each gender. But the policy has not been able to overcome the low representation of women executives in Norway.

The paper has weighed in on the potential pros and cons of following such a policy. The cons are that it can eclipse other competences.

Also, there are no studies linking diversity with improved revenues.

But these were outweighed by considerations that diversity could help in decision-making. The fund’s management concluded that “diversity will likely bring additional perspectives and approaches to the board’s discussions and ultimately improve the quality of its decision-making process.”

Despite the Nordic countries having a reputation of being the most gender-equal, the figures are not very encouraging. Just 28% of managers in Denmark are female, rising to 32% in Finland and Norway, and 36% in Sweden, according to a report by independent think tank The Cato Institute in 2018.

Iceland is the highest-scoring Nordic country, with 40%.

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“We do have the idea of being gender equal…but we have a long way to go before we are gender equal. I think it will take quite a lot of time – another 50 years at least – until we get there – and that is only if we keep working at it.”

Anneli Häyren,

a researcher at the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University in Sweden.

The fund added that there should be a “rigorous search extending to a broad range of people with different backgrounds”. The Norwegian fund has been active in laying out its expectations on how the fund should function. It has talked about the payments of chief executives should, how the CEO and chair roles should not be combined, equity issuance, and different voting classes of shares.

Several European countries have imposed quotas to ensure that more women are represented on boards of directors.

Yet the share of women on the boards of the 30 biggest companies is just 12.8 percent in Germany, 28.6 percent in the US, 24.9 percent in Sweden, and 24.5 percent in Britain.

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ALPHABET WORKERS UNION TO BRING BACK THE ‘DON’T BE EVIL’ MOTTO More than 400 engineers and other workers at Google and its parent company, Alphabet, have formed a union open to all employees. The Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) will give protection and resources to workers who join in the U.S. and Canada, and is intended to push the tech giant to live up to its motto: ‘Don’t be evil.’

The group announced the creation of the AWU with an op-ed in The New York Times, after years of employees protesting for better workplace inclusivity and ethics at the search engine. The membersonly union is supported by the Communication Workers of America, which represents workers in telecommunications, information technology and media.

Covert efforts to form the Alphabet Workers’ Union began over a year ago, part of a growing tide of activism within the tech giant.

The push reflects a need for workers to be able to speak out without facing repercussions in their jobs. In the coming weeks, the AWU plans a series of “informational events” to rally further support.

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The Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) won’t seek collective bargaining rights to negotiate a new contract with the company.

The group only represents a fraction of Google’s workforce. (Image: Press Corner; Google)

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Google employees are among the highest-paid workers in America and enjoy some of the coolest perks. According to company filings, the median pay at Alphabet was $258,708 in 2019.

“Our union will work to ensure that workers know what they’re working on, and can do their work at a fair wage, without fear of abuse, retaliation or discrimination,” Parul Koul and Chewy Shaw, software engineers elected to lead the Alphabet Workers Union, wrote in the NYT op-ed.

The AWU won’t seek collective bargaining rights to negotiate a new contract with the company. The group only represents a fraction of Google’s workforce.

The union is open to all employees, including temps, vendors and contractors (also known as TVCs), with the goal to “build a structure to create worker power.” It will collect dues of 1% of total compensation (annual base pay and bonus) from members, according to the website.

“Our goals go beyond the workplace questions of, ‘Are people getting paid enough?’ Our issues are going much broader,” Alphabet Workers Union.

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RETAIL WILL CONTINUE DOWNWARD SPIRAL WITH MAJOR JOB LOSSES IN 2021 The pandemic has adversely affected the retail industry resulting in continuous job losses.

The economies of the world have taken a beating due to the pandemic and it is predicted that it will take at least another two years for the various countries to reach normalcy in their development cycles. The industries hit hardest by the pandemic induced lockdowns are retail, automobiles, hospitality, oil and airlines and travel.

The Centre for Retail Research has estimated that up to 200,000 jobs in retail could vanish in 2021. The analysts say that for 2020, the sector will likely suffer a -4.8% growth rate.

The pandemic year 2020 saw a loss of more than 176,000 retail jobs and a larger number of losses are expected this year as shops continue to struggle under lockdowns, the research company warns.

Joshua Bamfield, director at the research group, said the forecast was based on the impact of closures on cash flow. “The longer-term effects of the greater use . . .of online retailing is likely to be hugely damaging for physical stores”, he added.

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In 2021, the analysts expect retail sales growth to be an average of +2.4%, This is slightly more than previously predicted as consumers and the economy as a whole get back to normal.

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The retail industry has appealed to the government to provide tax relief and continue other benefits announced earlier into the next year, as recovery seems bleak in this new scenario.

In the initial months, supermarkets had a strong run as people rushed to stock up. But most other stores, including department stores, general stores, furniture stores, homewares, clothing and footwear and many others were hit by the lockdown and closures.

As stated above, the shift to online sales has impacted bricks and mortar stores. Online retail sales in 2020 are estimated at £56.161bn ($77.76 billion), a 16.3% increase from earlier, though it could be much higher. The sales of bricks and mortar shops are estimated to have suffered a fall of-19.4% compared to last year.

A joint report by KPMG and Ipsos Retail Think Tank warned there were “very tough times ahead” for retail, with large parts of the UK likely to remain under lockdown for months. Paul Martin, UK head of retail at KPMG, says “The work from home revolution could benefit local high streets as more metropolitan workers remain in their hometown.”

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Building the Next-Generation Leaders By: Anna Versai

“

One of the tough responsibilities of managers of managers is to return people to individual-contributor role if first-line managers don’t shift their behaviors and values”.

Ram Charan, The Leadership Pipeline

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With the worldsurvival on lockdown, evThe long-term of private,organizations owner-managed, erywhere have had to rethink they upon operor family-owned businesses, willhow depend a clear strategic ate.

But inand the early midst focus of theoncrisis, somesuccession have displanning.

Yet, in many businesses, a little of covered something unexpected: productivity has that up, goes determining who’ll preserve the gone notinto down. legacy they’ve built when the founders leave the grandstand.

A crisis like a global pandemic naturally triggers extreme anxiety and stress, but it also There are very few family businesses that unleashsurvive esthe tremendous andthemotivation.

If leadpassage ofenergy time and winds of change. ersIt keep threat that levels70% low,ofthey can harness that is estimated family-owned firms generally do not survive into thework 2nd generation, sense of urgency to achieve results that and 90% do notseem makeimpossible. it to the 3rd generation. would normally is it that number of family businesses ButSoawhy crisis alsoa large presents a more consequential do not survive the third generation? The answer is opportunity—for organizations to redefine who complicated. they are. Here are three ways organizations can use this momentum to transform their of culture Research

by PwC revealed that 43% familyfor thebusinesses long term. don’t have a succession plan in place, with only 12% making it the 3rd generation.

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Step 1: DEVELOPING A STRONG LEADERSHIP PIPELINE WITH SUCCESSION PLANNING Experts say that even though professional advisors are hired to chalk out a succession plan, they tend to concentrate on the technical aspect rather than the family components, which include family competencies, dynamics and internal issues.

Many of what are considered family business benefits such as loyalty, legacy, commitment, engagement, and values can quickly turn into liabilities or roadblocks to the business.

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When family business owners were asked, “What issues are of the greatest importance and greatest difficulty for you?” They responded resolving family issues and formulating a succession plan.

Generally, family business owners or founders are unable to share their goals or vision for business growth. Business planning, succession planning, and financial planning are often viewed as ineffective use of time instead of a necessary business process.

As the next generation takes over without clear set goals, they often find themselves without direction as they plan for the future. Therefore, learning how to manage the family component early on in the evolution of the family business will pay dividends down the road.

Research shows that almost half of entrepreneurs come from familyrun businesses (PwC 2016). However, many next-generation members feel they don’t have space or the voice to contribute to the family firm.

It is crucial to find out if the next generation is interested in taking over. The decision should not be thrust upon them. Next, start them young if they are interested.

Step 2: PREPARE AND FAMILIARIZE The best succession handoffs are often years in the making. This gives time for the person taking over time to adjust. And also, there is no ambiguity about the handover. Even the employees are prepared for the transition. When the time comes, the process is smooth and without any disruptions.

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Step 3: ACCOUNTABILITY AND COMPETENCE A well-run family business prepares the next generation in advance to take over. There should be grooming, training, and garnering of outside experience. Aspiring successors should demonstrate competence and model accountability. This reassures the employees that the person taking over is competent and not just inheriting the business due to the accident of birth or nepotism.

Involve skilled non-family employees to prepare the next generation.

Make them a part of the grooming and signal to the non-family members that they are valued contributors to the firm’s success.

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Step 4: APPROACHING CONFLICT Strangely in spite of running big corporations, it is found that family business owners tend to ignore the succession issue till the last moment as they fear conflict. Human nature avoids confrontations; hence, an ostrich-like attitude comes into force–of avoidance. There are many important issues left unsaid for fear of ruining relationships.

But such an attitude can lead to catastrophe with the unresolved issues gaining bigger proportions, and ultimately the business suffers.

Mostly, the succession issue is very sensitive in first-generation family businesses. As there is no precedent here.

Hence, the considerations should be: • Do you want the business to stay family run?

•

Do you want the management involved in the decision process?

• If it is to stay in the family, what kind of skills the next generation requires and what structures should be put in place to ensure that it happens?

• If non-family comes into the business, how to ensure that the ethos aligns with family values and welfare?

• If there are multiple hires, then what will be the ownership structure?

• Will it be passed on equally, will the responsibilities be divided?

Establishing clarity in the dispersal of accountability and responsibilities in a large family and business inheritance is a wise act. Succession planning not only protects wealth but keeps equal interests in mind.

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Q&A with Jane 34

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The brutal and straightforward answers to HR-related queries and concerns.

Send in your queries with the subject line ‘Ask JANE HARPER’ at info@thehrdigest.com

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I want work-life balance.

Dear Jane, I am currently working in a job that requires me to work beyond the contracted hours every week. This is common in my industry where young workers are expected to work 90-100 hours per week or even more. Most of us do not leave the office or take a break at lunchtime.

We’ve missed family and social time, sacrificing our relationships for work. It is generally believed that people who join this industry are aware of the hard grind and compensated well for their efforts.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if this is the life I deserve. I didn’t come into this job expecting 9 am – 5 pm, but I also didn’t expect consistent 9 am-5 am either. If I stay here for another 5 to 7 years I’ll easily draw a seven-figure salary and instantly become a member of the 0.1 percent. Based on my conversations with people within the industry, it’s not common practice to switch to a different organization in search for a better work-life balance. It didn’t take a lot of convincing for me to realize that I want to remain in the field but switch to a less deadlinedriven role.

I’m starting a job hunt, and I’m incredibly nervous about taking another position, only to end up in a similar plight. I’ve been invited to interview, and I’m not sure how to tell if a company really believes in work-life balance? I don’t mind working late now and then, but right now I’m looking for a company that helps employees achieve more than just career goals with proper work-life balance.

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A periodic late working, heading into the office on a Sunday morning, and going the extra mile to meet client’s expectations is the thing that has a monumental effect when you want to advance your career. In any case, this doesn’t nullify the other fact: You deserve to work for an organization that is genuinely focused on a work-life balance.

So, yes, you’ll work late one night. But, you’ll also need to have the option to request that your manager allows you to work remotely so that you can join your family’s annual Thanksgiving dinner. And despite the fact that you don’t have kids yet, it very well may be in your mind someday, and you need a manager who wouldn’t fret when you need to leave right on time because of childcare problems.

A big part of achieving work-life balance is finding an organization that makes an effort to address this issue. So, how do you figure out during the interview process without making it sound like you’re looking for lame excuses to leave the office early? You’re going to have to be subtle.

DO A REFERENCE CHECK Skim through your LinkedIn network and check whether you know anyone who knows any former employees. Reach out to see if the former employee would be willing to chat with you for 10 minutes.

To get a candid response, you should try and talk with the

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former employee in person or over the phone; most people are wary of badmouthing their former employer in writing. If you get hold of the person on phone, be sure to be upfront that you’re regarding this discussion as confidence, and then ask them to tell you about their experience.

Here are some questions you may consider: • How would you describe the company culture? Does the company encourage employees to take vacations? What about flextime? What are typical hours at the company like?

• Do you think diversity & inclusion are an important part of the culture? Is the company focused on helping people from all walks of life succeed? Is the company family-friendly, or fostering a healthy work-life balance?

• If you could have changed one thing about the company culture, what would that be?

DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE Make a request to schedule your interview for early in the morning or later in the evening. Notice how many people are still at their desks. Is it 8 PM and everyone’s still working? Or, is it 8 PM and there are only a few employees left?

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An organization that fosters work-life balance would be equipped with perks such as on-site daycare facilities for parents. There are a few other ways too. Does the company have a designed lactation room for breastfeeding moms that like a comfortable, quiet space?

Research the company. Do a little browsing on LinkedIn, Facebook, and maybe even check out a few employees’ social media account. You’re also likely to find honest reviews on sites like Indeed and Glassdoor. However, it’s good to take those reviews with a grain of salt. Once you look through the reviews, you can usually start to tell the difference between a person who intends for his input to be useful to a potential employee versus the one who has a lot of pent-up anger and frustration and has decided to put vitriol online.

Look for recurring themes. If more than enough reviews tell you to “stay away” that’s a red flag you would not want to ignore. Keep an eye out for details that give a glimpse of the company’s culture and how it supports work-life balance for its employees.

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ASK QUESTIONS It’s perfectly okay to ask questions during your interview process that might lead the hiring panel to provide information about worklife balance.

What are the company’s policies on working remotely?

What do you love about working for this company?

If there’s one aspect of culture the company could improve upon, what would it be?

How would you describe the company culture?

If you ask these questions in a few different ways and never hear words like flexible, supportive, or empowering, that could be a big, red flag.

Finding a job that supports work-life balance can be challenging.

Take time to find a position that ticks all the boxes, it’ll be well worth all the effort it took to get there.

Got something to ask? Send your questions to info@thehrdigest.com.

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Thriving in a Post-Pandemic World Unilever to adopt “hybrid model” of remote and office for staff post-pandemic.

T

By: Diana Coker

he pandemic has changed many things; the new normal is strict hygiene, social distancing, and distant working. Remote work and work-from-home is here to stay, and experts believe that a full traditional 5-day 9-to-5 office day is a thing of the past. At best, companies will be offering a hybrid culture. Come to work some days a week; rest operate from home as far as possible.

Most big companies, including tech behemoths, are seriously considering adopting this model for the near future. Unilever, the Brit-

ish multinational consumer goods company headquartered in London, too is adopting the same.

Unilever’s chief executive Alan Jope recently said his office workers will never return to their desks five days a week, in the latest indication that coronavirus will transform modern working life.

Unilever is the third most valuable company on the London Stock Exchange. It has brands like Dove, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Marmite, Hellman’s, Knorr, Lipton and Persil.

Speaking at a Reuters’ conference, Jope said he did not expect

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We anticipate never going back to five days a week in the office. That seems very old-fashioned now.

Alan Jope,

Chief Executive Officer, Unilever

Unilever Bestfoods headquarters building De Brug (The Bridge) built over an existing historical factory from 1891 designed by architect Chris de Jonge.

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office workers across Western Europe and North America to return to work until at least April.

He added that Unilever would use a “hybrid model” of working between homes and offices after that. Unilever has a staff of 150,000 global employees, 7,000 of whom are in the UK. “We anticipate never going back to five days a week in the

office,” Jope said. “That seems very old-fashioned now.” He also said the pandemic had made it clear that the company did not need to be as hierarchical.

The company would encourage all its employees to receive the vaccinations for Covid-19. Those who do not will have to undergo mandatory testing.

In the latest CNBC|SurveyMonkey Workforce Survey, remote workers have a Workforce Happiness Index score of 75 out of a possible 100.

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The CEO said the pandemic had shown that an alternative way of working was viable. The company was able to transition to the new way of working quickly and efficiently.

In the latest CNBC|SurveyMonkey Workforce Survey, remote workers have a Workforce Happiness Index score of 75 out of a pos-

sible 100. The report also found that remote workers are more likely to describe themselves as very satisfied with their job (57%), to consider themselves to be well-paid (81%), to say that their company provides them with good or excellent opportunities for career advancement (66%), and to note that their contributions at work are valued a lot by their colleagues (54%) versus those who went to the office during the pandemic.

Unilever has allowed most of its staff to work from home, though factory workers have been exempt from stay-at-home orders.

Jope also emphasized that the company was keen to pursue its office model too as working from home resulted in a “slow erosion of social capital” as it prevents colleagues from meeting in person.

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There are concerns about how mentoring and innovation and teamwork will get affected once people start working remotely. Technology firms such as Alphabet, Google’s parent and Facebook have also extended their work-from-home prospectus through June 2020.

Although, on one hand, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has previously said he could see about 50% of its employees being remote in the next five to ten years. However, on the other hand, the social media giant also sealed a huge lease for a new office space in Manhattan earlier this week, mainly indicating that the remote-work question is much more multidimensional.

The Microsoft headquarters campus in Redmond in Redmond, Washington.

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Microsoft released a similar “hybrid workplace” plan outlining its new work policy once the pandemic is over all over the world and people can choose to continue to work from home. In a blog post on the site, Microsoft explained that it will now allow employees to work from home for less than 50 percent of their working hours, or for managers to approve permanent remote work.

The company will cover the expenses of setting up a permanent home office. If employees want to relocate to a place of their choice then it will be allowed though pay scale, benefits will be reworked and the company will not pay for the relocation costs.

City center office owners and builders are definitely worried about this new turn of events as it will leave a lot of office buildings empty and drive down real estate prices.

Morgan Stanley predicted 30% of US workers would work from home after the pandemic.

Unilever had already started a 4-day week experiment in New Zealand, following a trend

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in the country being followed by several small companies.

The pandemic has affected the spending patterns of most consumers with people concentrating on groceries and home essentials. People have moved to e-shopping. Jope highlighted how the pandemic has raised concerns about social responsibility and the environment.

“People are e-browsing, e-buying, e-paying, e-media-consuming and we expect that will continue,” he said.

“We can rely on people’s use of technology to stick around.

The HR Digest connected with Chris Vennitti, President of the Mid-Atlantic Region at Addison Group to get insights on how managers can make the adjustment to the new reality effectively, important factors they need to be aware of and

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how to optimize their setup.

During this transition, it is imperative that expectations are reset. The hybrid workplace is a new concept for many managers and will require making adjustments to regular processes.

However, as more Americans search for work, it’s essential to get this process right earlier rather than later. Negligent hires will only slowdown business operations and waste money; so being even more thorough in the hiring process is a necessity during this transition.

Talk with employees, establish a plan and put processes in place that don’t allow you to cut corners.

As more and more interactions occur digitally, we will continue to discover new forms of

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Unilever has already started a 4-day week experiment in New Zealand, following a trend in the country being followed by several small companies.

conducting business. The solution will not come from newer technologies (although, Silicon Valley developer will continue to help us bridge this gap). Rather, the solution would be in understanding how human-to-human interactions work; in developing a unique skill set that is reflective of our current needs.

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What do companies with best in class in HR do differently? This can be quite difficult to answer given the year we went through in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

A company’s success, more or less, depends upon how quickly HR taps the needs of the organization. But when we interviewed top HR leaders from some By: Pri Mistry of the world’s biggest companies, we found key insights that transcend beyond industries. Albeit the HR leaders faced diverse business challenges, similar subjects continued arising.

Although the HR leaders faced diverse business challenges, the same themes kept popping up in recent times.

POWERFUL

LEADERS

In such challenging times, vision and resilience can be two very important virtues. These qualities are evident in the men and women who’ve achieved a spot in The HR Digest’s list of Most Powerful Leaders in HR. Their success is a result of an unwavering leadership acumen in the face of ever-increasing challenges. We say this with confidence, based on our interviews with HR Leaders from companies such as Amazon, Cognizant, Deloitte, Slack and many more.

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CREATING SHARED VALUE Becky Schmitt Executive Vice President & Chief People Officer, Cognizant

True inclusion requires change at every touchpoint in the employee lifecycle – hire to retire – and ensuring our people processes and systems are reinforcing desired behaviors along the way.

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s a company whose success depends on change management, Cognizant puts a premium on its internal culture. From the vantage point of a lifelong career in human resources, Becky Schmitt talked with The HR Digest about the various programs which have put Kellogg on the global map as one of the top companies for star performers.

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The HR Digest: Organizations have recognized the importance of using people analytics to de-bias hiring and rewards – but then fail to accelerate in skills identification and tackling biases. How did Cognizant approach this unique challenge to debunk conventional wisdom?

Becky Schmitt: At Cognizant, we are working to create conditions where everyone can thrive. This includes our diversity and inclusion efforts, and we recognize there is still work to be done.

Last year, we took the important step to embed our Diversity & Inclusion team within our Talent & Transformation organization. True inclusion requires change at every touchpoint in the employee lifecycle – hire to retire – and ensuring our people processes and systems are reinforcing

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desired behaviors along the way.

As an example, we have leveraged diversity data to establish female hiring and retention goals for our top leaders. These goals are embedded into annual performance planning for 4,000 directors and above and are a factor in year-end reviews and ratings.

I truly believe that a strong team, when coupled with a compelling employee value proposition, can be a greater motivator than any reward.

Can you share with The HR Digest readers some innovative recruiting strategies that allow Cognizant to compete for talent in America and abroad?

Cognizant is an expansive organization that has grown rapidly over its history. Today, we have approximately 290,000 associates globally, and our hiring engine is always running to bring in talented individuals to help us deliver our purpose. At the same time, we operate in a highly competitive talent market, so in addition to being an attractive employer, it’s essential for us to have innovative methods to break through and secure strong and diverse talent for our team.

One of the ways we do this is through learning and development opportunities. Candidates may not have all of the prerequisite skills for a particular role or may have areas they want to further grow and develop while on the job. We provide pre-employment training to build capability and confidence early, upskilling and reskilling through our award-winning learning Academy, and we recently launched university partnerships in India for associates to pursue higher degrees while employed with

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Cognizant. Candidates highly value the range of options to grow through access to both company-directed training as well as self-paced programs.

We have revamped our flexible work programs to meet our people where they are and adjust to the realities of the pandemic. Associates can complete their hours outside of a standard schedule to accommodate family or other responsibilities, for example, by stretching their hours over seven days a week versus five..

We have also kicked off a “Returnship” program aimed at restarting the careers of talented women in technology who have had a multi-year career break, often to raise a child or care for family.

And, of course, we are always making enhancements to our Total Rewards approach to make offers even more competitive regionally.

Can you point to any single defining moment in your career?

I really struggled with being a working mother for about the first 10 years of my career. I never felt good enough at home or at work. I tried multiple things – going part-time, taking a demotion, working more hours, you name it.

Like many women in this position, I was applying unrealistic standards. Finally a very wise person gave me the grace to think of my time differently. She said, “Becky, you need to decide in the moment that matters what type of mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend or professional you need to be and be totally focused on that moment.” That resonated. I shifted my focus to being present versus being perfect, so that the people I am with get the best version of me in that setting. This unlocked a new perspective, helping

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me to feel that others were getting what they needed from me, while also helping me to free up the headspace to think bigger and plan ahead.

What would you say is the most effective non-cash motivator?

The people you work with. I’ve found there is no price you can put on being surrounded by amazing talent. There is a magic that happens when you find a combination of smart people who push your own thinking and capabilities, while also supporting you in being your best. I truly believe that a strong team, when coupled with a compelling employee value proposition, can be a greater motivator than any reward.

When the time comes for you to give aspiring leaders advice about their lives and careers, what will you say to them as you reflect on your own experiences?

I gain perspective and learn new lessons nearly every day, but there are two key pieces of advice I’d provide at this stage of my life and career: 1. Have a plan, but always leave room for opportunity. Your greatest growth often happens through the surprises and detours. If I had been too rigid in my own plans, I would not have been open to a move to India, which turned out to be both a breakthrough moment in my career as well as a great experience for my family.

2. Career paths don’t have to be linear or vertical. So often we focus on moving up within our fields that we overlook lateral movements.

Challenge yourself to explore a new industry, master a new skill or gain expanded perspective through a role in a different country/ region. The breadth of experience will make you an even stronger professional and further propel your leadership aspirations. The destination is the journey!

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CREATING A CULTURE OF QUALITY Beth Galetti Senior Vice President Human Resources, Amazon Applying to, working at, and leaving Amazon should be frustration-free experiences. In other words, we apply the same high standards we have for customers to developing tools that allow us to recruit and retain the best talent.

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s the COVID-19 crisis takes a sharp turn from government to business, the issue of redefining jobs moves up the agenda. In an interview with The HR Digest, Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President Human Resources at Amazon, explains the importance of business resource groups and the vital role it plays to deliver real business results.

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The HR Digest: What is Amazon’s secret sauce for being recognized several times as “Great Place to Work?” Do you still see room for improvement in Amazon’s employment practices?

Beth Galetti: Amazon is where smart, passionate people come to obsess about customers and innovate on their behalf. Amazonians come here – and stay – because they get to do meaningful and impactful work. They have high ownership and are encouraged to invent things that have never been done before. They get to build the future.

Amazon operates like a series of customer-focused start-ups innovating at a fast pace. This very nimble organization allows Amazon employees to build their own path by owning their development, their career, and their future.

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The possibilities they explore, the opportunities they take advantage of, and the impact they have is driven by their ideas and initiative. In other words, your experience and trajectory at Amazon is in your hands.

In addition to our culture, which makes Amazon an incredible place to work, we also invest in our employees, help them grow their careers – both inside and outside of Amazon – and reward them for their contributions. This includes our $15 starting wage for all employees and our competitive benefits, including health insurance from the first day on the job, 401(k) partial matching, up to 20 weeks of paid parental leave, and access to free skills training for higher paying, in demand roles.

At Amazon, we recently renamed our HR organization to People Experience and Technology (PXT for short) to signify that we seek to deliver the best experience for all Amazonians, and are innovators and builders ourselves—building the workplace for Amazonians to invent on behalf of customers.

Employee-led resource groups (ERGs) are one of Amazon’s core strengths. Can you tell The HR Digest readers more about these programs and how they promote change within the company in practical terms?

We value individual expression, respect different opinions, and work together to create a culture where each of us is able to contribute fully. Our unique backgrounds and perspectives strengthen our ability to achieve Amazon’s mission of being Earth’s most customer-centric company.

Amazon has 12 affinity groups, also known as employee resource groups, with more than 90,000 members across 190 chapters that bring Amazonians together across businesses and locations around the world. Some examples

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include the Black Employee Network (BEN), Amazon Women in Engineering (AWE), and Indigenous@. These groups play an important role in building internal networks for creating a community, advising Amazon business units, leading in service projects, and reaching out to communities where Amazonians live and work.

As one of the world’s largest employers with workforce all across the globe, what are Amazon’s best practices during the crisis to ensure productivity and transparency?

The health and safety of our employees around the world has been, and continues to be, our top priority as we face the challenges associated with the coronavirus.

In 2020 alone, we created over 500,000 jobs globally and used our scale to come up with new ideas to manage the challenges posed by COVID-19.

From implementing new technology to allow us to onboard all of our new employees virtually, even taking their safety training on their mobile phone before their first day on the job, to building our own COVID-19 testing labs with more than one million of our front-line employees already tested, to using AI in our fulfillment centers to ensure physical distancing is in place to protect our employees.

At Amazon, how do you see this changing the HR landscape, and what does Amazon do to stay ahead of the curve?

Employees come to Amazon to do meaningful work, and our job is to make that easier by removing barriers, fixing defects, and enabling self-service.

Applying to, working at, and leaving Amazon should be frustration-free experiences. In other words, we apply the same high standards we have for customers to developing tools that allow us to recruit and retain the best talent.

For example, our employees used to have to work with their manager or HR representative to get support for things like changing their schedule,

requesting time off, or checking on their pay. We make these simple, but important, tasks easier for them by building products like AtoZ – an app for an Android or iOS phone – for hundreds of thousands of hourly employees to easily check schedules, request time off, change shifts, check pay, and receive company news. Throughout the pandemic, for instance, we were able to update this app so that associates could clock in for work on their phone, allowing them not to gather at a time clock before or after a shift.

We are constantly auditing ourselves. We listen to feedback from employees on a daily basis and take quick action to fix problems and invent new ways to make their experiences better.

What do you consider your most rewarding experience in professional life?

At Amazon, we were fortunate to have the trust of our customers and be able to serve them during the COVID-19 pandemic, and I am proud to be a part of the team that demonstrated tireless dedication to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of our more than 1.3 million employees. One of the most rewarding experiences for me this past year was building, from scratch, a COVID-19 testing lab to give frontline employees in the US and the UK the access to government-certified COVID-19 testing regularly. Early in the pandemic, our employees faced the same shortage in testing that the world faced, and we decided to try building our test labs – something we had never done before – to increase testing capacity and support our employees, who told us that they would feel safer if they could get tested regularly.

We brought a team together from across the company, from technologists, scientists and healthcare professionals, and met daily to go from idea to implementation in a matter of months. It was exciting to be in a heavy learning mode, learning about things like the biology of a virus and the variations in virus testing methodology, while we piloted different ideas to quickly build 62

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the final lab in Kentucky. When we invent at Amazon, we expect one another to work across functional boundaries, and each team member contributes their ideas regardless of their specific job title. I was proud to work alongside talented team members as we built and launched COVID-19 testing labs that have provided millions of tests for employees to date – and counting.

How are you going to shake things up next?

To manage the challenges of 2020, we doubled down on the things that matter most to our employees and their communities: workplace safety, customer obsession, diversity, and sustainability. These will continue to be our core focus areas, but it’s critical for the HR function to continue to evolve to deliver the biggest impact. At Amazon, we recently renamed our HR organization to People Experience and Technology (PXT for short) to signify that we seek to deliver the best experience for all Amazonians, and are innovators and builders ourselves—building the workplace for Amazonians to invent on behalf of customers.

Looking ahead, we will focus on three things. First, continuing to invest in technology and tech teams that can develop tools for our employees.

The People Experience and Technology organization includes over 1,000 tech employees—including dedicated engineers, computer scientists, and product managers—who develop world-class, easy, and intuitive products for candidates and employees. Second, launching new egalitarian benefits like Amazon Care, which starting this summer will offer Amazon employees in the U.S. access to a medical professional from their phone in less than 60 seconds, or Neighborhood Health Centers, clinics either on-site of our facilities or in the vicinity exclusively reserved for our employees and their families. And lastly, building mechanisms that allow us to preserve our culture as we scale with HR innovations like Connections, a tool that helps us gather employee feedback in real-time, every day.

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CREATING A CULTURE OF QUALITY Laurie Havanec EVP & Chief People Officer, CVS Health

Empower, develop and support your team. This will allow decisions to be made at the right level of the organization and engage, inspire and recognize leaders who want to be accountable and own what they do.

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ow to create the future of work? What is the role of HR executives in upskilling the workforce? What advice can a renowned CPO give to aspiring talent? These were only some of the questions The HR Digest discussed with Laurie Havanec, EVP & CPO at CVS Health.

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The HR Digest: Rethinking the future of work is at the top of many executive teams’ agendas. What according to you will define the new frontiers of the future of work?

Laurie Havanec: The pandemic created such a rapid period of change for employers, but we’re really at the beginning of that change. All employers should be preparing for massive change in what their employees will expect and need in the future. Going forward, employees will be seeking more ways to balance their work and lives by managing where they work. Employers will need to provide employees with the tools they need to connect, collaborate and innovate no matter where they are working. At the same time, the power of personal connections in a shared space can’t be underestimated when it comes to building and maintaining a strong and inclusive company identity The HR Digest Magazine | April 2021

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and culture and allowing colleagues to take Upskilling significantly advantage of development and relationships minimizes colleagues’ that will help them grow their careers. So, I falling behind on think that the words “flexibility” and “hybrid” valuable information will be key components of any future of work and approaches that strategy. We’re working hard to define how drive their ability to that will work best in our company, but I fully make decisions in realize that it will evolve over time. One of our company mantras is that we are never real-time and fuel done learning, which certainly will be true for our differentiated us with the future of work. It’s also important customer care and to note that at CVS Health we are focused service. on serving our customers each day. Two thirds of our employees never stopped reporting to work in our stores, pharmacies, distribution centers, clinics and home care environments, even during the height of the pandemic. I’m so grateful for their commitment and service.

How are you preparing your employees for this new reality of work?

First, we’re listening to our employees. Over the course of the last year, we’ve continuously gathered feedback about what our employees needed as they adapted to working remotely and balanced work life and home life in the same space. We’ll continue to listen and learn as we begin to reopen our offices and evolve our approach. Second, we’re focused on our culture.

We have a strong history of collaboration and innovation. As we look to the future, we plan to modernize the environment in our locations to create space in which colleagues can connect with people they may not work with each day and continue to develop new capabilities, but still find it easy to engage digitally with colleagues in other locations or who are working remotely.

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accelerate results while meeting colleagues where they are in terms of the need for flexibility. And we’re working to get everyone comfortable with collaboration tools that will make working in a more flexible environment feel seamless.

By creating a purpose-driven culture, CVS Health has found itself in constant process of cognitive transformation. This is an extraordinary asset in today’s world, where organizations must transform frequently, rapidly and economically to thrive. How do you keep the people at CVS Health motivated for change?

Our purpose-driven culture and obsession with caring for our customer is embedded in the fabric of our company. Our colleagues are deeply committed to putting our customers on the path to better health. So, our colleagues are motivated to innovate and improve how we care for our customers and their health. Our response to the COVID-19 pandemic is an excellent example of how CVS Health colleagues were able to quickly and nimbly coordinate across all the parts of our business to meet our customers and our nation’s health needs, from quickly standing up testing and vaccination sites to helping members maintain access to quality health care.

What is CVS Health’s secret sauce for being recognized several times as “Great Place to Work?” Do you still see room for improvement in your employment practices?

Our 300,000 colleagues bring our vibrant purpose-driven and customercentric culture to life every day. Our mission is to foster an inclusive and collaborative culture that puts our colleagues at the center of all we do. We are always looking for ways to make our “great place to work” even better!

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colleague experience at CVS Health. We believe our culture differentiates CVS Health as the employer of choice for top talent who can thrive in diversified career paths aligned with their aspirations.

And there is always room for improvement in our practices. The moment that we stop focusing on continuous improvement and making ourselves better, we will lose our ability to attract and retain great talent. We aspire to have the best talent and therefore need to relentlessly push ourselves and constantly listen to our colleagues to learn what will make their experience with us more compelling. We see our employees as our best spokespeople for talent to join CVS Health.

Upskilling has a strong place on the strategic agenda of CVS Health. If you had to make the case for the value of upskilling in workforce decision making as succinctly as possible, how would you frame it?

Providing customers with the expert care and high-quality experiences they need in a health care environment is our primary mission at CVS Health. And because each customer is unique, very often, so is the type of service or support they need our colleagues to provide. This means our colleagues must take in information and respond with customer focused decisions, every day.

To equip our clinicians on the front-line with refreshed knowledge and skills needed to make these decisions, we rely upon a simple, but high-impact approach to upskilling. Our approach to upskilling ensures learning and development can easily take place on the job, with minimal disruption of workflow. Upskilling significantly minimizes colleagues’ falling behind on valuable information and approaches that drive their ability to make decisions in real-time and fuel our differentiated customer care and service. CVS Health listens and acts on colleague and customer feedback to continue to improve our training and development and empower our colleagues with the knowledge,

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skills and confidence they need to make high-impact, high-quality decisions, every day.

What experiences, people, or philosophies have most influenced the way you view and practice leadership, and why?

My personal leadership philosophy centers around four principles: • Bringing our best self to work every day. This means celebrating our successes and growing and adapting from our mistakes. It also means making decisions, innovating, moving quickly with intention and course correcting to get to the best answer before the competition does.

• Doing the right thing; especially when it is hard. The second part of this element is what really matters. We all do the right thing when it is easy but showing the leadership courage to make the hard decisions under difficult circumstances is often the hardest and most important fingerprints we can leave on an organization.

• Relentlessly building relationships with trust and candor; sideways, up, and down. These relationships are the key enablers to achieving our own vision and helping others achieve their vision. Aligned organizations are faster and more efficient at driving an agenda.

• Empower, develop and support your team. This will allow decisions to be made at the right level of the organization and engage, inspire and recognize leaders who want to be accountable and own what they do.

It will guarantee that we are developing, supporting and sponsoring the next generation of talent for our organizations.

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What’s the key lesson you want future HR leaders to take away from your work?

Be willing to take risks and be uncomfortable. Don’t wait to finish the work you are doing to move into a new role. Define the fingerprints that you want to leave on an organization and hold yourself accountable for making them happen.

Proactively seek feedback from a variety of stakeholders as committing to your continuous development is essential for growth. And most importantly, always remember that people are the one thing that truly distinguish great companies. Invest heavily in people and culture because in the end, strategic execution cannot happen without aligned and engaged colleagues working together in an inspiring and compelling cultural environment.

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A CULTURE OF EXCELLENCE Melissa Strait Chief People Officer, Inspire Brands

We’re focused on building a culture of innovation that enables good ideas to thrive at any level of the organization, not just at the top.

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n these challenging times, Melissa Strait, Chief People Officer at Inspire Brands, is making a herculean effort to build on the advantages of a values-driven corporate culture. In a conversation with The HR Digest, she explains why a culture of excellence plays a dominant role in motivating employees at the world’s second-largest restaurant company.

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The HR Digest: What is Inspire Brands’ secret sauce for being recognized as a “Great Place to Work?” Do you still see room for improvement in Inspire Brands employment practices?

Melissa Strait: When we founded Inspire in February 2018, our leadership team spent time developing a clear purpose and set of behaviors that could align our organization and our brands. While each individual brand maintains its own brand purpose and values, Inspire provides the foundation to unite all of our team members towards an aligned culture. That purpose – to Ignite and Nourish Flavorful Experiences – is at the core of how our team members work together, serve our guests, and strengthen our communities.

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Our recognition culture is a fundamental part of the way we operate and something that truly differentiates Inspire as a company.

to thrive at any level of the organization, not just at the top. We empower our team members to take risks, test, and learn in ways that not only support the business, but further their professional growth. We continue to seek new ways to foster that culture, from Ignite Sessions between teams to share best practices and key learnings, to building a culture of recognition that encourages team members to recognize their peers for living our behaviors and delivering on our business objectives. These efforts will remain a key focus for Inspire in the years to come.

Employee-led resource groups (ERGs) are one of Inspire Brands core strengths. Can you tell The HR Digest readers more about these programs and how they promote change within the company in practical terms?

Inspire’s Business Resource Groups (“BRGs”) are company-sponsored, but team member-formed and led, with a mission to strengthen the leadership skills of their members, provide networking opportunities, and serve as resources for our diverse teams. From Champions of Women Leaders to Black Voices at Inspire, our five BRGs provide team members an opportunity to share their perspectives, experiences, and ideas in order to educate, inspire, and develop one another. They also provide an important internal support system for our team members to create new relationships with peers and mentors. BRGs play a key role in the Career Path Opportunities pillar of our recently-launched People First @ Inspire program, an actionoriented inclusion and diversity initiative that strives to provide an inclusive work environment where team members of all backgrounds can succeed.

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productivity and transparency?

Clear and consistent communication has been a priority for Inspire as we’ve navigated the challenges of the past year. That commitment to communication extends to every level of the organization. We conduct monthly All-Team meetings where our leaders share updates on the state of our business and brands with all our Support Center and Field team members. We have also implemented leader-focused meetings like roundtable Q&A sessions with our company’s directors and senior directors, and a specific monthly meeting for our top leaders to align on business strategy and goals. We have developed a regular cadence of transparent communication that helps to ensure our team members and franchisees to deliver on our company’s purpose and vision, driving the strong business results we realized in 2020.

At Inspire Brands, how do you see a changing HR landscape, and what does Inspire Brands do to stay ahead of the curve?

The Human Resources field has been profoundly changed by the emergence of digital solutions, and Inspire is investing in a best-in-class technology function that will unlock tremendous opportunities across our family of brands. We are focused on developing an HR technology platform that enables finding, hiring, onboarding and developing the best talent. For example, our Talent Acquisition teams are leveraging investments in digital technology to enhance the way we source candidates whose skills align with our open roles, as well as streamlining the application process to be mobile-friendly, thereby removing barriers for entry.

While technology enhances the ways we can reach potential new team members and engage our current workforce, company culture remains an essential focus. Over the last few years, we’ve fostered a culture of recognition ¬– one that celebrates team members for how they deliver on our purpose and live out our core behaviors. Through formal and informal channels, team members and leaders are actively encouraged

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to recognize each other for their achievements. Our recognition culture is a fundamental part of the way we operate and something that truly differentiates Inspire as a company.

What do you consider your most rewarding experience in professional life?

I began my career with Arby’s as a restaurant team member in my hometown of Muskegon, Michigan; 35 years later, I am honored to still be a part of this organization as the Chief People Officer of Inspire Brands.

Throughout my career, I had the opportunity to work in so many aspects of our business, from day-to-day restaurant operations and training to operating the business as a small franchisee. Those experiences and challenges helped me grow as a professional and, more importantly, gain a better understanding of the knowledge and skills our 650,000+ company and franchise team members need to succeed.

At Inspire, we truly believe that the restaurant industry is not just the best place for a first job, but for a career. Whether through proprietary team member training programs like Brand Champ or informal mentoring moments, empowering others to develop their careers across an organization they love is what makes my career so rewarding to me.

How are you going to shake things up next?

Right now, our teams are focused on integrating the Dunkin’ and BaskinRobbins brands into the Inspire family. These are two iconic brands with strong talent, and I have enjoyed every opportunity to meet with and learn from their teams over the last few months.

I am so proud of everything we have built at Inspire in just over three years, and I cannot wait to continue growing and evolving our company’s approach to HR in 2021 and beyond.

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DIVERSITY AS STRATEGY Nadia Rawlinson, Chief People Officer, Slack Now more than ever, employees are expecting their companies to be more intentional in their efforts to build an inclusive internal culture that supports employees’ “full selves”—and figuring out how to best foster that culture outside of the office is an opportunity I’m looking forward to.

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hile much needs to be done to neutralize our biases and unleash untapped talent – Nadia Rawlinson, Chief Purpose Officer of Slack, is already hard at work developing the one asset she feels will help ensure deep-level diversity and inclusion throughout the organization. In recent years, Rawlinson has worked alongside some of the biggest names in the technology industry to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace. It’s an ambitious and inspiring initiative.

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The HR Digest: You’ve been at Slack for seven months. What were your first impressions of Slack’s company culture? How will you influence that culture in your new role?

Nadia Rawlinson: Since joining the company in September, I have been struck by the warmth, humility, intelligence and true “humanness” everyone brings to work each day. I’ve marveled at our employees’ commitment to showing up and delivering for our customers, and each other, no matter what. This attitude permeates every interaction I’ve had, and it is truly unique in the current world of work – but I also believe that it doesn’t have to be.

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What I was most impressed by, however, is how strongly I could feel this culture and sense of community right out of the gate, despite being onboarded in a fully remote environment—and a lot of that has to do with our product. At the most basic level, the casual nature of messaging on Slack makes it conducive to short, friendly exchanges that more closely mirror the in-person conversations that take place in the office. It has been really impactful in helping me really get to know and get comfortable with my team members, both professionally and personally.

Looking ahead, I think what I am most focused on is working out how to best keep that sense of culture and inclusivity going as we get deeper into remote work and onboard more and more employees remotely. Now more than ever, employees are expecting their companies to be more intentional in their efforts to build an inclusive internal culture that supports employees’ “full selves”—and figuring out how to best foster that culture outside of the office is an opportunity I’m looking forward to.

We understand Slack’s team is growing at a rapid pace. What will hiring look like in the coming year? When you set out to recruit new talent, what do you look for?

Our hiring policies have changed permanently as we transition into being a much more distributed company, and they will continue to evolve as we navigate this new frontier of remote and hybrid work. Hiring

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A recent survey conducted by Future Forum, a consortium launched by Slack to help companies reimagine work in the new digital-first world, found that the vast majority (83%) of knowledge workers [in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Japan and Australia] do not want to return to five days a week in an office.

for a distributed workforce brings some considerable

advantages—most

notably

in building more diverse teams. It shifts the center of connection, innovation and power away from the company’s physical HQ, and provides an opportunity to move past norms and build more inclusive and diverse teams from a wide range of geographies outside of the areas immediately surrounding your physical offices.

Different backgrounds mean different learning styles, different means of problem-solving, and different perspectives on solutions. With regard to recruiting new talent, it can be easy to fall into the trap of looking for people who

“check” certain boxes. But in my career, I have found so much value in the unexpected. I believe that every unconventional choice you make – whether that’s taking a job overseas, or at a company no one has heard of, or in an industry people aren’t familiar with — gives you a unique experience that ultimately pays off in spades and increases the value you bring to a role.

While I’ve always liked to look for candidates who have made unconventional

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choices in their careers, hiring a distributed workforce opens up even more opportunities to source the unexpected talent you may not have encountered otherwise.

Do you think that post pandemic trends like remote working, flexi hours become a common trend? What other trends at work, do you think are here to stay?

I do believe the new ways of working and living that have emerged during this period will persist in the post-pandemic world. A recent survey conducted by Future Forum, a consortium launched by Slack to help companies reimagine work in the new digital-first world, found that the vast majority (83%) of knowledge workers [in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Japan and Australia] do not want to return to five days a week in an office. And after a year of remote work, I think organizations have come to realize that employees can be just as—if not more—engaged and productive when working from home. Giving people the flexibility to work when it works for them, with the autonomy and tools needed to support that will become table stakes.

However, staying fully remote may not work for everyone, and one emerging trend I think is likely here to stay is the hybrid/remote office model—i.e., allowing employees to work remote a few days a week and be in the office

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a few days a week. It provides employees the flexibility they have come to expect, while also catering to those who are accustomed to and prefer work in physical offices from time to time. Beyond that, it’s tough to predict exactly what the future looks like, and I expect companies will adopt their own unique policies adapted to their specific industries and employees’ needs. However, one thing is for sure—as we enter these uncharted waters, staying innovative and competitive will require organizations to be agile and willing to break old habits, build new approaches to work and evolve their cultures. Those who don’t are likely to leave their employees searching for greener pastures.

To make a success of digital transformation, effective leadership and a mature organization culture is required. What is the mindset that leaders require in order to succeed in a digital world?

I firmly believe that the best way to build a strong organization is to meet people where they are. Leaders who want to prioritize humanity at work— meaning authentic, open, transparent interaction— can help by exhibiting behaviors, tools and actions that encourage inclusivity, flexibility, and connectedness. Especially as we transition into the new normal in a postpandemic world, my advice for leaders is to over-communicate, put your words into actions, and codify cultural changes.

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Over-communicate: Communicate transparently and authentically to employees, even to the point of where you may feel you’re repeating yourself. In anxious times, employees will fill a perceived vacuum and often jump to worst-case scenarios. Even when you don’t have perfect or complete information, communicating and being open about those unknowns helps build trust and confidence with your teams.

Put your words into actions: Any change to how people work must be not only supported by the highest levels of leadership, but also demonstrated by those same leaders. For example, when leaders encourage their employees to take time for themselves, employees are much more likely to do so when those same leaders are taking time as well.

Codify structural and policy changes: For employees to understand and be confident in a new way of working, those new rules need to be reflected in your company’s official policies. It’s one thing to hear “we’re giving employees 80 hours of Emergency Time Off” and another to go into Workday and see you have a drop-down menu offering ETO as an option alongside more familiar terms and leaders making use of that themselves.

One of the big themes in your work is increasing the importance of an

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underrepresented workforce. What’s your sense of what companies can do to build, manage and promote workplace diversity?

In the wake of this past year’s events and the ongoing national and global reckoning with racial and social inequality, it has become clear that diversity training is no longer enough. To ensure adequate progress is being made, detailed strategic plans need to be implemented to drive and measure long-term diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Here at Slack, we take a holistic approach to building an inclusive and diverse company and culture—from recruiting out of a broad and diverse pool of talent, to training managers how to build trust with their teams and manage inclusively, to co-creating a culture of safety, trust and empowered voices.

As a part of our commitment to embed diversity, engagement and belonging in our hiring practices and workplace culture, every year we release a company diversity report. We see the annual report as an opportunity to step back and critically evaluate whether our approaches are having the desired impact. If they aren’t, we take what we learn from the data and use it to develop new programs and improve existing ones. If we don’t take the opportunity to step back and take a hard look at whether our systems are working—whether we’re making actual progress—then we will fail the communities we’ve committed to serving and lose the opportunity to truly make lasting change.

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THE SECRET TO BUILDING RESILIENCE Pat Teague Chief Human Resources Officer, USAA

Leaders must be able to respond to evolving member and employee needs and experiment with bold, creative ideas and get comfortable with failing fast to continuously improve and move forward quickly.

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at Teague, who leads USAA’s human resources team, talks to The HR Digest about the company’s leadership development programs that has helped attract the industry’s most driven workers and how tough times can have a motivational impact on the workforce.

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The HR Digest: How is USAA responding to COVID-19? How are you coping?

Pat Teague: From the beginning, USAA’s priority has been the safety and health of our employees. Along with the guidance of local health officials, these have played major roles in the decisions of our leaders during this time and will continue to play a role moving forward. From transitioning most of our employees to work from home in March of 2020 to offering enhanced employee benefits such as additional Covid-related time off (3-weeks), two $1,000 bonuses to all non-executive employees with

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base salaries under $100,000, discounted take-home food programs and extended bereavement leave, we want to take care of our employees. We knew it was important to help our employees through this difficult

The most important component of decision making for me is to have diverse perspectives at the table to reach the optimal solution.

time even if it could not be in person.

The past year has been filled with change and opportunity for me personally. It also has placed the HR organization front and center, ensuring our employees remain safe and have access to our wellness benefits. We have delivered many alternative ways to support employees’ emotional well-being and resiliency while quickly adapting to the changing environment and meeting business needs.

I have had to remind myself to create space to re-charge. I use the analogy of when you’re flying, and the flight attendant tells us to place the oxygen mask on yourself first so you can be there to help others.

To make a success of digital transformation, effective leadership and a mature organization culture is required. What is the mindset that leaders require in order to succeed in a digital world?

At USAA, we have a standard for how we work which includes being innovative and building for the future. We have a member-first mindset

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that informs everything we do.

Leaders must be able to respond to evolving member and employee needs and experiment with bold, creative ideas and get comfortable with failing fast to continuously improve and move forward quickly.

Digital capabilities are advancing at a rapid pace, and our leaders have to focus on trying new things to discover the art of the possible and not get stuck in a mindset of what worked in the past. This means taking informed risks to improve competitiveness and deliver value. At USAA we do this by empowering employees who are closest to the work to make decisions, ensuring we are creating space for alternative perspectives and encouraging respectful, fact-based debate and healthy challenge to get to the best outcomes.

USAA takes great pride in its leadership development programs.

In building a reliable pipeline of leadership talent, how do these programs help deliver on your objectives?

This last year has only reinforced the importance of agile leaders and a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I’m a strong believer in creating a sense of belonging for all employees and creating an environment of psychological safety at work in the face of the many issues we are all facing today. In the face of COVID-19, our employees led the way

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regardless of title or role ensuring that everyone had the opportunity to contribute to our purpose-driven mission, by respecting and listening to others, and creating an environment where they could be their authentic selves. These leadership traits are valuable in meeting our members’ needs not just for today but for the future. USAA has a long history of innovative programs that champion this philosophy such as Manager Candidate School, Leadership Development School, and Vets Lead (a military focused leadership network). Learning programs, though, are only part of the solution. The most meaningful lessons and teachings come from experience. That’s why I’ve asked some of our best leaders to teach and coach on topics critical for the years to come – leading a remote workforce, building diverse and inclusive teams, being authentic, and ensuring the well-being of our greatest asset: our employees.

What is your personal approach to decision-making? Would you call it more analytical or intuitive?

I would say it’s a combination of both and depends on the situation since we cannot always expect to have data for all decisions. I tend to lead with intuition and utilize readily available data. The most important component of decision making for me is to have diverse perspectives at the table to reach the optimal solution. For example, throughout 2020, most decisions focused on keeping everyone safe while serving members with excellence.

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Those critical decisions were made rapidly, with very little data and collaboratively ensuring we included many voices around the table.

What has been the most challenging decision you’ve ever had to take in your career?

The most challenging decision had to be leaving the finance organization to accept a position to lead a newly formed enterprise operational function. Finance was my “comfort zone” and my team and I had created strong relationships with each other. It took me a few days to reach my decision as I thought about the impact to my family, leaving my current team and the possibility of failure. Ultimately, I said yes to the new opportunity because it would build my business acumen and provide me with the opportunity to serve the company in a larger role.

In hindsight, although it was a risky decision for me professionally, it ended up being the best decision of my career. With a background in Finance and Operations, it gave me the opportunity to compete and be selected for the CHRO role.

The leader who provided me with the opportunity to continue to learn and grow was Wayne Peacock who is now our CEO.

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A WORKPLACE THAT INSPIRES PASSION Sarah Wagener Chief People Officer, DoorDash Compensation and rewards are only part of the equation–top talent yearns to grow and expand––so, ensuring that they are leveraged to take on new initiatives and solve our toughest problems is a huge part of driving a successful operating culture at DoorDash.

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n a remarkable interview with The HR Digest, Sarah Wagener talks about the value of creating a passionate work culture in the global business sector. “We execute, while collaborating,” she says. “We get to the lowest level of detail, while remaining positive, optimistic and empathetic. We obsess about our customers, while working together across teams to deliver for them.” As a prominent influencer of diversity, the Chief People Officer at DoorDash has made a magnificent contribution to paving the way to a culture fit for the industry’s most driven workers.

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The HR Digest: When you arrived at DoorDash in 2018, you implemented a number of people enablement programs to scale the company’s headcount by 9x through today. Can you tell HR Digest readers how you accomplished this unique feat?

Sarah Wagener: When I arrived at DoorDash in 2018 and took over leadership of the People team as our first Chief People Officer, there was much work to do to prepare the team to support the company’s bold growth plans.

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First, I needed to transition the team’s operating model from a generalist model to distinct teams of operators and specialists with focused mandates and deliverables.

Next, I brought in expertise in critical areas like DEI with the focus of weaving DEI throughout the fabric of the People team and embedding it in our growth plans. Evolving the company’s culture is critical for successful expansion, and with that, we assessed our company values, made adjustments to reflect the company we are and strive to be, re-launched our company values, and embedded them across the employee lifecycle. We also

The very nature of how our business expands is what drives everyone to continue growing and expanding at the same rate. We are upfront about this in the recruiting process and reinforce this through our company values, so that it is not something we have to keep people open to, but instead, is expected and embraced by our employees.

doubled down on building a world class recruiting function––which is always a work in progress in a high growth environment–– and continued to refine the recruiting machine that is central to delivering on our growth plans.

Keeping our customers front and center in our plans has been a critical component in building and scaling our People team. This customer-

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first approach is core to how we operate at DoorDash overall, and addressing the needs of our candidates and employees has been critical to how we have endeavored to make DoorDash a place where each and every employee can do the best work of their careers.

DoorDash is said to have a passionate work culture fit for the industry’s most driven workers. To what extent is that down to a successful talent management strategy?

At DoorDash, we have 12 values that are in place to guide the behaviors of our people, such that everyone amplifies our culture vs. needing to fit into it. We organize them in these 4 buckets: •

We are Doers: Creating solutions that will lead our company and

our industry is what we do -- on every project, every day.

•

We are Learners: Everyone here is learning on the job, no matter

if we’ve been in a role for one year or one minute.

•

We are Leaders: Leadership is not limited to our management

team. It’s something everyone at DoorDash embraces and embodies.

•

We are One Team: The magic of DoorDash is our people, together

making our ambitious goals attainable and driving us to greater heights.

Many of our values are operational in nature; however, execution alone does not drive a winning culture. The balance of our values between

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what we do and how we work together to do it is the secret sauce at DoorDash. We execute, while collaborating. We get to the lowest level of detail, while remaining positive, optimistic and empathetic. We obsess about our customers, while working together across teams to deliver for them. It truly is an AND, not either/or culture at DoorDash.

Talent Management comes in the form of ensuring that our team’s performance is assessed and measured against the how (living our values) and the what (delivery and impact). Having a credible and reliable performance system for calibrating and measuring talent is the first step. Next is being deliberate and planful in how top talent is recognized, grown, deployed and retained is core to successful talent management. Compensation and rewards are only part of the equation––top talent yearns to grow and expand––so, ensuring that they are leveraged to take on new initiatives and solve our toughest problems is a huge part of driving a successful operating culture at DoorDash.

How do you keep your people open to transformational growth and innovation?

Our business evolves quickly and every day, new challenges appear that require expert problem-solving. The very nature of how our business expands is what drives everyone to continue growing and expanding at

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Progress doesn’t come from always agreeing, and that’s why we need diverse voices no matter what level someone is, or what their resume says.

the same rate. We are upfront about this in the recruiting process and reinforce this through our company values, so that it is not something we have to keep people open to, but instead, is expected and embraced by our employees. Everyone from our CEO to our most recent hire is expected to get 1% better everyday. It is a part of who

we are, and fundamental to being successful at DoorDash.

When you set out to recruit new talent, what do you look for? How do you retain star performers to DoorDash?

We believe obsessing about our customers is much more effective when our people represent our customer’s communities. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and representation are business imperatives at DoorDash.

We endeavor to grow and advance the careers of underrepresented people of color and those identifying as womxn and non-binary, while always making room at the table for diverse perspectives and voices.

Trust and transparency gives DoorDash a small team feel, despite our company’s huge ambitions. Our transparent, open culture means our people can ask leaders anything, and because we’re tackling new challenges and uncharted territory every day, we need teammates

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from varied backgrounds and identities to help us think outside the room and solve these problems in ways no one has before. Progress doesn’t come from always agreeing, and that’s why we need diverse voices - no matter what level someone is, or what their resume says.

Our employee resource groups (ERGs) help foster safe spaces for our people We define what’s best for DoorDash by what’s good for our mission, and we take pride in seeing the impact of our hard work. We believe that outsized performance warrants outsized rewards, and people who contribute meaningfully to our mission are recognized for it.

to connect and support one another in communities that share similar experiences.

We have found that supporting our people through the sponsoring of communities like ERGs drives a deeper connection to the company and a stronger sense of belonging overall. And studies show when people feel like they belong––truly belong––they operate at their very best.

In addition to cultivating strong employee connections, our recognition of our people is a core part of our retention strategy.

We have a twice-a-year merit cycle designed to deliver concrete feedback

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that supports people growth, while ensuring our compensation rewards top performers. We define what’s best for DoorDash by what’s good for our mission, and we take pride in seeing the impact of our hard work. We believe that outsized performance warrants outsized rewards, and people who contribute meaningfully to our mission are recognized for it.

What do you consider your most rewarding experience in professional life?

My most rewarding experience comes from fostering growth within DoorDash, particularly in raising up women and people from underrepresented backgrounds in leadership. I’m passionate about supporting equality of opportunity, and ensuring that we’re making room for every voice and perspective at the table. As long as I can use my position to attract more underrepresented talent and create a team of leaders that represents the diversity of our communities, I consider that a success.

How are you going to shake things up next?

It’s difficult to answer this question because I feel like I have to shake things up everyday! Each day brings with it insanely complicated problems to solve, at a scale and complexity that is rare and unique

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to DoorDash. I have described working at DoorDash as equal parts exhilarating and exhausting––yet 100% rewarding. I am required to stretch, expand, and grow in ways that I never have in my career. I am a smarter, faster, and more creative People leader because of my time here at DoorDash, and the best part is that it is just beginning.

So, when I think about how I am going to shake things up, I have to say: it is difficult to think of a time here when I haven’t been required to shake things up.

The COVID-19 crisis has caused instability for workers across the globe. How does this affect DoorDash’s expansion and the overall global talent?

Our expansion strategy has always centered around where we can provide value––for merchants seeking new ways to grow their businesses, consumers seeking convenience, and Dashers seeking flexible opportunities to earn. In many ways, COVID-19 just accelerated many of the trends we were already seeing across local commerce, and rather than changing our strategy, it simply accelerated timelines for plans we already had in the works.

When everything changed in March 2020, my team, along with the DoorDash management team, needed to seamlessly make the transition from working in our offices to effectively operating and

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executing at the same high level, while working from home, all with very little warning. To support our people through this transition, we rolled out financial support to help set up functional home working environments, free PPE to keep them stay safe when they needed to leave their homes, enhanced paid leave to those who need more time to recover from COVID-19, and a resource center where they can access the support they need as they navigated WFH. Today, DoorDash operates in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, and our corporate offices throughout all three countries are currently closed, as we prioritize the safety and wellbeing of our employees during the ongoing pandemic. While we’re seeing hopeful trends in vaccinations and decreasing COVID-19 cases, my team’s focus continues to be on our people, and ensuring that everyone on the DoorDash team has access to the resources and information they need to do great work, feel supported, and understand what is going on across the company, day to day.

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THE WORKPLACE OF TOMORROW Steve Hatfield Global Future of Work Leader, Deloitte

According to the 2021 Deloitte Global Human Capital Report, 72% of respondents pointed to the ability of their people to adapt, reskill and assume new roles as one of the most important factors for navigating future disruptions.

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s a global management consulting business whose success depends on client trust, Deloitte puts a high value on talent with passion, grit and vision. From the vantage point of an extraordinarily lengthy career at the company, Steve Hatfield talked with The HR Digest about how Deloitte’s “purpose-driven” culture has helped forge the workplace of tomorrow.

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The HR Digest: Rethinking the future of work is at the top of many executive teams’ agendas. What, according to you, will define the new frontiers of the future of work?

Steve Hatfield: Post-pandemic, we expect to see changes in how we think about almost every facet of work – but particularly in how organizations elevate humans and architect technology to enable greater productivity, innovation, resilience, and organization performance.

Resilience is key because, as this past year has shown us, work today

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is often in a continuous state of disruption. Organizations need to not only think about technology as a way to maintain connection when we’re all distanced or working remotely – but as a way to enable workers to be more creative and responsive to shifting market forces.

In other words, using technology to elevate our human capabilities and potential, catalyzing greater problem-solving, collaboration, innovation and more.

By embracing their role as architects of work, HR leaders can expand on their impact and help push their organization toward its broader economic and human goals.

How are you preparing your employees for this new reality of work?

At Deloitte, we had the benefit of having experience with remote work systems even before the pandemic, as many of our workers communicate and collaborate with clients and colleagues virtually across the country. We continue to be focused on improving our processes to make the most of these technology systems and humans working in complement to each other.

This is something that we’re seeing with a lot of the organizations we work with as well. There’s a new level of interest in looking at the processes that these businesses have followed for years and seeing if

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there are better ways to operate. This starts with a recognition that humans don’t work in the same way machines do, nor should they. As organizations continue to open up further this year, you’ll see leaders and workers coordinating to re-architect their approach to work as more of a flow, understanding that humans prefer to do work in a more fluid manner.

By creating a purpose-driven culture, Deloitte has found itself in constant process of cognitive transformation. This is an extraordinary asset in today’s world, where organizations must transform frequently, rapidly and economically to thrive. How do you keep the people at Deloitte motivated for change?

One of the draws to building a purpose-driven culture is the level of engagement and motivation it creates. We seek to engender an environment of exploration, creative problem-solving and learning in the work itself. People are motivated and involved in their work for all sorts of personal and professional reasons. Engagement and a feeling of purpose in one’s work is a key factor to fighting burnout, creating greater performance, and even improving well-being at work. We motivate our people by empowering them, mentoring them and giving them the tools they need to thrive along with continuous learning opportunities.

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What is Deloitte’s secret sauce for being recognized several times as “Great Place to Work?” Do you still see room for improvement in Deloitte’s employment practices?

Deloitte is proud to be recognized as a great place to work, and all the hard work that our leaders, managers, and team members put in day in and day out to keep it that way. Part of why I think we continue to be seen as a great place to work is that we have never been an organization that rests on its laurels – we are always looking for ways that we can improve and build upon what we’ve learned.

That includes making sure that we “walk the talk” in making sure our workplace is resilient and purpose-driven in everything that we do.

While we’ve always had communicative leaders, this past year has brough a new level of transparency in our discussions, as we often got to see our colleagues in ways we haven’t before. In some ways, it’s given us a new appreciation and understanding of the importance of nurturing a strong culture and team mindset in our approach to work.

Upskilling has a strong place on the strategic agenda of Deloitte. If you had to make the case for the value of upskilling in workforce decision making as succinctly as possible, how would you frame it?

Meaningful upskilling can only be attained by empowering workers with learning opportunities that will help them unleash their full

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potential. Launched in 2011, Deloitte University is one of the most important investments we make in our people. It’s where years of knowledge, experience, and values are fostered and passed on, and it’s where we develop leaders who make an impact that matters for each other, our clients, and the communities we serve. It made us more thoughtful on knowing when we need to get people together in a physical location for collaboration, strategizing, learning and relationship building, all wrapped by an amazing experience; and when we can be virtual using better technology to learn and collaborate. And this was before the pandemic! It has been a gamechanger both for reinforcing our culture, purpose and motivating our team members to keep building on that vision.

What experiences, people, or philosophies have most influenced the way you view and practice leadership, and why?

You might say I’m a “Corporate Anthropologist” given my background in business and anthropology. I’ve spent the last 25 years looking at how organizations and leaders behave. I’ve learned that leadership is about fostering passion in those around you, supporting people to integrate work and life as a whole person, and championing one’s constant reinvention.

I’ve been at Deloitte for 22 years because we embody these behaviors.

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I’ve been fortunate to have worked with phenomenal colleagues exploring new and complex problems, all the while growing and reinventing as person and contributing to the firm at large. One of the most gratifying aspects in my role is paying this forward and motivating others in the same way Deloitte has motivated me.

This emphasis on what’s most important has helped my teams and Deloitte as a whole succeed. For example, during the past year, Deloitte understood that work/life integration, focusing on the wellbeing of our people, and advancing DEI were critical priorities; and through them we could motivate our people to grapple with the unknown and help our clients get through the worldwide crisis, and chart a course to thriving in the future.

What’s the key lesson you want future HR leaders to take away from your work?

This is an important time for HR leaders to help their organizations reimagine work and set a new direction for their workforce. The past year has made it clear across the C-suite just how central workforce issues are to an organization’s strategy and its ability to quickly adapt. According to the 2021 Deloitte Global Human Capital Report, 72% of respondents pointed to the ability of their people to adapt, reskill and assume new roles as one of the most important factors

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for navigating future disruptions. What’s more, 41% of executives said that building workforce capabilities through upskilling, reskilling and mobility is one of the most important actions they are taking to transform work.

As a result, HR has the ear and attention of the C-suite. Confidence in HR among business executives has notably increased over the past year, with many of these executives looking to their departments for the best ways to empower workers and drive stronger outcomes throughout the organization. By embracing their role as architects of work, HR leaders can expand on their impact and help push their organization toward its broader economic and human goals.

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FAMILIES FIRST CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE ACT:

EXTENSION & EXPANSION OF PAYROLL CREDITS In March 2020, Congress enacted the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) requiring employers with fewer than 500 employees to provide employees with paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave for specified reasons related to COVID-19. Fortunately, certain employers can receive tax credit reimbursements for FFCRA payroll. While mandatory FFCRA paid leave ended on December 31, 2020, Congress provided employer’s with the choice of providing FFCRA paid sick leave until March 31, 2021.

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Background The Family and Medical Leave Act came out with certain new provisions under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) for virus-related illnesses.

The FMLA covers all employers with 50 or more employees who work for 20 or more workweeks.

Employers who employ 500 or more employees and fall outside the ambit of the FFCRA are still obliged to grant paid leave under the FMLA. The FFCRA only covers private employers with less than 500 workers. Here we list situations that will cover Covid-19 cases:

Eligibility Criterion Employers should be covered.

Under the provision, the employees who have been in the job for at least a year, working at least 1,250 hours, are eligible to take Corona related leave.

The workplace should have 50 or more employees coming from within 75 miles.

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Employees suffering from a serious health condition rendering them unable to perform their jobs are entitled to leave under FMLA. The health conditions covered are an illness, injury, impairment, or physical or mental condition that involves inpatient care or continuing treatment by a health care provider.

Coronavirus comes under the category of flu, which is not a serious health condition ordinarily but if it requires inpatient care or treatment by a health care provide then it can be counted as a serious health condition.

Continual treatment by a health care provider includes a period of incapacity of more than three consecutive days, and any subsequent treatment or period of incapacity relating to the same condition that also involves either: • In-person treatment two or more times, within 30

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days of the first day of incapacity, unless extenuating circumstances exist regarding the followup visit, by a health care provider.

• In-person treatment by a health care provider on at least one occasion, which results in a regimen of continuing treatment (e.g., antibiotics) under the supervision of the health care provider.

Will the leave cover an employee staying away from the workplace due to the Covid-19?

A Department of Labor (DOL) guidance promulgated in December says leave taken by an employee for the purpose of avoiding exposure to COVID-19 would not be protected under the FMLA.

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Can an employee take FMLA leave to take care of a family member down with Covid-19?

FMLA leave can be taken to care for a child (biological, adopted, or foster child, a stepchild, a legal ward, or a child of a person standing in loco parentis), spouse, or parent (or in loco parentis) with a serious health condition. A “serious health condition” under the FMLA for an employee’s son, daughter, spouse, or parent has the same meaning as for an employee’s own “serious health condition.” An employee may take FMLA leave to care for a family member with COVID-19 if complications arise for the family member that create a “serious health condition”, and includes circumstances where a family member is unable to care for basic medical, hygienic, or nutritional needs or safety, or is unable to transport themselves to the doctor.

Can an employee claim leave to take care of a person with a weak immune system so that s/ he is not exposed to the virus?

No, an employee cannot take FMLA leave to care for a close family member with a compromised immune system to avoid getting COVID-19. However, an employee may take FMLA leave to care for a family member who has a chronic serious health condition or a permanent/long-term condition requiring supervision if the close family member is experiencing a period of incapacity or treatment for incapacity.

FMLA leave cannot be taken to care for elderly family members who have no serious medical condition.

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Extension to September 30, 2021

With the new entry of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), employers opting to give FFCRA paid leave may now receive tax credit reimbursements through September 30, 2021.

The clock starts over again on April 1, 2021. Regardless of whether an employer claimed a tax credit for giving FFCRA paid leave to an employer before April 1, 2021, the employer may decide to give up to ten (10) days of paid debilitated leave to that same employee starting April 1, 2021. Employers may also claim a tax credit for giving up to twelve (12) weeks of paid family leave.

Extension of Qualifying Reasons for Paid Sick Leave and Paid Family Leave

Before April 1, 2021, an employee could only qualify for FFCRA paid leave under six reasons. The employee, 1. is subject to a Federal, State, or local quarantine or isolation order related to COVID-19; 2. has been advised by a health care provider to 112

self-quarantine related to COVID-19;

3. is experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and is seeking a medical diagnosis; 4. is caring for an individual subject to an order described in (1) or self-quarantine as described in (2); 5. is caring for a child whose school or place of care is closed (or child care provider is unavailable) for reasons related to COVID-19; or

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6. is experiencing any other substantially-similar condition specified by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the Secretaries of Labor and Treasury.

Starting April 1, 2021, an employer may provide FFCRA paid leave to three additional reasons: 1. if an employee is seeking or waiting for diagnostic results for, or a medical analysis of, COVID-19 and after an exposure to COVID-19 or test or finding at the business’ request; 2. if an employee is obtaining vaccination related with COVID-19; or 3. if an employee is recovering from any injury, disability, disease, or condition related to a COVID-19 inoculation.

Under ARPA, an employee may qualify for either FFCRA sick leave or FFCRA family leave under any of the above nine reasons.

Additional Non-Discrimination Rules

An employee that decides to provide paid leave should also abide by new non-discrimination rules. FFCRA tax credits are not available to employers who discriminate: 1. in favor of highly compensated employees, 2. in courtesy workers, or

of

full-time

3. on the basis of an employee’s tenure with the employer.

If an employer offers FFCRA paid sick leave to its employees, the employer would need to apply it in a uniform and non-discriminatory fashion.

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How Agile is Your HR?

How can HR leaders deliver value in a changing world of work?

By: Anna Versai

As the business environment rapidly changes, many organizations are looking for ways to tap opportunities in the new world of work. Adapting to this constant flow of disruption requires a new, agile mindset as well as rethinking of traditional policies and processes.

Here’s a key factor why the shift to agile is necessary: According to a study from executive search firm Odgers Berndtson, a meager 15% 114

of executives worldwide have confidence in their organization’s ability to manage disruption such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, technological advances, and ever-shifting demographics.

Another research from McKinsey & Company notes that agile organizations have a 70% chance of being in the top quadrant of organizational wellbeing, the best marker of long-term performance.

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AGILE HR: What is it?

Today’s organizational hierarchies are constantly evolving. The emphasis is on core jobs with an ecosystem of contingent labor that supports from all directions. A big challenge, however, is developing a culture of inclusion in this environment.

Organizations are looking to improve agility with flexibility and hiring, which means tasks evolve on a day-to-day basis.

At the same time, traditional pay structures are dropping off the radar as organizations

embrace agile compensation and benefits determined by skills and expertise, rather than solely an individual’s level in the organization.

These are disruptive ideas, yet remember that the process of implementing agile methodologies can be a lengthy, difficult experience.

An organizational culture of constant learning is the key, so be sure to include feedback loops and open communications so workers across the organization is engaged to the core.

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One may wonder what agile looks like in practice. What strategies and attitudes are innovative organizations and thought leaders embracing to readily set up their organizations for tomorrow? Here are a few ways to start.

1. Remove ‘annual’ from your vocabulary. If organizations really embrace agile methods of working and have more engaged, self-sustaining teams, then there’s no question that the hierarchical approach to compensation is under challenge.

One of the most efficient ways to build trust and connection needed for agile work is giving the workforce the ability to recognize and reward good work. Recognition is a significant move for organizations where HR is still spending a larger part of their budgets on annual- and retentionbonuses. This is regardless of the fact that no matter how much an employee receives for one-time pay, the increase in engagement only lasts about 3-4 months. Taking recognition and rewards outside the bounds of annual practices additionally empowers the organization to better equip

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themselves for future disruptions.

A recent WorkHuman research notes that employees recognized in the previous month at companies that have recently undergone a monumental change such as a merger or acquisition in the last year are nearly twice as likely to trust in their company’s leadership team, compared to those who have never been recognized or rewarded at work. You can simplify performance management here which largely relies on meetings, ratings, and formal documentation, which results into little to no transparency or trust.

2. Agile performance management encourages more than just engagement. It helps find: smaller, personal development goals; peer-to-peer recognition; projectbased assessments; and flexible reward. Another WorkHuman research shows that workers who frequently check in with their managers are five times more likely to be disengaged. It’s important to encourage an open and honest dialogue as teams work towards common goals. An agile performance management methodology gives employees at the front line nearest to the product and clients the ability to openly communicate as business priorities shift. This will give your business the agility and edge it needs to prepare for the future of work.

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3. Today’s collaborative teams are highly distributed, and leaders are exceptionally busy.

There are times when a star performer who could be the next-generation leader goes unnoticed or unrecognized.

HR leaders can help drive top performers and shine light on previously unknown potential. This methodology is more democratic and inclusive. It truly draws on the wisdom of the company’s workforce. As many organizations are now leveraging predictive analytics to discover leadership potential in real time. The use of technology makes it possible to showcase hidden gems within the organization and find leaders of tomorrow in a less rigid way.

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4. While in the past HR may have avoided mixing work and home life, today is a very different story.

Sharing what is important with coworkers allows us to be connected on a deeper level. Such moments can be work celebrations, personal commemorations and much more. It may as well be sending off an old coworker with memories or offering congrats to a colleague who just bought their first house. Agile organizations are making it a priority to celebrate meaningful moments and important life events. It’s about consistently stopping in the progression

of work to reaffirm our connectedness, and to show appreciation for each other.

Everything is changing in the way in which we work today. Every single business practice is being disrupted in response to significant shifts in technology, business and society. Twenty years ago, an idea like “agile methodology” would have created havoc in boardroom meetings.

Today, more organizations are leveraging this principle. Infuse agility into your organization’s DNA and you’ll see your culture flourish.

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A Call to Action By: Diana Coker

The incursion of AI and automation into the workplace is engineering a disruption that employers and employees are handling differently. While 73 % of executives are carefully paying attention to a significant workforce shift from AI invasion, WEF expects the technology to create over 58 million new jobs by 2022. Employers may have a new task of re-engaging every generation in their office to ensure a swift transition into potential new workplace eras.

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nclusivity and diversity are the new buzzwords for a woke workplace with ageism a tired third in the mix. At a given time, a mixed workplace is bound to have an intergenerational workforce with ages ranging from the 20s to 60s. There are definitely opportunities for different perspectives and ideas in the workplace, but there are equal opportunities for conflict too.

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The multigenerational mix comprises of the baby boomers, the older workforce (between 55 and 73 in 2019); the Generation X (1965 -1980), with the experience and knowledge; the millennials (1981-96), just stepping into the managerial roles; and Generation Y (1997), fresh out of schools eager to take over the world.

The management in such organizations is bound to be walking the proverbial balancing rope. There are challenges being thrown up constantly, and sometimes the small conflicts and different ways of looking at things can pile up and become a “them” and “us” issue.

To effectively motivate a multigenerational workforce and communicate and engage with the employees is a challenging task.

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The first and foremost task for supervisors and the management is to avoid the pitfalls of stereotyping and age bias. Multigenerational workforce is bound to have a different approach to their career path.

Meeting career expectations and job profile perspectives become difficult tasks for any manager in such a scenario.

Baby Boomers constitute 40 percent of the workforce in the US and are expected to do so by 2030. (The statistics are bound to change with the pandemic upsetting the scenarios and leading to massive job cuts across the board).

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whereof through sheer exposure.

This workforce has gone through the grind and is technically savvy as they have witnessed the manufacturing revolution and been part of the shift to digital technology, in fact, they are the inventors of digital tech.

An older workforce brings both challenges and opportunities to organizations.

Being an important part of the workforce, the first task with the leadership is to see that the older generation’s skillsets are utilized to the maximum. This includes experience, a legacy mindset that knows the whys and

The younger generation has a different approach to their careers. A distinct shift towards work-life balance is seen now. The approach to tasks is different; they are less likely to be bound by the rigid timelines and tying to the desk. A younger generation is bound to come with a new approach and a fresh perspective.

For managers, the task is to blend both and find ways to engage and motivate as a team.

Here are a few things that can be done to retain and motivate them: • Employers and people in charge should be trained and made aware of how to handle a multigenerational workforce’s differing work

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styles. Avoid stereotyping. Older employees may be less technologically reliant or be more than comfortable being a part of the smart device generation. After all, they are the precursors and inventors of technology.

• Make it a priority to create a team culture that encourages open dialogue and communication to break down generational barriers.

• Start a buddy or mentoring program. Do not make it hierarchical. Mentoring can be done both ways. Baby boomers are an important source of institutional knowledge. If the workplace environment is forcing them to think of retirement, then you will lose decades of experience and skillsets, which are still relevant. But being rigid in approach does not help, hence mentoring from a younger colleague on popular culture, new technology, and such can be engaging and productive for all.

• Offer training and short term-workshops for the boomers to expand their skill set and learn the latest development in their respective fields. This can be used as a reciprocal strategy where the boomers themselves can hold regular workshops for the younger employees. This builds engagement and relationships among the workforce.

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• The employers should adopt inclusive human resource policies where the needs of the older generation are not overlooked in the youthoriented workforce. Make an effort to accommodate their aspirations and offer titles and role commensurate to their experience and age.

• A flexible working schedule has now become the norm rather than the exception.

This should work in offering people willing to work part-time or reduced hours.

You will have access to a knowledgeable workforce longer and have time to plan a transition, and boomers can extend their earnings longer and plan their retirement better.

• Giving regular feedbacks fulfils two tasks. The roles and expectations are made clear, with no ambiguity. Regular, specific, constructive feedback aimed at helping employees change behavior and solve problems should be available to all employees.

No preparation for tomorrow can be better than understanding the missing links in the present day workplace. Whatever the value technology would bring must first handle competitions facing businesses today. Employers must engage the current workforce by redesigning jobs, continuously upholding an enviable corporate brand, aligning their workforce with the future work, improving the employee experience through digital tools, and welcome talentinspired changes.

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Reengineering the Hiring Process Data-driven insights to navigate the COVID-19 crisis and plan for 2021.

By: Jane Harper

T

he pandemic year was challenging for recruiters. As virtual recruiting and onboarding a remote workforce became the norm, the recruitment landscape had to adapt to the rapidly changing scenario.

Talent shortage is a reality in these times, with the US facing a 69% shortfall, the highest in a decade. Korn Ferry predicts that by 2030, there will be a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people, or roughly equivalent to Germany’s population.

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Daniel Chait, CEO of New York City-based Greenhouse, says we’re entering a phase of what he calls the “Great Re-hiring.”

REMOTE HIRING It will be the norm rather than an exception. Geographical crawling for the best talent available will be incorporated with recruiters not

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hemmed in by locale considerations.

An added advantage is companies have majorly invested in the remote infrastructure doing the pandemic where work from home was the only alternative to a complete shutdown of businesses.

With changes in the HR space, technology has empowered a new breed of recruiters.

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EMPLOYER BRANDING

According to a Glassdoor report, 69% of Americans said they were disinclined to work in a company with a bad reputation, and 84% would consider leaving their current jobs if they got a better offer from a company reputed to be more culturally diverse and environmentally conscious. A key element that shapes an employer brand is its Employee Value Proposition or EVP. An EVP integrates employee engagement programs with the company’s branding to attract and retain skilled candidates.

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PSYCHOMETRIC TESTING

A survey by the Society for Human Resource Management estimates that 18% of companies use psychometric testing in the hiring process. This is expected to increase by 10-15% per year.

Personality traits and other capabilities will be an essential consideration in future recruitments. Psychometric testing can help determine whether a candidate is a good fit for a particular position.

Unlike AI emotional analytical tools that are considered unethical for recruitment processes by some, psychometric tests are developed scientifically and designed to be objective and unbiased.

Psychometric tests help measure traits like aptitude, communication style, and emotional intelligence.

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INTERNAL MOBILITY Rajesh Ahuja, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Infosys says that the future is in reskilling. LinkedIn wrote in its hiring trends report, “recruiting will hire less, build and borrow more this year.”

Companies should aim at leveraging upskilling through internal mobility by creating a strategic plan of action. The need to upskill for the digital world is the need of the hour. It requires employers, educators, government administrators, and not-for-profit organizations to come together to develop plans to help people become more resilient, capable, and agile. A growing number of business leaders see the value of upskilling, but there’s much to be done.

CULTURAL VALUES 22% of employees in the U.S cite this as an important part of job satisfaction. Racial Justice, amongst other DEI (Diversity, equity, and Inclusivity) considerations, has seen an uptick among prospective employees.

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The quality of senior leadership at the helm also attracts top talent.

Diversity is no longer just a feel-good “initiative,” but a business-critical imperative. Organizations are starting to recognize the importance of an inclusive workforce. Investors are showing greater interest in how companies are able to do the socioeconomic good.

Does your D&I strategy include ondemand workers such as drivers, virtual assistants, and cleaners? As you plan for a post-COVID hiring strategy, how will take account of the key trends to ensure your business benefits from a wider mix of people, including young men and women most affected by the job crisis?

RECRUITERS WILL EXPAND THEIR SKILL SETS According to a LinkedIn survey of over 1,500 talent professionals, the no. 1 134

skill for recruiters to embrace in 2021 is adaptability.

This includes suing AI, talent data, employer rebranding, and upscaling the virtual hiring process, among other things.

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Johnny Campbell, CEO of Dublinbased SocialTalent elaborates: “We saw recruiters massively increase their appetite for learning as soon as COVID-19 hit last March, more than doubling their normal learning consumption in the following months. Hot

topics included talent advisory training, virtual interviewing, being productive while working remotely, virtual onboarding, and internal mobility.”

Further on, he added that “Learning how to be better talent advisors is

always a popular topic for recruiters, but many more sought it out for the first time as their hiring managers frantically reached out to them with a massive demand for information about the evolving labor market.”

AUTOMATION Integrated HR automation can allow companies to cut hiring costs up to 17% and HR staff hours by 26%.

Recruitment Automation software leverage AI to streamline talent acquisition efforts. This includes sourcing candidates, conducting interviews, matching values, etc. By integrating automation tools, tasks like AI-resume screening, automated job listing, interview scheduling, and onboarding can all be streamlined.

This allows your recruitment teams to give ample time for one thing that matters for effective recruiting — authentically engaging with top candidates.

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CREATING

A GREAT PLACE TO WORK By: Pri Mistry

H

ow do you become the best company on earth to work for? What are the considerations for creating an admired workplace culture? What are the markings of a truly great company? For years we’ve been exploring this question by asking

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HR executives in interviews to tell us what the “Best Companies to Work For” do differently.

Our aim in conducting this research was not just to catalog all of the things these companies do – as can be found elsewhere on the internet.

However, all things considered, we

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aimed to find out why and what they do differently. While no single formula can encapsulate the qualities of these companies and the meaningful ways that they motivate employees, we found interesting insights that could help start you down the right path.

Here we have, in their own words, the

most admired companies on earth and their secret sauce to a great culture.

It’s fairly easy to identify what you can do – it’s just doing it that’s easier said than done. We applaud these companies for the hard work they’re poured into creating the future of work.

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Qualtrics Headquarters:

UTAH,

UNITED STATES Global Headcount:

Understanding how your employees and customers are feeling and experiencing your services is key to disrupting any market.

3,300+ On maintaining progress and momentum.

No doubt the global pandemic fundamentally changed the way organizations, including Qualtrics, engage with employees. One of the biggest impacts we highlight in our 2021 Employee Experience Trends Report is that during the pandemic, the top engagement drivers for employees have actually shifted.

In 2019, the focus was on growth

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One of the biggest impacts we highlight in our 2021 Employee Experience Trends Report is that during the pandemic, the top engagement drivers for employees have actually shifted. In 2019, the focus was on growth and leadership opportunities, but in 2020 those drivers shifted to feeling a sense of belonging and inclusion at their organization.

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and leadership opportunities, but in 2020 those drivers shifted to feeling a sense of belonging and inclusion at their organization.

What this tells us is that as leaders

their resources, and how to drive lasting and impactful change. This is especially important in a remote environment when you can’t meet in-person and where regular pulses go a long way.

De-bias hiring and rewards.

look to create a more inclusive experience, teams across the company should be focused on gathering feedback and data that will help identify areas of improvement, where to best invest

The key to creating change within an organization is regularly listening to employees and taking quick action to address their feedback. As the leading experience management company, we frequently pulse our own employees to make sure we understand how they are thinking and feeling about their experience at Qualtrics and then take action based on their feedback.

Let me give you an example: At the beginning of the pandemic, we knew it’d be a big transition for employees so we asked questions like, “How are you doing?” “Do you

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have what you need?” “How can we support you?” That feedback was instrumental for us to know if our employees were doing ok and how we could help them.

This feedback is so valuable to help us pinpoint experience gaps and to quickly address them.

Motivating People.

Change is constant in any industry, and at Qualtrics we embrace it. We created a whole new category of software - experience management - and there’s a lot of innovation yet to come in this space. Our employees are paving the way along with the company— it’s a unique position to be able to grow and create together. One example of this is our weekly global company meeting, where employees can regularly hear

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from leadership and connect on business priorities and learn what’s coming next.

The secret sauce for being recognized several times as “Great Place to Work.”

At Qualtrics, we strongly believe that great companies define their culture through core values.

And everyone who interacts with Qualtrics is familiar with the foundation and values that this company was built on. We call them TACOS: Transparency. We share with one another and hold ourselves accountable.

All in. We bet on Qualtrics and Qualtrics bets on us.

Customer obsessed. If a customer is upset, we failed. Period. We

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learn from it, and we fix it.

One team. There is only one team at Qualtrics. We win together, we lose together, and we have each other’s backs.

Scrappy. We’re smart, resourceful, and we always find a way.

Each individual at Qualtrics — from the C-suite to the newest intern — is immersed in these values. They are a testament to the strength of our people and culture and a continuous reminder of what we stand for as a company. This year, we hosted our first XM Day, a global day of service for our employees to spend time designing and improving experiences in their homes, communities, and the world. That effort continues

every day as we push ourselves to close experience gaps for our customers and communities.

How is Qualtrics going to shake things up next?

Experience matters now more than ever. Understanding how your employees and customers are feeling and experiencing your services is key to disrupting any market. We are lucky to work with 13,500+ of the best brands in the world and are excited to partner with them to deliver better experiences coming out of this unprecedented pandemic.

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Vistaprint Headquarters:

DUNDALK, IRELAND

Global Headcount:

7,000 On maintaining progress and momentum.

Clear communication and opportunities to tag into Diversity & Inclusion conversations have been vital to maintaining progress and momentum. We have partnered with our internal teams to elevate our D&I communication at the companywide level with articles that clearly illustrate where we are on our D&I journey by sharing 142

We have a strong network of leaders that help their teams understand, support and be motivated by our Vistaprint-wide objectives, then align their priorities so that everyone contributes to our vision with a “one Vistaprint” mindset.

what has been completed and what lies ahead. Our Employee Resource Groups continue to lead virtual events that allow team members to connect in large and small groups like they would have in-person. We saw some unexpected success due to remote-first, which came from the ability to broaden these event invitations to have a

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One of our foundational basics is being magnetic to talent, which means we are continually mastering how we attract and retain great talent.

global reach. With this expansion even more team members have become participants in our D&I engagement initiatives.

We have amazing team members leading our asynchronous and remote-first workstreams who lean in and look for ways to help build those meaningful connections in a virtual workplace. Examples of

recent initiatives include the launch of Onboarding Cohorts, where new joiners go through a 12week program together and have discussions on various topics D&I, including unconscious bias. We are also preparing to launch remotefirst training to all remote leaders, focusing on creating an inclusive culture and environment with their teams in a virtual setting.

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De-bias hiring and rewards.

One of the most effective ways to tackle bias is to continually educate and build awareness and accountability within the organization. In 2020, we trained our Key Leadership team members on Unconscious Bias, how to recognize and how to mitigate.

Self-aware leaders set the tone for their teams and are able to keep each other in check to prevent biascreep. Members of our Executive Leadership team also all act as advisors and active participants in each of our Employee Resources Groups, remaining directly tied to timely discussions with team members about events taking place both inside the company and within the community.

Motivating People.

Everyone in Vistaprint - who we call team members, not employees 144

- plays a vital role in our mission.

No matter your function, we share a purpose to help small business owners look and feel legitimate and credible so that they can achieve success. Team members across Vistaprint recently gathered virtually for a motivational session by an amazing performance psychologist, Jamil Qureshi, who spoke about defining yourself by the value you bring to other people.

This is very much the mindset we bring to empowering our team members during times of change.

Transparent communication is another way we stay motivated. We have a strong network of leaders that help their teams understand, support and be motivated by our Vistaprint-wide objectives, then align their priorities so that everyone contributes to our vision with a “one Vistaprint” mindset.

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The secret sauce for being recognized several times as “Great Place to Work.”

One of our foundational basics is being magnetic to talent, which means we are continually mastering how we attract and retain great talent.

In August 2020, we made the decision to move to permanent remote working for team members whose roles allow it. This has opened up a world of possibility for recruiting and hiring. Our most recent senior hires are not based in locations where we previously had offices, but a remotefirst work environment allows us to break free from geographic constraints to welcome wonderfully talented team members to Vistaprint.

How is Vistaprint going to shake things up next?

Our Founder & CEO Robert Keane challenged us to make how and where we work a towering strength of our culture and a competitive advantage. We’ll spend the next few years becoming honing the things that will make us a highperforming organization: working more flexibly and collaborating in new ways; hiring in new geographies; investing more in areas that support our team members and our growth.

Office locations will become Collaboration Centers with a mix of spaces where team members can meet to work in person with others when needed. Policies, practices, tools and technology are being reviewed and, where needed, redesigned to optimize each for the most productive and engaging remote working experience. Work is about what we do, not where we do it, and we want to be an employer of choice because of how we organize to work together.

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TaskUs

Our deep understanding of innovation and digital transformation means that we’re adaptable to change, and take it as an opportunity to look forward and further improve.

Headquarters:

SANTA MONICA,

CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES Global Headcount:

1,200+ On maintaining progress and momentum.

As a business services provider, TaskUs is built heavily around the concept of digital transformation, meaning that a forward-looking mindset is part of our company DNA. Amid COVID-19, we understood from the get-go that our teammates needs’ 146

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The TaskUs Method has been carefully crafted to meet the needs of modern employees. We have a team of full-time mental health experts providing holistic support and ultimately creating healthier working environments and happier teammates.

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would drastically change, and that wellness would be at the forefront more than ever before. We increased our focus on work-life balance, took our mental and physical wellness programs virtual, and upleveled our coaching and training programs. Our deep understanding of innovation and digital transformation means that we’re adaptable to change, and take it as an opportunity to look forward and further improve.

Since shifting nearly all of our global teammates to work from home in response to the COVID pandemic, TaskUs has rolled out new work-life balance commitments like meeting-free Fridays, no-chat weekends, and the requirement that everyone take a true time off without 148

checking their email.

Meanwhile, the company has reinvented employee engagement with virtual happy hours and wellness sessions—ranging from mindfulness meditation and stretching exercises to dance fitness and laughter yoga.

Additionally, TaskUs has rolled out the Connect15 platform which randomly connects two TaskUs employees for a serendipitous fifteen minute Zoom conversation.

Our digital remote work infrastructure, called “Cirrus,” was a huge part of this transformation. It’s our way of supporting the work-from-home era, and keeps our culture strong through a permanent digital presence. Simply put: all

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existing physical programs from our worksites were replicated for our new, mostly online lives. Since the shift to remote work, we have doubled our number of licensed mental health professionals, psychologists and trained life coaches available to employees, and made 24-hour telesupport possible, via private and secure online sessions.

As we evaluate vaccines’ impact on the pandemic and slowly move back into offices, Cirrus will not be a thing of the past – instead, it will support our in-person activities and build a stronger, more inclusive culture long-term at TaskUs.

De-bias hiring and rewards.

Teamwork and diversity are the basis of our team’s strength. We

prioritize hiring unique individuals from diverse backgrounds knowing that they can add immense value across our teams. We look for people who want to make a difference - regardless of locale or backgrounds. We partner with public schools, universities, military communities and other community sources that support inclusivity. In addition, we provide unconscious bias training to our leaders, recruiters and hiring managers.

We know that change starts with us. We hold ourselves accountable to our core value, Continuous SelfImprovement. It starts by looking internally at how we can improve and cultivate a culture that encourages diversity, inclusion and equity. Through that focus, we’ve established 10 Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to provide a safe space for underserved identity

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groups and ally supporters where they can engage in employee-led discussions to increase understanding and drive collaboration. In addition, these groups support the professional development of all members, introducing positive changes such as adding unique perspectives to decision making and easy access to upward mobility for marginalized audiences.

spaces. Community is consistently fostered through catered lunches, fitness classes, social events, and volunteer opportunities, celebrating TaskUs’ many represented regional cultures to foster inclusion and a sense of community across international offices.

But beyond the physical spaces, we provide TaskUs teammates

A powerful new model.

We pride ourselves on our “ridiculously good” culture, which creates a motivating, engaging work environment.

Our office design is a huge part of this, with game rooms, fitness centers, meditation areas, day care centers, and bright, colorful, open concept office

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with a holistic wellness program, which we call “The TaskUs Method.” This program is a comprehensive, global mental health initiative and integrated approach that blends clinical best practices, technology, resources and more to support employee wellbeing – guided by psychology and grounded in neuroscience. We have in house clinics with doctors, counselors, and psychiatrists available, and have replicated this presence through our Cirrus platform amid the pandemic.

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The secret sauce for being recognized several times as “Great Place to Work.”

Personalization and prioritization of wellness is TaskUs’ secret sauce. This is represented by how we think outside the box when it comes to benefits and human resources, and ultimately the impetus for the development of our TaskUs Method. The TaskUs Method has been carefully crafted to meet the needs of modern employees. We have a team of full-time mental health experts providing holistic support and ultimately creating healthier working environments and happier teammates.

This personalization and focus on development is also

represented in our coaching and training programs on a global scale. We are constantly supporting upward mobility and encouraging people to explore other opportunities internally that have the potential to further their professional growth and careers.

For instance, coaching sessions at TaskUs between managers and direct reports are done weekly. Discussions do not only revolve around work; but we also encourage leaders to regularly check in on the personal lives of their reports.

We acknowledge that a healthy discussion on how personal affairs affect work contribute to the overall growth of a person.

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A FAST TRACK TO CAREERS! By: Priya Versai

Well-paying jobs that one get without a college degree and with a respectable certificate program.

A

ny high-paying job requires minimal qualifications. If you have a degree, then the chances of getting a decently paid job increase.

But getting a degree is expensive and time-consuming, and not meant for everyone. What are the other alternatives out there that would give you the theoretical and practical knowledge to gain a push ahead in your career journey?

A good solution is to go for certificate programs, which are short-term training programs that give you an insight into your specified skills and validate that study too with credentials.

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There are certificates for jobs in various industries, including healthcare, information technology, education, and hospitality. There are many “New-collar jobs,” that do not require high specialization but demand mid-level skills. They do not require one to be super-specialized or have an extensive work history.

The required skills can be acquired through vocational training, certificate programs or an apprenticeship. Such programs are useful for people just starting in their careers or looking for a boost in their career prospects.

Certificates allow one to gain the appropriate knowledge to keep abreast of the latest developments in their respective field.

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Professionals generally find such short-term programs useful. Management programs also can give a fillip to one’s ambitions. Accounting is one career path where such certificates come in very useful.

How do you zero in on the right certificate programs suitable to your career needs or desires? Many educational websites curate such certificate programs for you. There is even a certificate finder website. And then, there are other avenues too;  Find out from your organization if they have some affiliations with institutes that offer such programs or even if there are in-house short term programs on offer.

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 Scout your local colleges and institutes.  Talk to colleagues and friends if they have any referrals or recommendations.  Check that the certification you are going for has the appropriate government accreditation.

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DATA MANAGERS Data managers organize data using special software. They make sure it is safe and available to the required people.

There are many fly-by-night organizations that offer courses that have no recognition beyond their doors.

Here is a list of well-paying jobs that one get without a college degree and with a respectable certificate program.

Database managers can be employed in IT, retail, hospitality, healthcare, etc.

Earlier, people preferred database managers to have a degree in computer programming and information management systems. But with technological progress, there are readymade software available that allow people with strong knowledge of database languages, such as Structures Query Language (SQL), to do the job According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, this job is experiencing a faster than average growth rate, with the average salary at $93,750 (2019) per year.

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COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS Some may be surprised at this inclusion. But a 4-year degree is not a necessity. Anyone who knows a variety of computer languages, including Java and C++ can make code. Many small children write and develop apps. One needs to have an inclination and interest, and certificate programs can teach the basics of the various computer languages.

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Jobs are available in computer systems design companies, or they could work for software publishers or financial companies, among others.

With remote work gaining wider acceptance, programmers are in demand and freelance work more available.

and capacity. Web developers can work in any sector that needs a web presence. An associate degree or a certificate in web development is needed.

While many computer programmers do have a bachelor’s degree, many have shifted to it due to their passion, experience, or doing a certificate program in specific programming languages.

According to the Department of Labour’s Occupational Outlook Handbook, the median pay for a computer programmer is $86,550 (2019).

DIAGNOSTIC MEDICAL SONOGRAPHER

WEB DESIGNER They design and develop websites. They handle the website’s performance, speed,

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, web developers earn a median income of $73,760 per year.

They are also known as Ultrasound technicians. They do ultrasound images for patients. Medical sonographers work in hospitals, doctor’s offices, medical centers, and laboratories.

One can get an associate degree and a one-year certificate program to find employment. There are bachelor’s degrees too that offer this specialization.

According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, medical sonographers earn $68,750 (2019) per year.

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RADIOGRAPHERS They generally take X-rays and other diagnostic imaging on patients. They work under physicians and help physicians evaluate images. Most radiologic technicians have an associate degree in MRI or radiologic technology. These programs typically take 18 months to two years to complete. There are also certificate programs that take one to two years.

Radiology technicians earn, on average, $62,280 (2019) per year, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

DRAFTSMAN They find employment in architectural planning and civil engineering work.

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They create drawings of the structural features of buildings or maps of civil engineering projects (including public works, bridges, and roads). Most drafters have training in computeraided design and drafting (CADD), engineering, mechanical drawing, and other design and engineering skills.

This training can be from a certificate program, a two-year program, or even a four-year program.

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Drafters earn a median income of $56,830 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

PLUMBERS They are in great demand in construction, repair and services.

Many plumbers learn their work through a certificate program and/or a four- to five-year apprenticeship. Some states

also require that plumbers and pipefitters be licensed.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, pipefitters and plumbers earn a median income of $55,160 per year.

COURT REPORTER A court reporter transcribes the proceedings that take place in a

legal court. They transcribe depositions and trials. Most court reporters work in courts or legislatures. They require a postsecondary certificate in court reporting from a community college or technical institute.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, court reporters earn a median income of $60,130 per year.

HEAVY VEHICLE AND MOBILE EQUIPMENT MECHANIC Heavy vehicle and mobile equipment mechanics (also known as service technicians) repair, inspect machinery and vehicles used in transportation, farming, construction, and more. Mostly vehicle mechanics work on apprenticeship or vocational training.

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equipment mechanics.

This is an added advantage as some of the latest machinery is very complex.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, heavy vehicle and mobile equipment mechanics earn a median income of $51,590 per year.

HEATING, AIR CONDITIONING, AND REFRIGERATION MECHANIC AND INSTALLER They are also known as HVACR technicians and work on heating, ventilation and cooling technologies used in offices, homes and buildings. HVACR technicians usually complete a degree or certificate program from a trade or technical school or a community college. These programs can last from six months to one year.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, HVACR technicians earn a median income of $48,730 per year.

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PHARMACY TECHNICIAN A pharmacy technician assists pharmacists in dispensing medicine. They are employed in drug stores/pharmacies and even pharma companies, hospitals, etc.

This being an assistant’s job, apprenticeship suffices. Many

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vocational/technical schools offer programs in pharmacy technology, some of which award students with a certificate after a year or less.

This average salary of a pharmacy technician is $33,950 (2019) per year, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

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Top picks of conferences and professional events around the world April 19 – 21, 2021

Virtual

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SHRM Talent Conference & Expo 2021 To learn innovative talent strategies tailored to the realities of the world of work. Learn from engaging speakers and takeaway tips to enrich your workplace. Network with other recruitment and talent management professionals on the latest trends in recruiting and best practices to retain engaged employees at every level of your organization.

April 21, 2021

Build and Inclusive Culture

may 4 – 6, 2021

Gartner Data & Analytics Summit | Americas

We know that hiring, engaging, and retaining a diverse workforce creates a business advantage, but this value has skyrocketed in today’s unstable marketplace. Join this online HR event by the Human Capital Institute to meet the HR leaders who are changing everything with new strategies, tools, and innovative ideas that will transform hearts, minds, and your bottom line.

Because this Data & Analytics Summit offers content for every member of your data and analytics team – from technical – to senior-level strategy. This virtual HR event covers three main topics; business strategy, technology, and leadership, all from a data and analytics perspective.

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may 11 – 14, 2021

Virtual Employee Engagement Summit

june 4 – 6, 2021

d&i Leaders Global Forum 2021

july 21, 2021

Redesign Your Employee Experience

To be part of a unique experience that includes 45+ industry experts sharing their exclusive case studies, live Q&A panels and interviews from those who are shaping the future of employee engagement in the ‘new norm’. The Virtual Employee Engagement Summit is one of the few online HR events that featured a truly gender-balanced selection of speakers for their 2020 edition which makes us believe they’ll do the same in 2021.

Because it’s the leading annual global event for organizations looking to accelerate their workplace diversity and inclusion strategy. Over 600 senior diversity, inclusion, and HR professionals attend the forum to hear from 40+ expert speakers, network, and exchange ideas.

2020 speakers included Global Inclusion & Diversity Heads of large international companies such as Heineken, LinkedIn, and Ikea.

One of the biggest areas of change today is how employees perceive their experience, whether they’re in the office or remote. This virtual HR event by the Human Capital Institute helps you understand how to use design thinking to create experiences that inspire and retain in any working environment.

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August 25 – 27, 2021

Virtual

August 29 – September 1, 2021

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Ohio HR Conference: Refresh & Refocus On behalf of the Ohio SHRM State Council and the Ohio HR Conference Committee - you are invited to Refresh and Refocus - the 2021 Ohio HR Conference. We’ll be back in Columbus next year at the Greater Columbus Convention Center from August 25-27, 2021 for two and a half days of superior programming in a great (onsite!) venue.

HR Florida Conference & Expo 2021 The HR Florida Conference & Expo is the annual conference of the HR Florida State Council, a state affiliate of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Each year, the event attracts 1,500+ human resource professionals and vendors throughout the state of Florida and across the nation. These individuals represent virtually every industry and companies ranging from small businesses to large industrial centers. Programs presented at the annual conference cover all aspects of the SHRM Body of Knowledge.

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