What’s Next: The Challenges Ahead for HR Leaders
BY Ilana DeBare June 12, 2023Few 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 WorkMost 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 RetentionEven 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 was interviewed during the fireside chat (company photo)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 AnalyticsTo 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.
‘Career Growth Can Be Even More Meaningful Than Salary’
BY Ilana DeBare July 17, 2022Michael Watson came to hate the friendly farewells.When Watson worked as a corporate recruiter, too often an employee he’d brought into the company seven or eight months earlier would stop by his cubicle to thank him warmly and say good-bye.Good-bye? After less than a year?“I just don't see a lot of career growth here,” the departing worker would explain. “It’s easier to find a job outside this organization than inside it.”Like Watson, many HR professionals have come to realize that career growth opportunities–or lack thereof–are a key factor in retaining talented employees. “Career growth is something that can be even more meaningful than salary,” said Tilmin Hudson, VP of sales at Numly, a platform for coaching and networking.Hudson and Watson, who is now head of global customer advocacy for Eightfold, an AI-powered talent platform, were among the five speakers who shared insights about career-growth opportunities and retention during a panel discussion at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference in June.Career Development From the StartThe panelists, moderated by Scott Thurm, senior editor of The Information, agreed that career growth opportunities should be built into employee experience from the moment of hire.Said Miglani, at right, with Hudson: “As a minority woman, when a company hires me, the first thing I look at is who looks like me and who represents my values. When I don’t see that in leadership, the company can have the best programs, but I’m not going to stay.”“They come in the door, we put them on a 30-60-90-day growth plan, and our learning and development team teaches four classes during their first week,” said Joni Quintal, head of learning and development at Cushman & Wakefield, the commercial real-estate company. “They know from the start there’s an internal team committed to their career development.”Once employees are on board, managers can play an ongoing role of coach and career guide, but only if they are equipped to do that. “These days everyone wants a coach,” said Hudson. “Many managers think they’re coaching but they’re not really coaching. We really need to support managers in becoming coaches.”Shveta Miglani, head of global learning and development at Micron Technology, said that all her firm’s newly appointed managers receive training that includes coaching and emotional-intelligence skills. “We have experienced managers teaching these sessions so they can actually talk about their own experiences, and participants aren’t just looking at a slideshow,” Miglani said.Cross-pollination Within the OrganizationThe role of managers in fostering career growth goes beyond coaching. They must be willing to let go of prized employees who find advancement opportunities elsewhere in the company, even if it makes their own job harder in the short run. “The idea that you [as a manager] have to be a net exporter of talent is really important,” said Watson.Companies can take a cue from the gig economy by offering workers a chance to try out new roles on a temporary, project-oriented basis. “Gig or project work helps test the waters, both from the leader side as well as from the individual employee perspective,” said Miglani.Companies can also connect employees across departments as peer coaches. This offers a double benefit: both the coaching relationship and a glimpse of career options the employee might not otherwise have known about.“You can have someone in marketing coaching someone in finance, or someone in finance helping someone in sales,” Hudson said. “Someone in another department may know how to do something and may be more innovative about it. So why not have that person help someone elsewhere in the company?”Career Support for Underrepresented GroupsCompanies should take extra steps to ensure that in-house advancement paths are visible to traditionally underrepresented groups like women and people of color.Employee resource groups (ERGs), if supported by top leadership, can instill a sense of belonging and opportunity. So can diversity in the executive ranks. “As a minority woman, when a company hires me, the first thing I look at is who looks like me and who represents my values,” said Miglani. “When I don’t see that in leadership, the company can have the best programs, but I’m not going to stay.”The panel was moderated by Scott Thurm, senior editor of The InformationManagerial encouragement can be key in helping women employees envision new, challenging roles for themselves within an organization. As one panelist put it, many women don’t have the “fake it till you make it” mindset. Yet without taking risks, they may feel stagnant and leave.“We women do this ‘imposter syndrome’ thing on ourselves when we’re thinking about our careers,” Hudson said. “We think we can’t pass those three tests or don’t have those three additional skills, so we don't apply.”Career Mapping through A.I.Employers today have exciting new tools to address the challenges of career growth, including artificial intelligence (AI) programs that can inform employees about internal career options they hadn’t even imagined.“This is the Golden Age of HR technology," said Larry McAlister, VP for global talent with NetApp, a data-management company. “You can be a 25-year-old kid coming in to do a self-assessment, thinking, ‘I don't know where I’m gonna go.’ And the tool will tell you there are three ‘next jobs’ you could potentially take, based on what you like to do and what your skills are. It lets you visualize the next steps inside of your company. That’s mind-blowing.”These tools can promote diversity by helping all employees—not just the confident or connected ones—find opportunities. “You could get recommendations for a job you might never have thought you’re qualified for,” McAlister said. “The technology tells you what your gaps are so you can easily close them. It breaks down barriers. People who feel like ‘I’m not with the in-group,’ or ‘I’m far away from headquarters,’ get a fair shot.”Still, even the best technology needs a human touch—someone talking with individual employees and encouraging them. “Technology gets you to the human conversation faster and more informed, but it will never replace that human conversation,” McAlister said.“If you don't have people who care,” said Watson, “none of the technology makes a difference.”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.
How to Go Beyond Resumes for Better, More Diverse Hires
BY Ilana DeBare July 15, 2022Svitlana had been fascinated by math and computers since her childhood in Ukraine. In college there, she studied computer science. Afterwards she started working in quality assurance (QA) and moved up into complex software engineering. But when she married an American citizen and moved to North Dakota, she couldn’t get a single job interview. “Most hiring managers looked at her resume and saw some random person coming from Eastern Europe who went to some unknown university and worked at some unknown company. Nothing really stood out for her,” said Peter Lu, VP for customer experience and solutions engineering at CodeSignal, which has developed an objective, skills-based interview and assessment platform that can be used as a standard for technical hiring. Lu, who spoke in a Thought Leadership Spotlight at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference in June, highlighted Svetlana’s story as an example of what’s wrong with traditional recruitment processes. By relying too heavily on resumes and keywords, he said, recruiters fail to recognize strong candidates from unorthodox backgrounds. “A PDF resume was Version 1.0,” Lu said. “A LinkedIn profile was Version 2.0. But at the end of the day, that’s still a proxy because it doesn’t represent candidates’ true skills and abilities. We’re trying to answer the question, What is Version 3.0?” The answer, Lu suggested, lies in data-driven approaches that test candidates’ actual abilities. Such approaches can identify skilled I.T. talent from non-traditional backgrounds—people who may not have gone to prestigious colleges or worked at brand-name companies. Peter Lu, VP for customer experience and solutions engineering at CodeSignal (Photo by David Coe for From Day One) In Svitlana’s case, one of her applications eventually landed at a Chicago company that used a coding test from CodeSignal. She performed so well on the test that they flew her to Chicago to interview her, and then hired her. Will that kind of skills assessment be the Version 3.0 needed by employers seeking better, more diverse talent? Yes, Lu said—but the assessment tool needs to align as closely with the actual job as a flight simulator does with flying a plane. At CodeSignal, they make sure their tests are relevant by seeking feedback both from candidates who do well and those who do poorly. “It's no surprise that people who do well on your assessment are going to rate it highly,” he said. “More important to us are those people who don’t do well. If you’re able to get them to say, ‘I get why you asked this question, I get why these questions are relevant and fair,’ then you've created a good assessment.” “By going beyond people’s resumes, we can open up the funnel and allow employers to hire for more diverse talents,” Lu said. “Employers can find those hidden gems—gems like Svetlana who would never have had a chance if they hadn’t gone beyond the resume.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, CodeSignal, who sponsored this Thought Leadership Spotlight. 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.
Fostering Healthy Workplaces in a Hybrid Environment
BY Ilana DeBare July 14, 2022Veronica Knuth has a terse but telling response when asked how her company’s employees are doing in today’s Covid-driven, hybrid-work environment:“Our employees are fine. Our humans are struggling.”Knuth, the chief people officer for Quantum Health, was among the speakers in a panel conversation on “Managing a Healthy Workplace in a Hybrid Environment” at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference in June. She and her co-panelists agreed that the hybrid work world created by Covid-19 has made it more challenging than ever to promote employee health and well-being. “Doubling down on human-centric programs has never been more important,” Knuth said.“The silver lining is that this has brought more focus on health and wellness to organizations,” said Ian White, a managing director and HR business partner at Applied Materials. The panel, moderated by Cynthia Larive, the chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz, offered a range of advice for companies trying to support their employees’ physical and emotional health during this unprecedented time.Tailored ApproachesWhite described how Applied Materials, with workers around the globe in both manufacturing and office jobs as a supplier to the semiconductor industry, rejected a one-size-fits-all response to the question of remote vs. in-person work. “Obviously what's going on in the U.S. is different than Europe, which is different than what's going on in China,” he said. “And so we've tried to lead with a message of flexibility, balancing business needs with the personal preference of employees.”Cynthia Larive, the chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz, moderated the discussionAlthough the semiconductor industry is vastly different from higher education, a similar approach prevails at San Jose State University. “Being part of a campus community is really important for educating students,” said Joanne Wright, senior associate VP for university personnel. “Obviously there are some positions that cannot be remote, like landscaping. But we also look at whether positions are student-facing or back-office-facing. We’re always trying to balance [employee needs] with the community we’re trying to build.”Skye King, senior VP for resilience and social change at the ad giant Ogilvy, said her firm shifted into hybrid work relatively smoothly, since they already had teams and clients spread across the globe. Ogilvy encourages its managers to talk with employees about their scheduling needs and to set online meetings at hours that are convenient for different time zones.“The last couple of years have given us a window into people’s lives that we didn't have before,” King said. “We’re literally seeing what’s behind them—kids running into Zoom conversations, and cats and turtles and everything. It’s created an increase in empathy.”Challenges of Hybrid WorkEven with empathy, though, hybrid work still requires painful adjustments for many companies. Allan Brown, VP for total rewards and workplaces at Electronic Arts, described a grieving process among his colleagues as it became apparent that hybrid work was becoming a permanent norm. “There's been some denial, some anger, but eventually we’ll get to a place of acceptance that this is the way it’s going to be, and a lot of people are benefitting,” Brown said.Many managers need help learning how to talk with employees about their personal requirements and preferences. They also need tools for managing and evaluating remote employees. “It's important to have really strong and explicit telecommuting agreements,” Wright said. “Managers need to be able to say, ‘Here are the expectations, here's how we’re going to monitor you, here are the hours you need to be available.’”Brown cautioned that hybrid workplaces can foster internal schisms if companies aren’t watchful. “We’re trying to create fairness, but it’s never going to be equal,” Brown said. “Some people will benefit from being able to work from home, while others will benefit from living close to the office and being able to go in. The worst-case scenario is creation of an ‘in’ crowd and an ‘out’ crowd, where the people who get promoted are the ones coming in and getting exposure to the senior folks. We can’t let that happen, so we need to make sure that opportunity exists for people who are remote or hybrid. How do you do that? I don't think we’ve solved it yet.”New Wellness InitiativesWhile working through such issues, companies have come up with a variety of initiatives to support the well-being of their hybrid employees.Applied Materials instituted “self-care days”—blocks of several hours when remote employees can choose to take part in online health presentations and yoga sessions or just take time off to go for a walk. San Jose State launched a weekly newsletter with tips on well-being and added a dedicated counselor for faculty and staff. Quantum Health strengthened its benefits package with a feature where employees get a follow-up call offering support if they’ve been referred to a medical specialist.Ogvilvy offers channels for employees to express themselves on hot-button issues that may be causing stress and worry. After the Ukraine invasion and recent mass shootings, the company hosted loosely-facilitated, online safe spaces where people could share their feelings.“People are typically asked not to bring certain emotions into the workplace, but I think it's important that when people are angry, or sad, or frustrated, we talk about that,” King said.Of course, accommodating employee emotions can create other, new challenges. “We have some employees who absolutely brought their whole selves to work and now want to make changes in the company,” said Brown. “However, not every employee agrees with them. We've tried to balance giving safe spaces with the fact we still need to run a business.”Ultimately, it’s the HR team that is responsible for keeping a hybrid workforce healthy and engaged. And they too have health needs as they guide their companies through the changes unleashed by Covid-19.“I've always believed in the notion of ‘health of the helpers,’” said Knuth. “We have to be at our best in order to help everybody else be at their best. So I make sure that I’m getting rest and eating right and exercising. I'd say you should double-down on what keeps you at your best.”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.