Few people would refer to the ancient technology of bricks and mortar when talking about hybrid work at 21st-century companies. But Kausik Rajgopal does–with good reason.
Bricks are like employee skills, said Rajgopal, executive vice president of people and sourcing at PayPal. Mortar is like the connection and teamwork that grows from in-person interactions. “You can’t build a building with just bricks. You need the mortar between the bricks,” Rajgopal said at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference.

Speaking in a fireside chat From Day One co-founder Steve Koepp, Rajgopal described what he sees as the three biggest challenges facing HR leaders today: the future of work, talent acquisition and retention, and people analytics.

The Future of Work

Most immediately, businesses face the question of how much to draw employees back into the office, a continuing source of tension over the past year. Paypal undertook an extensive listening campaign to find out what would entice employees to return to in-person work. “Overwhelmingly, they said, ‘We can be productive remotely. But the reason we want to come back is to be more connected,’” Rajgopal said.

That insight led to his bricks-and-mortar analogy. It also led to a hybrid policy that blends the convenience of remote work with the connection of being on site. “Listening without judgment led to our virtual flex workplace model, where most of our employees are remote and come in from time to time based on the nature of the work,” he said.

Paypal's decision process involved more than listening, though. HR leaders tried to figure out what employees really were seeking, which was deeper and sometimes different from their stated preference. “If a manager says, ‘I want people back on Tuesdays and Thursdays,’ what is it they really want to accomplish with that?” Rajgopal asked. “Do they want a bunch of people in a room listening to them so they feel important? Or do they want to brainstorm and whiteboard? As HR leaders, identifying and addressing the underlying interest can be really powerful.”

Talent Acquisition and Retention

Even before Covid, the tech industry was grappling with a shortage of skilled professionals. Then two years of pandemic distance further weakened employees’ ties to their companies. “Remote work, with all its joys and productivity, can also be somewhat transactional, because you’re going from Zoom meeting to Zoom meeting,”

Rajgopal said. “One big implication of the pandemic is that employees now think, feel, and operate more as consumers with respect to their companies. If we have a recession, maybe that changes a little bit. But I do think that dynamic is here to stay.”

That puts the onus more than ever on HR departments to devise effective retention strategies. People may join companies for the salary, but they stay for other factors–seeing a career path for themselves within the company, or a sense that they can get things done there, or a belief that the company shares their values.

Over the past year, PayPal rolled out a set of leadership principles based on four values–inclusion, innovation, collaboration, and wellness–and designated vice presidents to serve as champions for each of the principles. They’re putting the wellness value into practice through, among many other initiatives, a Wellness Day each quarter, when the entire company shuts down. “We recognized that if only one part of the company did a two-hour program on wellness, while getting constantly emailed by other parts of the company, they’re not really shutting down and renewing and recharging themselves,” Rajgopal said.

“One of my favorite things is looking at my LinkedIn newsfeed after a Wellness Day and seeing people post, ‘I took my dog for a walk,’ ‘I went for a hike,’ ‘I visited my parents.’ Wellness is a cherished value that we really, really live.”

People Analytics

To deal with the challenge of retention, companies now have the opportunity to draw on the tools of people analytics–data that can inform and drive HR functions. For example, one leading indicator of voluntary attrition is if an employee has been in the same role for an extended period of time without any conversations about their career goals. Companies can take that information and ensure that a manager speaks with the employee to help them explore career options within the organization. “This is something that, based on our analytic perspectives on attrition, is something that we’ve started doing more systematically,” Rajgopal said.

Analytics, he said, has the potential to propel HR into a greater role in company decision-making. “HR is a function that is more important and more strategic than ever,” Rajgopal said. “It’s going to be much more of a leading-indicator function, versus a lagging-indicator function. Part of that means being more data-driven and using analytic insights to inform discussions with the C-suite. The art of employee listening, the art of understanding, and then translating that information into actions that engage employee communities will be more important than ever, and HR will be in the middle of that.”

Ilana DeBare is a former workplace and small business reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her novel “Shaken Loose” will be published in summer 2023.