What Unusual Jobs Taught Me About Hiring, Retention, and the Talent You’re Overlooking
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza September 09, 2025Paddy Fanning never set out to become one of the best sheepdog trainers in the world. He was a cowboy working on a Canadian cattle ranch when he came across an old book on horsemanship that described the magical give-and-take between humans and animals. Back in Ireland, as he worked to recover from a drinking problem, he put those lessons into practice with a border collie on his father’s sheep farm, and, in the process, discovered a new sense of purpose.Twenty years later, Paddy has represented Ireland in international herding dog competitions and earned a reputation as one of the finest trainers alive. “I’m probably still a bit unemployable,” he told me, laughing. “You hear my job there, and I don’t really have one. And yet we do okay. Dogs have given me all that. I just feel glad with the way the whole deal turned out.”For the last six years, I’ve been writing about work. How people get their jobs and how they lose them, the relationship between employer and the employed, and how all of us find meaning in our work. I frequently meet people who are unhappy with their careers. But I noticed something: People who have unconventional jobs often are happy with their work.So I started searching for the people who have jobs they don’t tell you about in school, roles that don’t show up on job boards: the death doulas, sheepdog trainers, puppeteers, and Foley artists of the world. And I made a podcast about it, called How to Be Anything.Each episode tells the story of someone with an unusual job, and after interviewing 15 of them, I realized their lessons aren’t only for people whose careers take them off the beaten path. Their wisdom and experiences are relevant for anyone working today–including those in corporate America. Some of my findings: Self-Determination Is a Powerful Retention ToolFrom Day One contributing editor and journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza takes you inside the world of unique and unexpected jobs in her podcastAlmost everyone I spoke with chose their job intentionally. Sometimes it took years (or decades) to find, but in the end they carved out space to do work they found meaningful. That self-determination is a powerful reason they stay.Puppetry artist Heidi Rugg built a career by weaving together all the art forms she loves, and her work became stronger once she focused on the environmental themes that deeply matter to her. On the TV Show Dimension 20, lorekeeper (kind of like a script supervisor) Skye Smith designed their own system for tracking the plot, a process they owned from start to finish. For Smith, the real satisfaction comes from being taken seriously. “If I have opinions, I get to say them and they get taken into consideration, which I think is a huge blessing, especially as someone who's young and I didn’t finish college,” Smith told me.And when veterinarian Cindy Otto worked at Ground Zero after 9/11, she saw firsthand the need for better medical care for search-and-rescue dogs. Backed by the University of Pennsylvania, she launched an entire research program to address it, and now is on the leading edge of working-dog science. When workers have the freedom to pursue ideas that matter personally to them, they’re far more likely to stick around.Everyone Needs to See the Fruits of Their LaborWork feels meaningful when you can see its impact.Forensic artist Melissa Cooper has seen her sketches lead directly to the capture of violent criminals, and she draws joy from knowing she’s giving power and a voice to survivors. Gavin Cox, a research scientist who works a mile underground searching for dark matter, described the satisfaction of spending a month designing a procedure to safely move liquified xenon gas, a high-stakes task that required precision and patience. “That’s when I feel proud of my work,” he told me.Employees don’t need a dramatic story to feel accomplished, but they do need to see that the outcomes of their contributions matter.I asked veterinarian Cindy Otto what she thinks of her career now that retirement is in sight. She told me that at a recent veterinary symposium, a presenter asked the crowd for a show of hands: Who had been affected by the Penn Vet Working Dog Center and the work they’ve done? Every single person in the room raised their hand. “I think about it a lot,” she told me. “I’ve made a difference. I’ve made an impact,” she said. Excellence Requires Freedom to FailNo one starts out as an award-winning sheepdog trainer or an award-winning Foley artist. You start as lousy, and then you become okay, and then you become good–and then you become great.That’s why the famous Jack Welch mentality of routinely cutting lowest performers (a practice now back in vogue in 2025) is so damaging. It sends a message to your employees that stumbling is a punishable offense, and eliminates the top performers of the future.Organizations that want innovation have to accept that employees will struggle, or even fail, on their way to mastery.Careers Are Built on Soft SkillsBrendon King has been climbing 500-foot cell towers for more than a decade. The hardest part isn’t fixing the electronics, it’s staying calm when the steel tower sways like a noodle in the wind. Patience, composure, and a little bit of thrill-seeking keep him safe. The technical skills, like repairing fiber optic cables and network switches, those are things he learned on the job. But the best part? “It’s a constant adventure, no matter how you look at it,” he said. “I’ve been in places where people have lived there their entire lives and they’ve never once seen the view that I get to see. It’s amazing.”Similarly, Erin Bishop spent two decades in market research before becoming a death doula. You might be surprised that running a focus group translates quite well to conducting community discussions about death and dying. “Having a career that helps me be a better person in the world—I never thought I would have that in my life,” she told me.Too often, employers seek out candidates who have direct experience, and miss out on remarkably talented people with unconventional career paths.Work Should Be EnjoyableBusiness leaders love to talk about purpose and meaning. They want employees to connect to the company mission, touting its ability to increase engagement and retention. It’s true, and there’s evidence to back it up. But purpose alone isn’t enough.The people I spoke with not only find meaning in their unconventional jobs, but enjoy them in the moment. An employee may love working at a company that saves lives with medical equipment or helps people afford homes. But if the day-to-day is tedious, they won’t stay. Meaning is important, but fun doesn’t get enough credit.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Featured photo courtesy of forensic artist Melissa Cooper)
The HR Metrics That Matter: Defining ROI in a People-First Culture
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza September 08, 2025In the rush to adopt the latest AI tools and maximize efficiency and output, employers may be overlooking the one factor that gives them a competitive edge: people.“It’s the unpredictable, varied creativity of humans that actually allows one business to leapfrog over another,” said Ken Matos, director of market insights at HR analytics platform HiBob, during a From Day One webinar. “When you’re people-first, you’re really looking for ways to get the right people to advance your business strategy most effectively.”Kenneth Matos of HiBob spoke during the webinar (company photo)A “people-first” culture, as Matos describes it, is one grounded in the belief that it’s people, not processes, not technology, that makes a business successful. That means designing the right roles for the organization, then ensuring the right people are in those roles. When employees feel well-matched, supported, and recognized, Matos says, “you get increases in creativity, novel ideas, and their ability to adapt and learn. That’s really valuable when you’re in a growth phase.”Flashpoint, a cyber threat intelligence platform, learned this firsthand. Several years ago, the company enjoyed a hiring surge. Headcount was growing at a steady clip and business was booming. But Lane McFarland, Flashpoint’s senior director of talent management, eventually hit pause. He began to question whether the pace of hiring was tracking closely enough with the company’s long-term goals.“We have a very complex and unique organization,” McFarland said. Flashpoint employs threat intelligence analysts from “three-letter” agencies like the CIA and FBI, vulnerability analysts who adopt criminal personas to draw out hackers, as well as accountants, HR partners, and other corporate staff. Each group brings its own professional culture and expectations about the working environment. “We want to make sure that we are matching both what we need and what they need,” said McFarland. “We don’t want to get to a point where it’s not a fit because it’s our fault.”So, McFarland redefined how Flashpoint approaches hiring, beginning with clear expectations. Job descriptions now outline outcome milestones for the first 30, 60, and 90 days, and checkpoints take place accordingly. Those check-ins aren’t just about evaluating employees, they’re also about ensuring the company is delivering on its side of the relationship.The company’s needs change, just as employees’ needs do–McFarland knows that. And rarely is someone so mismatched to a role that it can’t work. If a new hire lacks a requisite skill, McFarland can help them get it. If the role isn’t the right fit, he encourages pivots. Sometimes even outside the company.For some leaders, “people-first” suggests benefits packages and sentiment surveys, but Matos and McFarland encourage HR leaders to think deeper. “I always recommend HR leaders expand the scope of what they think of as well-being,” McFarland said. For him, it’s about whether employees feel fulfilled, valued, and recognized.Matos puts it this way: “What is a reasonable amount of work to give people before things break down? In an ideal world, we would say, ‘let’s measure their well-being. If their well-being goes down, that’s too much work. That’s not an ROI conversation. That’s an ethical conversation.”“Engagement is a symptom,” McFarland said. “We need to understand what’s the underlying problem, how we can impact that from an HR perspective, and whether we can expand our view of what HR leaders actually have the power to shape across the business.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, HiBob, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by courtneyk/iStock)
The Untapped Power of Caregiving Benefits: Unlocking Productivity and Retention
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza September 03, 2025As the cost of childcare and eldercare increases and U.S. workforce shrinks, “it’s going to be ever more important that those who have caregiving responsibilities, who need to or wish to stay in the workforce, have the support they need,” said Phyllis Stewart Pires, the AVP of employee support programs at Stanford University.Childcare and eldercare are increasingly out of reach for many households: Not only is care often cost-prohibitive, it’s not always available. There are often long waitlists for care centers and some rural areas may have no options at all. Companies are increasingly aware that the need for childcare support was not just a circumstance of the pandemic, but a workforce issue with consequences for employee productivity, retention, and equity.Caregiving spans from the highchair to the rocking chair, says Dave Jacobs, co-CEO of caregiver support platform Homethrive. “It doesn’t discriminate based on education or socio-economic means. Even if you have the will and knowledge to be able to find the support you need, it’s becoming more expensive, and most of it is private pay,” he said during a From Day One webinar on caregiving benefits. Without support, the stress of taking care of family members encroaches on employee well-being and productivity. The result is distracted employees, or worse: preventable attrition.Caregiver dropout affects the whole talent pipeline. “As people are offered opportunities to move from, say, individual contributor to manager, manager to director, director to VP, sometimes they will decline those opportunities if they have a really stable caregiving situation and don’t want to disrupt that,” Jacobs said. Some are forced out of the workforce entirely. “It’s not only about losing opportunities, it’s also about losing the dream job or sometimes just losing everything.” Caregiving is not only a matter of health and wellness, it’s a matter of equitable opportunities for everyone,” said Arturo Arteaga, senior director of total rewards at VCA Animal Hospitals. Panelists spoke about "The Untapped Power of Caregiving Benefits: Unlocking Productivity and Retention" during the webinar (photo by From Day One)Forward-thinking employers are experimenting with a range of support. At Stanford, on-site childcare centers provide access to care and create jobs in the community, many of which were wiped out by the pandemic. Pires sees the potential for public-private partnerships to fill gaps in care. At VCA, where 80% of employees work on-site, Arteaga has introduced backup care.Some employers are building networks of vetted providers in communities where employees live, said Jacobs, offering subsidies for regular care, keeping backup care options available, and making schedules flexible when possible. At international law firm Sheppard Mullin, senior HR director Thomas Adrian is focused on gender equity, as the burden on caregiving falls primarily on women. “Because of the partnership model, we really want to maintain that gender equality between male and female,” he said, so employees are afforded as much paid time off as needed. The firm also defines caregiving broadly. “We won’t define the word family. If you live with your brother and he needs help, or his child needs help, we’re going to extend it to them. If you are concerned about someone you define as family, it’s going to come back and affect your work.”Flexibility is paramount, says Erin Fitzsimmons, the global head of talent attraction at TE Connectivity. One of her U.S.-based colleagues works with teams in China, and after putting her kids to bed, takes calls with her overseas colleagues. Fitzsimmons herself relied on the flexibility last year when she returned from parental leave. Unable to travel, she took overseas calls remotely while her team made the trip. “Being a global company, not everyone is on your typical 9-to-5. It all comes back to culture,” she said. Communication is paramount. Adrian at Sheppard Mullin makes sure caregiving benefits are automatically highlighted in any conversation about leave. Fitzsimmons created comprehensive benefits packets detailing when and how leave is available, and Arteaga stresses consistency: “Not once a year or twice a year. Constant,” he said. Some benefits don’t matter much until you need them–often right away. When that happens, employees need information close at hand. Employers investing in caregiving, from last-minute backup help to community infrastructure are not only helping their own employees, they’re protecting the future of the business.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Homethrive, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by AleksandarNakic/iStock)
Supporting Financial Wellness Beyond the 401(k): Why Financial Stress Is a Workplace Matter
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza September 02, 2025A common misconception among employers is that high earners are financially stable. But as Mamie Wheaton, director of financial planning at LearnLux, points out, that isn’t always the case. “High income doesn’t necessarily equal peace of mind. Financial stress at any income level can lead to burnout, disengagement, and even turnover,” she said.Another common misconception: thinking that offering a 401(k) checks the box on financial wellness. In reality, employees are juggling far more immediate concerns, like credit card debt, student loans, or childcare costs. “If someone can’t manage today’s financial stressors, retirement planning is often the last thing on their mind,” Wheaton said.She and her colleague Jane Lund, who leads regional sales at LearnLux, a financial well-being platform tailored to individual needs, presented a From Day One webinar on how employers can support financial wellness beyond just retirement plans. In it they discussed the very real implications of financial stress on employee retention, engagement, and productivity.Uncovering the Source of Financial StressEmployees don’t always know what kind of help they need, or how to ask for it. “People often feel shame about their financial stress, especially if it’s tied to family building, life changes, or illness,” Lund said. Those needs often show up in hardship withdrawals from retirement accounts, upticks in personal loans, or rising absenteeism. “Sometimes all three,” she said.For HR leaders, this presents a challenge. Financial struggles are seldom obvious, but the downstream effects–like absenteeism, disengagement, and attrition–are very real. As Lund put it, “You don’t really see people raising their hands saying, ‘I need help,’ so how are leaders supposed to know what to prioritize?”Even when employees do schedule a call with a financial planner, like those at LearnLux, they might open with a question about retirement planning, but the real issue could lie elsewhere. That’s when licensed, certified planners like Wheaton dig deeper, looking for the root problem, so they can help employees feel empowered to make better decisions for themselves. Sometimes a single conversation can make a difference, while others will need regular touchpoints over weeks or months to find their footing. And for everyone, these needs may change over time.Why Financial Wellness Is a Workplace MatterThe implications of financial wellbeing are closely tied to safety, productivity, and retention. One LearnLux client, a construction company, launched a zero-injury initiative and discovered through surveys and conversations that employees’ financial stress was a key factor. “We see that a lot in frontline workforces,” Lund said. And not just in blue collar workplaces, the same is true in higher-earning industries, like healthcare.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the discussion among leaders at LearnLux (photo by From Day One)By introducing financial wellness support, the company helped employees stabilize their personal finances, which in turn supported their safety goals. Retention improved, too. Based on their annual survey, “about 79% of employees who have used LearnLux for three months or more say they’re more likely to stay at their current job,” Lund said.“If we can be there to help new employees start off on the right foot, it’s going to help with retention,” Wheaton added. “It’s also going to help reduce 401(k) loans, credit card debt, and overall stress at work.” Small changes that add up to a healthier, safer, and more resilient workforce. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, LearnLux, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Puttachat Kumkrong/iStock)
Handling the Flood of Job Applicants: How Employers Can Escape the AI Feedback Loop
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza August 19, 2025When Alexandra Magaard applies for a job these days, the problem isn’t about having to wait long for a response. In fact, it’s usually only seconds before she’s invited to be interviewed. “You submit your application, and then immediately you get an automated text saying, ‘Are you available for a short call with a recruiter?’ It’s instantaneous.” Magaard, who has eight years of experience in public policy, is eager to get back to work. She has been applying for tech policy jobs in mid-size companies and consultancies since late 2024. But when the call comes, it’s not a recruiter on the other end: It’s an AI bot reading a script. “The AI was like, ‘How long have you worked in policy? Where are you based? Are you open for a full-time role? Are you open to remote?’” she said. Answers to all of these questions were clearly laid out in her application.Despite selectively and thoughtfully applying to roles for months, Magaard believes she’s is a casualty of the AI arms race taking place in the job market right now. With fewer open positions and more people competing for them, job seekers are using AI-powered tools to churn out applications at an unprecedented rate. Employers, in turn, are adding AI to their recruiting stacks to keep up with the avalanche of resumes that arrive by the thousands. At New York Life, recruiters receive as many as 100,000 applications for 1,400 open roles. Based on those numbers, “it’s easier to get into Harvard than it might be to get a job at New York Life,” said Glenn Padewski, the firm’s head of experienced-professional hiring and executive search, during a From Day One conference earlier this year. HR analyst Josh Bersin told From Day One a similar story via email: One of his clients posted a banking IT job at midnight and clocked more than 1,000 applications by 12:05 a.m. While not quite on the level of requests for Taylor Swift tickets when they go on sale, most employers aren’t equipped to thoughtfully consider that many applications.Job postings are proliferating as well, even though actual hiring is sluggish in many industries, because companies still want to stock their talent pipeline or test the current talent pool. Recruiters are now juggling 56% more job postings than a few years ago, said Steve Bartel, founder and CEO of recruiting platform GEM, during a From Day One webinar. Applicant numbers have tripled for many roles, yet recruiting teams aren’t growing. “In fact, 20% of our customers see thousands of applicants for a single role,” he said.“How can an employer deal with these floods,” Bersin wonders, “and what possible good is this ‘AI-war’ doing for job seekers?”‘The Process Has Become So Automated. Who Do I Follow Up With?’Layoffs, hiring slowdowns, and a fresh wave of college grads has made looking for a job feel like a slog, especially for the class of 2025. “The labor market for recent college grads in 2025 is among the most challenging in the last decade,” Jaison Abel, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, told NPR last month. Job searches are getting longer for everyone, and candidate morale is dipping.To sift through the mountain of applications, companies are leaning hard on AI: one-way video or voice interviews, skills tests, and automated chatbots, especially at the top of the hiring funnel. Some candidates appreciate the instant screenings, saying they feel it finally gives them a shot at jobs they might otherwise be overlooked for.But there’s a downside to the deluge for both employers and prospective workers. Many applications aren’t from genuinely interested candidates, and others contain fudged credentials or skills tests completed with AI. Fake and fraudulent job applications have employers arming up even more, with identity verification and deepfake detection software.For candidates, the process has become exhausting: long applications, multiple interviews, unpaid test projects, and then often radio silence from the hiring company. “The process has become so automated, that it’s like, Who do I follow up with?” said Magaard. After AI-powered screening calls with three different companies, she’s never received a human response.Why Some Recruiters Are Going Old-SchoolWhile employers add layers of friction and sophisticated screens to sift out casual (or outright fake) applicants, AI alone won’t solve the problem.“I think there’s going to be more recruiter-led sourcing, more hiring-manager-led sourcing, and more referral work, so that someone is vetting the candidate organically before you’re filling the role,” said Ken Matos, director of market insights at HR tech platform HiBob. To some degree, tech is out. Analog is in. In other words, recruiters are going old-school. Companies like Cisco and McKinsey are bringing back in-person interviews after years of defaulting to phone calls and Zooms. Recruiters are relying on word-of-mouth referrals to surface good candidates actually interested in the job. “Many hiring leaders tell me the quality of candidates has gone down, so there’s even more effort going into human sourcing and recruiting,” Bersin said. And rather than take-home projects that are easily faked, some companies are hiring top candidates for a day so they can “try out” for the job.To free up more time for human contact with top candidates, HR teams are using AI to handle the tedious tasks of recruiting, like interview scheduling and outreach. The goal: to build a smaller, higher-quality pipeline from the start. Bersin notes that in the current climate, “careful, deliberate job seekers are more or less ‘left out’ in this mess,” and employers have to work harder to make their employer brand, values, and workplace expectations clear up front. Honesty about workload, flexibility, and culture can help filter out candidates before they apply.As for the job seekers, Matos suggests that the ability to apply to hundreds of jobs in minutes may be hurting more than helping. Volume doesn’t produce results, and there’s only so much rejection one can handle. People will benefit by applying to fewer jobs, getting fewer rejections, and being more likely to get an interview, “rather than this black hole of dumping effort and energy, then just feeling unwanted.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, a podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo-illustration by Montri Uaroon/iStock by Getty Images)
Embracing Inclusive Care With Menopause and Midlife Health Benefits
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza August 14, 2025When menopause became a regular topic among benefits leaders it “validated the experiences of millions of women who previously suffered in silence,” said Dr. Toni Morrissey, an OB-GYN practicing at Maven Clinic.“We’re seeing more open dialogue, improved resources, and inclusive policies that recognize menopause as a workplace health issue and not just a personal one,” she said during a From Day One webinar on embracing inclusive care. It’s made a difference for so many women, but there’s still distance to travel.Dr. Morrissey laid out the ways employers can design a menopause care plan that supports women, and the business, holistically. “Menopause symptoms can significantly impact productivity, retention and morale, and supporting this phase of life shows respect for longevity and loyalty in the workforce–especially when women are at the height of their careers.”The Barriers to Menopause CareOne significant challenge is that there’s no shortage of information about menopause available online, “but the quality is a different story. We see everything from outdated advice and one-size-fits-all solutions,” Morrissey said. Not to mention miracle cures and snake oil. “I’m so glad the conversation is being held in public,” she said. “It’s time for that. But our research shows that over a third of women see menopause related ads at least a few times a week, and more than half of them say it makes them feel so overwhelmed.”Employees need evidence-based guidance delivered by board-certified providers trained specifically in menopause care, and this is where employers have a huge opportunity. A 2023 AARP survey found that 54% of women said employers need to do more to support workers experiencing menopause. In fact, 73% of employers agreed. If companies can offer clinical, board-certified care with peer-reviewed education, “that kind of support really cuts through the noise and helps employees make confident and informed decisions about their health.”The internet is full of myths and misinformation, like the notion that menopause lasts only a year, when in reality symptoms can last up to 10 years, Morrissey says. The biggest and most damaging myth, she said, is that “menopause marks the end of productivity. And in reality, many people hit their career peak during this stage of life, and this phase really deserves support and not stigma.”Where Employers Can Get Started with Menopause Care Dr. Morrissey encouraged employers to start by listening. What are your employees struggling with and where do your current benefits fall short? Build upon the needs and gaps. For instance, menopause-specific care isn’t available in some areas, and employees may need remote access to providers. Additionally, “transgender, non-binary, and intersex people experience menopause too, and they often face even greater gaps in care,” she said. Another group who often gets overlooked are those experiencing medically induced early menopause.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza intervirwed Dr. Toni Morrissey of Maven Clinic (photo by From Day One)This is just another reason menopause care should never be siloed. It can be a meaningful component of an overall health strategy that comprises mental healthcare, reproductive care, and other midlife considerations, like caregiving benefits and career development. And because it supports high-value workers like those at the peak of their careers—consider it a retention strategy that protects institutional knowledge and leadership.To make it work, a clear, well-communicated rollout plan is essential. “It doesn’t just offer support, it sends a powerful message, which is that your health is a business priority.” Seeking Help for Menopause SymptomsBy the time Dr. Morrissey sees a patient, they may have been experiencing symptoms for years, symptoms that have gotten in the way of daily functioning in life and at work. “What’s heartbreaking is how many of them say they’re no longer able to do the very work that once brought them success and confidence,” she said. Proper care can make the difference. “The moment that always sticks with me is when people will say, ‘I feel like I got my life back.’ That’s what good care can do. It doesn’t just manage symptoms. It restores identity, energy and self-belief.”Of course, stigma around menopause stands in the way of many seeking care. ERGs can be a powerful tool for forming connections, but they should be optional, and they can’t be the only avenue for support, she said, especially where cultural norms discourage open conversation about healthcare. Employers can help normalize talk about menopause by making it a part of company-wide health education and communication. Appoint leaders as menopause champions talk about their own experience and help break down stigma. “Employees should never feel pressured to speak about their menopause experience broadly, but they should have a place that they can easily go for support, and building a supportive culture starts at the top.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Maven Clinic, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by SDI Productions/iStock)
Smarter Benefits by Design: Leveraging Tech and AI for Clarity, Impact, and Innovation
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza August 07, 2025Answering benefits questions used to be one of HR’s most time-consuming tasks. Now, companies are using AI not only to automate those routine inquiries, but to deliver faster, more personalized support, at any time of day. Benefits leaders are using AI to make small teams feel much bigger.The challenges of benefits administration haven’t changed much over the years, but AI is finally offering new solutions. “The common barriers are the same, whether you’re talking about AI and technology or the traditional way of administering benefits,” said Joanne Gloster, director of benefits at professional services firm Davies North America. Employees often don’t know what benefits are available, or when. Some worry about cost. Others are concerned about privacy–especially around health or financial benefits. With AI, benefits teams are sharpening their communication strategies and making answers easier to access.Gloster spoke during an executive panel discussion on the topic during From Day One’s July virtual conference on employee benefits. From guiding employees through leave policies to financial planning before surgery, today’s benefits tech is smarter, more tailored, and is empowering lean teams to do more with less. But for many HR leaders, the real goal isn’t just efficiency, it’s creating space for meaningful human connection.Personalized Benefits Help, Any Time of DayAt global life sciences MilliporeSigma, head of benefits strategy Elizabeth Chappelear is leaning on their benefits administrator’s AI engine to tackle those “first level” inquiries, like dependent document verification or basic coverage questions. Chappelear said it handled more than 7,800 conversations in the first quarter of the year, 84% of which were resolved without human intervention. Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the discussion (photo by From Day One)The company is in the process of creating its own AI suite tailored to internal benefits policies and programs. Nevertheless, human connection remains top of mind for Chappelear, who said that “it’s one of the things that we ask during RFPs or new vendors. We’re always asking about their technology. But the flip side of that is, what’s our access to humans?” At financial wellness platform Northstar, the company has developed custom AI engines trained by financial advisors. The solutions were built for its customers based on their employees’ unique benefits and compensation. But employees don’t need a benefits-specific question to get help. It might be, “I’m thinking about scheduling surgery next year,” said Erin Donahue, the company’s director of advice strategy. “Our AI will discuss health plan choice and make sure they evaluate the various plans offered, but it will also bring in other related benefits that could help.”While Northstar won’t be replacing their financial advisors with AI tools, when employees choose to use AI, the answers are specifically tailored to individuals, “so they can ask about benefits or personal finances in general, and it will answer in a personalized way based on everything we already know about that employee,” said Donahue. Information tech firm TransUnion is also building out a process that employees can use to help with policies. “If someone’s looking to potentially take a leave of absence, we would use our AI that would then guide them through the process,” Sherry Nelson, the company’s senior director of global benefits said. Maximizing Reach for Small TeamsAt Davies, Gloster supports an employee population of 2,800 with a team of three. AI has made it possible for her team to be more productive and precise. By using AI to tailor benefits communications, she’s able to segment who’s getting the messages and how. “For instance, if I wanted to send something out to folks who are utilizing the FSA and they seem to be floundering,” she would ask the tool who those folks are and how she should tailor a message specifically for them. “I refer to it as cheating, because that’s what it feels like to me,” she said. “But the truth is, it’s allowed our team to feel much, much bigger than it really is.”On the contrary, said LaToya Lyn, the chief people officer at Thinkhuman, an executive coaching platform, “It’s not cheating, it’s being more efficient.” Just comb through the list of requests related to benefits, and you’ll find they’re often very basic: Where can I find this? When is that going to happen? Very few of those require a human response, and AI can provide answers much faster, at any time of day.Lyn described setting up a text messaging bot for HR questions in a past role. When they did so, “we saw our tickets go from 100 to 25. And what was so amazing about that experience was people were able to get what they needed very quickly.” And if the AI got stuck, they were routed to a person.Despite the burst of enthusiasm for AI, Nelson at TransUnion wants to ensure they don’t lose connection with their employees, and in fact use tech and all its potential to fortify the relationship. “Part of our culture is being authentic and being present and social,” she said. “Some of it is just leveraging the technology to free us up to have those meaningful conversations and meeting the associate where they’re at. But if it hadn’t been for AI, we wouldn’t really be able to get there.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Galeanu Mihai/iStock)
When CEOs Talk Tough, What Should HR Leaders Bring to the Conversation?
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza July 22, 2025Remember the days when CEOs spoke honeyed words about the irreplaceability of great talent and promised to shield workers from burnout and grinding daily trips to the office?Now, however, the tone of employee relations has changed. One after the other, CEOs march through our news feeds, declaring that employees are acting entitled, resistant to change, and dispensable. Reddit’s CEO has accused employees of not working hard and Uber’s CEO recently joined a growing cohort of executives who have told employees to return to the office or beat it. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, for his part, ordered workers back to the office five days a week, said AI will shrink the workforce, and that employees had better figure out “how to get more done with scrappier teams.” Earlier this year, Shopify’s chief executive told employees not to request new hires unless they can prove AI can’t do the job.With prominent CEOs going rogue from the chorus of empathy, how can chief HR officers adapt to the new tone? To some degree, CEOs are being transparent about new economic realities. But when executives are feeling like they can shrug off pressure to consider worker well-being or make good on prior commitments, what is a CHRO to do? This is where CHROs can be caught in the middle. Their role is help promote organizational success, but part of that mission is to make their company a great place to work. CHROs occupy a vital role in the C-suite, serving as liaison between employers and the employed, and as a result, a cooperative CHRO-CEO relationship is required. In fact, a change in CEO leads to the exit of nearly three-quarters of CHROs, said Rosanna Trasatti, CEO at Eleva Executive Leadership Advisory, during Fortune’s recent Workplace Innovation Summit. For the newest generation of CHROs, part of the job is making top executives palatable to employees and to the public. The head of HR is “one of the few people at an organization who has both the legitimacy and the duty to provide feedback to the CEO when their behavior goes against stated organizational values,” Alex Kirss of Gartner told From Day One. Kirss, who leads the CHRO-effectiveness research team in Gartner's HR practice, added: “The CHRO’s role is not to be a disciplinarian, but rather a coach to help their CEO be the best version of themselves.” Unless there’s a clear ethical violation that a company’s board of directors needs to know about, Kirss said, feedback to the CEO should be private and confidential. Then, the CHRO should give the CEO some space to reflect and pick out what they’ll do next.In many cases, CEOs will listen to feedback from their C-suite colleagues and employees at large. When the companies Klarna and Duolingo said they would begin replacing employees with artificial intelligence, the idea was so unpopular that both CEOs reversed course, at least in part. Earlier this year, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon apologized for cursing in an in town hall meeting while expressing his annoyance at organized resistance to his RTO edicts. While high-profile CEOs may be vocal, but “our research shows that 95% of CEOs prefer to stay out of the limelight,” said Josh Bersin, the HR analyst and CEO of the Josh Bersin Co.On the other hand, some notable CEOs have simply rejected dissent. Bloomberg columnist Beth Kowitt noted that quashing dissent has been added back into the playbook. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has reportedly ousted his critics of his leadership style and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is supposedly uninterested in hearing input from employees.The CEO Class Already Has a Mistrust Issue With the PublicThe viral reaction to a moment captured on video last week, when tech CEO Andy Byron was seen on a concert “kiss cam” embracing his chief people officer Kristin Cabot, underscored the rising public mistrust of C-suite leadership right now. When the episode prompted scrutiny of Byron's track record as a corporate leader, a checkered past emerged. As chief revenue officer for a previous employer, Cybereason, “multiple former employees said Mr. Byron would lash out against employees who disagreed with him, including threatening to fire them. ‘You couldn’t challenge him,’ a former employee who worked for Mr. Byron said,” as reported at the time in The Information, a tech-industry journal.Indeed, part of the public response to the moment seemed to be fueled by a growing trust gap between corporate executives and the general public, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of management at Yale University, told the Wall Street Journal. “There’s a certain schadenfreude associated with this,” he said. “Here’s a takedown of the ‘haves’ versus the ‘have nots.’”Where does this mean we stand in employee relations, between the cycle of threats vs. rapprochement? Some observers wonder if we’re witnessing the end of corporate empathy—at least for now. The balance of power is changing hands, and for the most part, employers are getting their druthers. “The shift in tone marks a shift in power now that companies are shrinking their white-collar staff. With jobs harder to find, many workers are seeing perks disappear and their grievances ignored,” wrote Chip Cutter in the Journal.How new is the tough talk in corporate America? “I’m not clear how much changed in the first place,” said Alison Taylor, NYU professor and author of Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World, in a call with From Day One. “I think what we’re really doing is speaking the quiet part out loud.”The Trump Factor in Executive ToneMuch of the current condescension among some CEOs seems licensed by President Trump, who has attacked the integrity and competence of his own workers, describing the more than 2 million federal workers as “replaceable.” This is not the tone CEO have traditionally embraced. “CEOs live pretty scripted professional lives. They’re trained to tell investors nothing, read prepared texts for town halls, and stick to talking points on TV,” the journalist Liz Hoffman wrote in a Semafor Business newsletter earlier this year. “Now they see Trump speaking freely, and with few consequences … corporate America is unshackled, and the mics are everywhere.”The Trump factor has applied not just to tone but to substance as well. Take, for example, the very public tarnishing of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Since Trump signed an executive order prohibiting DEI programs in federal agencies and government contractors, many huge companies, including Walmart and Target have scrubbed mentions of DEI from their career pages or publicly announced retirement of the programs. For many executives, however, DEI is problematic only in name. “In my experience, here’s what most CEOs believe to be true: a diverse and engaged workforce is good for business; talking about DEI externally is not,” wrote Fortune’s Diane Brady in the CEO Daily newsletter. “Though plenty of companies have publicly disavowed their DEI initiatives, other leaders are wondering how to quietly continue building a workforce that reflects their values in this climate.”Cosmetics company E.L.F Beauty is doubling down on its DEI efforts, with CEO Tarang Amin appearing on CNN to talk about their commitment. And Dimon of JPMorgan, appears unintimidated by activist investors intent on challenging the company’s DEI programs. “Bring them on,” he said in an interview with CNBC at Davos this year.In this environment, CHROs will need to choose their battles when it comes to managing their CEOs. Those HR leaders, Bersin said, will have to take “a more proactive role in executive coaching, crisis management, and internal communications.” Mitigating reputational risks will take stronger governance structures and messaging plans. His guidance: What CEOs say publicly should be well-considered about reflecting the company’s values. Since companies wield a great amount of influence in individuals’ lives, they will be called on to respond to a growing mix of economic, political, and environmental pressures. Responding in a careful way will call for new corporate initiatives and management skills. “These are still companies full of real human beings who are a mix of opinions and races and genders,” Taylor said. “Some of them are going to be affected by some of these decisions, and they’re going to be looking, in many cases, to their employer for protection, for advice, for policies–for all sorts of things.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Featured photo: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who told his workers this year that they can go elsewhere if they don't like his RTO changes, at a conference in 2023. AP photo by Eric Risberg)
Building a Veteran-Ready Workforce: Empowering Your Military Hiring and Retention Strategy
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza July 10, 2025Every year, 200,000 service members exit the U.S. military and enter the civilian workforce. Dave Harrison was one of them. He’s currently the executive director for workforce development and government relations at recruiting Fastport, but once he was a U.S. Army paratrooper jumping out of planes.Veterans are a dedicated group with experience in extreme environments, Harrison says. For many, a work week isn’t just 40 hours. During deployment, it’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “I learned from the United States military, how to lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way–and when to do it. That’s very valuable.”These are skills that translate well to civilian employment, yet many employers don’t take full advantage of the veteran talent pool. And then there’s the vast network of military spouses. Emily Peacock, military talent and program manager at Fastport, is a military spouse of 16 years, in which time she’s lived in seven different U.S. states and two counties overseas. Like many military spouses,” she said, I’ve had to rebuild my career again and again, adjusting to new places, new time zones, and new roles. Along the way, I’ve worked for higher education, data analysis, administrative support, and now I’m focused on workforce development.”Together, Harrison and Peacock are forging relationships between veterans and employers, connecting the communities to create meaningful work. They spoke during a From Day One webinar on building a veteran-ready workforce with better hiring and retention strategies. The Veteran Talent PoolHarrison consistently hears three questions from employers: Where do I find veterans, how do I recruit them, and how do I retain them?Veterans can be found through traditional recruiting channels or local veterans organizations, of course, but not typically critical numbers. Yet the talent is there. Harrison and Peacock advised looking for channels that bring transitioning service members, and their families, into civilian life.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza spoke with Emily Peacock and Dave Harrison of Fastport (photo by From Day One)“The wonderful thing about a veteran,” said Harrison, “is they don’t have to be told every meal is going to be a feast and every day is going to be a holiday. They don’t need their back rubbed every day. They want to be treated fairly.”But they also have to see a career path at your company—a future and a means of developing professionally. “One of the biggest hurdles that we see is translating that military experience into civilian terms,” Peacock said. “Their job titles or accomplishments often don’t align exactly with what recruiters understand, making it hard for veterans to show how qualified they really are, but it’s a language issue, not a skills issue.”White Glove Military Talent ProgramPeacock works on Fastport’s White Glove Military Talent Program, which helps transitioning service members, veterans, and military spouses find meaningful employment, and helps companies better engage and retain former military talent. It’s available to enlisted service members with just a few years of experience as well as those with decades-long careers. Participants get resume help, career coaching, and interview prep, and matches to companies with military-ready cultures.The program acts as an intermediary between veterans and employers, forging relationships on both sides. “Our approach blends technology and human connection,” Peacock said. “We manage our employer partners and talent pipelines for the military community, and act as their personal concierge so any requests that they need, we connect employers with transition offices at bases located throughout the country.”The military talent ecosystem is unfamiliar to many corporate recruiters, so “we help them understand credentialing and reciprocity within various states as it relates to military training,” Peacock said. “We strategically source for their open roles where they want to dig a little deeper.”The First Six MonthsAccording to Harrison, the first six months of civilian employment are the most critical for both employer and employee. In this time, former service members are most likely to become disenfranchised, lose connections within the military community, and fail to successfully connect with their new role. Many exit the military without a network in the civilian workforce “and it kind of puts them at a disadvantage in today’s job market,” said Peacock. Her husband, who is approaching military retirement, says he’s most worried about not understanding the culture of the civilian workplace.Harrison has heard from veterans who, months into civilian employment, find themselves isolated or realize that the job they accepted was not the job they were promised. They come back to him—and a new match begins. “The relationships you make will matter,” he said.“It all has to do with onboarding set up by the employer,” Peacock said. A focus on cultural integration, mentorship programs, and employee resource groups can make the critical connection between employee and employer. Don’t wait for them to find you: Introduce new hires to those ERGs and mentorship networks during onboarding, and designate a representative to proactively reach out, she says. Then open that ERG as broadly as you can, and welcome people who have a connection to the military. In one ERG Harrison worked with for more than a decade, the group’s strongest leader was a military spouse whose husband had been killed in service. “The more you envelop those people, the more you envelop your entire company and your entire company culture, the more the word will spread, and trust me, it will matter down the road,” Harrison said.An Untapped Talent Pool: Military Spouses As a military spouse herself, Peacock says this group is often lumped in with transitioning with service members and veterans despite having different work histories and skills, not to mention obstacles.“The main unique challenge for a military spouse is frequent relocation,” she said. Military families move every two to four years, roughly, which has created the stigma that employers shouldn’t hire spouses because they’ll simply be packing up before long. “It’s important to recognize that military spouses are not more likely to leave their jobs compared to other employees in the same demographic,” she said, citing data from SHRM. “If an employer can offer remote or portable job opportunities, it is likely that this spouse employee will stay with that company. Oftentimes they don’t want to leave the job, they just have to because of the nature of the beast.”Another common misconception is that military spouses are unqualified or unreliable, evidenced by career gaps or inconsistent career experience. But whether a military spouse is employed while their partner is stationed overseas is often beyond their control. Sometimes jobs just aren’t available. Harrison says he’s known no small number of military spouses who “were very highly educated. They were PhDs and master’s degrees and had important jobs, and because they happened to be part of a military family, and they got relocated to a location, and they just assumed that they’d be able to find a job, doing something, anything, teaching something, and there’s not.”This can even be a problem for military spouses in the U.S. “Everywhere there’s a major installation, the job market is generally saturated,” he said. Retiring service members tend to stay and buy homes, and there just aren’t enough jobs to go around.“You’ll find that a lot of military spouses have started putting ‘military spouse’ in their headline on LinkedIn,” said Peacock. That’s a quick way to crack open this community and begin funneling them into your talent pipeline. More and more, veterans recruiting programs, like Fastport’s White Glove program, are folding in military spouses as well.But the military spouse community is a rich, often overlooked talent pool. Not only do they often have a history of paid work, the tasks of a military spouse are not small. “Take someone who, with 16 days notice, coordinates and arranges the movement of home from one continent to another continent, and puts kids in school. Moves kids, arranges jobs, moves cars. Does all these and does it on their own,” Harrison said. “That’s project management 101, that’s logistics.” If you need someone who can make things happen, look no further.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Fastport, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Photo by SDI Productions/iStock)
How AI Teammates Are Transforming HR Operations
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza June 27, 2025HR teams are about to expand, according to Jim Barnett, founder and CEO of Wisq. Pretty soon, our teams will comprise both human and AI colleagues, the latter taking on the tedium and grunt work HR was once famous for, while the former, the real humans, will be free to focus on people, on strategy, and on human connection.Barnett spoke in a From Day One webinar about how AI teammates are reshaping HR operations, offering a detailed look at how agentic AI is driving that transformation. Formerly the CEO of AltaVista, one of the web’s first search engines, Barnett also has impressive HR tech credentials. He co-founded the employee success platform Glint, which was acquired by LinkedIn, and later served as LinkedIn’s head of product. With his newest venture, Wisq, he’s built an agentic AI HR generalist for enterprise teams. Her name is Harper. To develop Harper, Barnett logged hours with HR leaders across companies, big and small, studying what they need most. “I heard the same thing over and over: that the HR team was overwhelmed,” he said. “They were under a lot of pressure to improve the efficiency of the team. They were flooded with tickets and a lot of repetitive tasks. And we really said to ourselves, ‘How might we use AI to automate a lot of these non-strategic, repetitive tasks?’” And so he did. “Harper can answer 80% of HR requests for information. She can coach your teams on how to develop and grow and handle situations,” said Barnett. “She can handle policy automation and policy compliance.”Jim Barnett, the CEO and co-founder of Wisq, pictured, spoke with journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza during the webinar (company photo)When HR teams aren’t bogged down with the tedium of managing problems like absenteeism, they can spend time on more strategic projects, like talent development. “There’s no question: There’s going to be a shift. There are going to be some changes in roles,” he said.The rote tasks of HR are often shouldered by the lowest on the ladder, but entry-level jobs won’t evaporate, Barnett says. “That’s the next generation of great HR leaders. It’s just the things that they’ll be doing will be more creative, less repetitive, and more strategic.”So, let’s start freeing up their time. Policy compliance is something they can already hand over to an AI HR generalist. At one of Wisq’s clients, a large manufacturing company, 85% of their HR generalists’ time was spent on just two things: time and attendance and safety. Barnett thought Harper could do better.“It might be the first time somebody’s been late, or they’ve been late twice, but they’ve never had any type of verbal warning or verbal discussion,” he said. Wisq found that in roughly half of those instances, Harper was able to flag that it’s too early for an HR intervention and coach the manager on what they should do instead. And if it does come time to involve HR, Harper can help them with the relevant paperwork.There’s room for Harper in talent management too. Let’s say you’re writing a performance review for one of your employees, and you’re planning to give them a “meets expectations” rating. But then Harper reminds you that just 30 days ago, you had a serious conversation with that employee about their efficiency. With a simple signal, Harper can ensure that employees get clear, accurate feedback so they can avoid a performance improvement plan. And when it’s time to write goals for that employee, Harper can ensure those goals are specific, measurable, and time-bound.Barnett believes that in the future, we’ll all be working alongside humans and AI teammates, “The change that’s coming is dramatic, and it’s coming fast,” he said. Yet he’s not cynical about AI personas taking over HR. People are far more valuable to him. “My personal life mission is to help people be happier and more successful at work, and so that’s really what I’ve dedicated my career to.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Wisq, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Photo by ismagilov/iStock)
The Real Impact of AI on Hiring: Staying Ahead of the Curve
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza June 24, 2025“This pressure to do more with less can be really challenging, let alone when you start to bring in a lot of what we’re seeing today in spam and in fraud,” said Meredith Johnson, chief product officer at applicant tracking platform Greenhouse. Recruiters face more than an applicant volume challenge today: They also have to sift for the highest-quality candidates who have sincere enthusiasm for the role while lazy applicants spam hundreds employers with AI-generated resumes and bad actors try to wiggle their way into companies to steal trade secrets or work on behalf of hostile nations—a problem few recruiters ever imagined they would encounter.Johnson spoke during a From Day One webinar on the impact of AI on hiring and how talent acquisition teams can stay ahead of the curve. Greenhouse is among the companies leading the charge on combating applicant fraud while preserving the candidate experience for good-faith applicants. The company recently announced its partnership with Clear to verify applicant identity and combat fraud and spam at the top of the hiring funnel. Adopting AI for Maximum ImpactFor companies that haven’t jumped on the artificial intelligence train, the good news is that the barriers to entry are low, and the easiest tools to adopt can offload some of the most time-consuming tasks. Early stages of the hiring process are ideal for AI intervention. It’s in the setup phase that TA teams often spin their wheels, Johnson said, over-polishing job descriptions or hand-tailoring candidate outreach emails one at a time. This, she noted, is a great place to start with AI.“You might send a communication that says, ‘I hope this email finds you well. We’re currently looking for individuals with these skill sets for this role, and I was really impressed with your experience in: Enter personalization token that’s drawing from all that goodness automatically for you.’” Once the recruiter reviews and signs off, that outreach is ready to roll. And when you’ve built a solid slate of candidates, recruiters can use AI to generate questions tailored to the role and most-sought-after attributes. Though this tool has been available only for a few months, Johnson said it’s their most used AI-assisted feature, with an 80% acceptance rate, “meaning that 80% of the time, our users are just accepting, without any condition, the suggested questions that are being provided.”Of course, what every recruiter hopes to find are those candidates who are not only qualified, they’re interested and able to take on a new role. Greenhouse is now using sentiment analysis to suss out the candidates that have the greatest affinity toward specific jobs. “One of the capabilities that we rolled out with the auto-generated sentiment analysis that automatically interprets and categorizes information from the prospect email, and so it can turn back results and signals to the hiring team. How interested are they? Could it potentially be bad timing?”Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the discussion with Meredith Johnson of Greenhouse (photo by From Day One)The goal is to move the best matched and most engaged talent along in the hiring process. Actually hiring stand-out applicants can be a matter of a good candidate experience, which can be a differentiator for an employer, she says, especially as companies lose good candidates among a deluge of applications.Companies may be prone to using time-saved as the primary KPI when folding AI into recruitment, but most recruiters don’t just want to move faster, they want to make better hires. Prioritizing–and measuring–the candidate experience mitigates against a hiring strategy that prizes speed at all costs. “You’re starting to get into that higher altitude of a more effective process, and that’s really important,” she said. “We want to do it with speed and have a little fun, but really, we want to get a really, really good result, and that’s what matters.”Greenhouse doesn’t operate without internal guardrails. The company runs a formal AI ethics committee that reviews all their products and updates, and they’re keen on transparency into not only what the tools do, but also what models they run on. Candidates can even opt out of some features, like interview recording and AI assistants in calls.Johnson sees challenges and opportunities beyond just sourcing, but deep “into the actual meat of recruiting.” As a hiring manager, she’s using Greenhouse’s platform to build her own team, and it’s through first-hand experience that she’s testing and developing new tools.“We think about not only solving problems in this space, but doing it with purposeful delivery and placement of AI-supported and AI-assisted capabilities,” she said. “There’s lots to uncover there where we can provide more AI-assisted time saving, efficiency, and boosting experiences in the interview process.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Greenhouse, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Photo by imaginima/iStock)
The Quiet Excellence Among Federal Workers—and What Corporate Leaders Could Learn From Them
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza June 20, 2025The employees at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are among the most high-performing teams on earth. They explore the farthest edges of galaxies, photograph cosmic events millions of years old, dream up some of the most advanced technology humans have ever made—and build vehicles to go where no one has gone before.More milestones are on the way. In 2027, the JPL will launch into space the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope—the most sophisticated to date—and, as the writer Dave Eggers puts it, they’re “within striking distance” of identifying not just the existence but also the location of life elsewhere in the universeThis is a world-changing pursuit for everyone born on terra firma, yet most of the folks at JPL don’t seek praise for what they do. When the writer Dave Eggers visited the lab in Pasadena, Calif., to write about its workers for the Washington Post, he noted that “no one at JPL—no one I met, at least—was willing to take credit for anything.”This work ethic, too, is worth some deep exploring. How can people making history by their excellence shun conventional appreciation? Corporate leaders in HR insist that a culture of recognition is essential to a healthy and productive workforce. True enough, yet Eggers found more dimensions of worker satisfaction that many corporate employers could learn from. Among them: an embrace of intrinsic motivation (curiosity and collaboration) rather than only extrinsic forms (compensation and celebrity); the challenges of answering big questions and solving societal problems; and the sense of leaving a generational legacy.“Yes, we are in the space business and in the knowledge business,” one manager told Eggers, “but I’ve always believed that we’re really in the inspiration business, the inspiration that we have lent out and inspired generations of engineers and scientists. It cannot be underestimated.”What’s even more remarkable, writers like Eggers have discovered: the JPL isn’t an outlier. It’s not an exotic planet among federal agencies, but representative of similar values across the workforce of 2.4 million civilian federal workers.At a time when the Trump administration has cut almost 59,000 federal employees and given buyouts to 76,000 as of mid-May, all the while vilifying the federal workforce as lazy and low-performing, a cadre of journalists have taken a closer look at who does the work that makes the U.S. government, and the country, run. The author Michael Lewis got curious about this at the dawn of the first Trump administration, when the incoming president and his team decided to skip the traditional briefing given by the previous administration on the complexities of the executive workforce. Lewis’s reporting produced a series of Washington Post stories and a bestselling book, The Fifth Risk, which explored what happens when the government is controlled by people who have little idea of how itworks.As a follow-up in 2024, Lewis and six colleagues, who include Eggers, the comic W. Kamau Bell, and Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks, followed federal employees as they hammered through their day-to-day duties. The often-arcane pursuits included engineering structures that save miners from dying on the job, investigating cybercrime (and nabbing the criminals), burying and memorializing veterans, meticulously calculating the health of our economy, protecting our most treasured national relics, dispensing knowledge to the public, busting monopolies with verve.The series of profiles, called “Who Is Government?,” ran in installments in the Washington Post in 2024 and was published this year as a book by the same name, now a bestseller.Lewis and his co-authors describe a culture within the federal workforce that most business leaders, and HR teams, might only dream of: a high regard for management, routinely doing more with less, a painstaking commitment to measurement, high retention despite comparatively low pay, creativity and innovation with slim budgets, and a deep personal commitment to the cause of the organization. But there’s still that missing piece—no one’s singling them out for praise.One former assistant secretary of foreign affairs at the Veterans Administration tells writer Casey Cep, without apparent resentment, that to be a civil servant is to be invisible. “No one ever knows about the good you do.” What, then, takes the place of that?How Corporate America Is Different, But Could ChangeCorporate America tends to mingle with its own kind. Private-sector conferences seldom invite public-sector speakers, there are few federal bureaucratic influencers on LinkedIn, Fortune isn’t likely to profile cybercrime teams at the IRS, even though they’ve recovered billions of dollars for the American public.Yet, in many ways, the public sector has achieved what the private sector still grapples for.If anyone in the private sector knows about excellence, it’s Lawrence Price. He’s a West Point graduate, an Army veteran, and the holder of a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology. In the private sector he has worn titles like “director of organizational development and continuous improvement” and “vice president of organizational excellence.” He’s currently the VP of people and culture at Brink’s, the company whose armored trucks transport wads of cash and diamonds.There are three types of corporate excellence, he said. Efficiency, innovation, and proficiency. The federal workforce, which is so large and so diverse in its purposes, contains all three.Companies that create the same product or service repeatedly want to be efficient. Bereaved families can call the National Cemetery Administration (part of the VA) most times of day or night to make funeral arrangements. Though every military member who dies is unique in their way, their burials are democratically the same: Republican and Democrat, male and female, black and white, officer or enlisted. It’s worth noting that they have so mastered efficiency with strict process and deep respect that the NCA ranks above any organization—public or private—on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index.Those that make new things want to be innovative (and are seldom concerned with efficiency). It makes sense that the JPL satisfies this criteria, but, as Sarah Vowell’s story in Who Is Government? shows, so does the Food and Drug Administration, whose CURE ID website allows doctors all over the world to report cases of rare disease and log the treatments that work and don’t work. It’s the first of its kind. And they did it on a shoestring.Companies that gather groups of experts—like a hospital or a robotics firm, for instance—want to be proficient. Most federal departments are proficiency hubs in one fashion or another. IRS cybercrime investigators are experts in digital forensics, archivists are experts in preservation and knowledge dissemination, the Department of Justice’s antitrust division is a concentration of experts in monopolies and mitigating them.All companies want some level of financial sustainability, Price noted. The same is true for government agencies, which need to meet their budgets even as they make difficult decisions between competing programs, dreams, and expectations.And all organizations want engaged employees, a goal easier for those that prize proficiency and harder for those that prize efficiency, but not impossible. Casey Cep writes that the private sector could learn a thing or two from the National Cemetery Administration, especially in the way of commitment. “There is no mission more sacred than honoring these heroes and helping their families through such a hard time, and it’s a job that [the NCA does] with excellence and compassion every single day,” Denis McDonough, the former secretary of Veterans Affairs, told Cep.Price believes that intrinsic motivation and sense of duty–a feeling that it’s a privilege to serve–are far more powerful than what corporate America might call a culture of recognition. “It’s stickier,” he said. “I’m ex-military, and it’s amazing to me what a piece of tin going on a person’s uniform—how it will motivate them, how it makes them feel seen.”Finding Motivation in the Mission It’s easy to imagine self-generating motivation if your mission is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States–an oath sworn by both military and civil servants. But what if you make windshield wipers, or build software, or paint houses? Where–and how–will employees find motivation?It may be a matter of identifying the human dignity in what the company does. Adam Weber, an executive coach in the private sector, told From Day One that organizational excellence begins with a clear vision for the future: “That flag on the moon, that deep understanding of why the business exists and where it’s headed,” he said. This needn’t be some altruistic dream nor a sappy myth about changing the world, but a clear-eyed description of the effects of what your employees do.A commercial painting business beautifies homes simply and efficiently. A sportswear brand helps keep people active and healthy. A payments software company helps people get paid on time. And a cybersecurity company ensures those paychecks stay in the accounts where they belong.The federal employees profiled in Who Is Government? are acutely aware of the downstream effects of their work, and they’re aware of who’s footing the bill. “The scientists I met [at JPL] were exquisitely aware that they’re spending taxpayer money, and they were determined to justify the faith put in them,” Eggers wrote. The sense of dignity in their work is immensely high. In corporate speak: They’re engaged with the company mission, and accountable to their stakeholders.Even so, long before the Trump administration declared open season on federal workers, their advocates decided that they could use a little more limelight in their own interest. Each year since 2002, the Partnership for Public Services gives out what’s called the Oscars of their field. At the award ceremony this week, the top price went to David Lebryk, a former top Treasury Department who “was forced out of his career position for refusing to grant Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency what he considered unlawful access to the government’s payment system,” as the New York Times reported.In accepting his award, Lebryk noted that “most of my career was spent trying to be unnoticed.” But now he was in the spotlight and wanted to encourage his successors. The night before the awards, he addressed a group of incoming federal interns, encouraging them to pursue public service, the Times reported. Eventually, he said, “things will break,” and the administration “will have to turn to people who know how to fix things.” He said he tells government colleagues to “take care of yourself, and take the long view; your skills are going to be needed in the future.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Featured photo: a portrait of employees at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, from left, Tiffany Kataria, Bertrand Mennesson, Vanessa Bailey, and Kim Aaron. Photo ©Jay L. Clendenin)
The Push for Flexible, Personalized Benefits: How Employers Are Adapting
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza June 04, 2025Once seen as back-office support, HR and benefits teams are now central to both business success and the employee experience.“Employees come to us as if we’re an educated consumer, understanding the health issues that they’re facing, that their colleagues are facing, requesting certain products and services,” said Stevi Evans, senior director of benefits at Weight Watchers. That’s a good thing, as far as she’s concerned. Not only does it indicate trust in the HR department, it also means that she can hear from employees, first hand, about what they need. “It’s definitely a new dynamic that has helped employees stay more engaged.”Evans and her colleagues in corporate benefits gathered for a panel on flexible benefits during From Day One’s NYC half-day benefits conference. The group traded ideas on personalizing benefits and communications, and staying flexible as needs change. Know Your PeoplePanelists agreed: A solid benefit program begins with knowing your employees.That’s been true at fitness club brand Equinox. It was Covid that forced the company to be flexible. With gyms and fitness centers closed, a large slice of employees (both part- and full-time) were unable to work, but the company wasn’t about to revoke benefits,” said Alana Kotlyar, Equinox’s senior director of global benefits. “So we’ve also provided the flexibility to reflect on what’s happening in our world when we’re setting hourly thresholds” that qualify workers for benefits. A fitness instructor can’t work 30 hours per week–that much exercise is humanly impossible–which is what qualifies an employee as “full-time” under the Affordable Care Act.Rather than follow the 30-hour rule, Equinox now sets thresholds by role. “It varies by job. We do two ACA measurement periods, which is atypical for an employer, because we understand the seasonality.” And the company now offers a basic health package, which includes mental health care, to all employees at subsidy. It’s “nothing glamorous–but it can get a lot of things done,” she said.Megan Burns, lead benefits solutions consultant at wellbeing benefits platform Benepass, says that the flexibility of lifestyle spending accounts (LSAs) can increase long-term engagement. LSAs are dollars that employees can use for any number of things determined by the employer. Think gym memberships or courses or childcare or even groceries. “It crosses so many different broad wellbeing areas,” she said. Plus, employers can opt to issue dollars on a monthly, semi-annually, or annual basis.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, second from right, moderated the discussion In fact, “sometimes we don’t realize how valuable a broad solution can be,” said Evans of Weight Watchers, who recently expanded the list of items eligible for the company’s wellness reimbursement to include groceries for part-time employees. “Sometimes the basic necessities are what goes a long way for people, compared to buying the newest sneakers or the newest pair of Lululemon leggings,” she said. “We used data [about our employees] to make that decision, and it worked well for us.”According to Benepass’s 2025 benchmarking report, financial health represents an emerging category in terms of employer spend,” and “It’s because of the feedback they’re getting from employees,” said Burns. Marketing Flexible BenefitsOf course, communications and long-term engagement is a concern for any benefits team. “A lot of people come to us looking for the newest channel,” said Guy Westermeyer, owner and founder of marketing agency Westcomm. “The bad news is, there’s not a newest channel. It’s still all the same channels.” What really matters is personalization and segmentation. For instance, one of Westcomm’s clients is a hospital system in Louisiana. It employs 40,000 people, but once applied a single communications strategy. “They were telling employees about benefits they weren’t eligible for.”Another client had been translating its benefits information from English into Spanish without considering the nuance of language. Puzzlingly, the Spanish-speaking demographic of its workforce wasn’t enrolling in medical plans, but it wasn’t a problem of desire, it was a problem of translation. “They were electing life insurance because they thought that covered their life–and thought that covered their medical,” Westermeyer said.By knowing your workforce–mistakes like these can be avoided.“We try to hit them where they are and the way that they ask to be communicated,” said Emma Stern, head of global benefits at Bausch + Lomb, which employs both office workers and frontline workers. They put benefits information on paper, pin it to bulletin boards, and link to it via QR codes. And where employees “have stand-up meetings in the morning with site leaders, so we get [benefits] on that agenda,” Stern said. And more recently, the company lined ticker-tape on TV screens with benefits info. Everywhere, in a myriad forms, employees can get their hands on good information.Kotlyar noted that employers interested in personalizing benefits don’t need to go shopping for new vendors to make it happen. “The simplest place to start with personalization is in your own current ecosystem,” she said. Vendors change and evolve over the years, they add new programs and services, they find new ways to solve problems. Or, you can work with them to come up with new solutions. “You can push your current vendors, from a negotiation perspective, to do a little bit more, stretch them a little bit.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Photos by Hason Castell for From Day One)
Breaking Barriers to Personal Growth: Identifying What Holds Us Back
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza June 03, 2025If a company is truly able to reward risk-taking among employees, “the number-one thing they do is provide a measure of psychological safety,” said Matt Pepe, the VP of people at Barcelona-based pharmaceutical company Ferrer, which develops therapies for underserved conditions–an enterprise that requires ingenuity and creativity. In psychologically safe workplaces, Pepe said during a From Day One webinar on breaking barriers to personal growth, “it’s OK to go out on a limb and fail. But it’s hard to get to that point.”It helps if company leaders set the tone, says Pepe’s fellow panelist Laura Magnuson, the VP of clinical engagement at virtual mental health platform Talkspace. “As leaders, we can build psychological safety in the workplace by modeling vulnerability: Admit when you’re not sure what the answer is,” then pursue a solution in conjunction with the employee.Success can be measured and observed. Lawrence Price, the VP of people and culture at security firm Brink’s, said that evidence of a risk-taking environment tends to show up in two ways. First: internal mobility. Look at the share of open jobs that are filled with internal talent and the number of short-term projects people take on outside of their typical duties. “That tells me that they’re willing to allow people to try new things and to try to explore those opportunities,” he said. Second: continuous improvement processes. “How often [employees] are creating cross-functional teams to drive innovation and improvements inside the organization, which requires some level of experimentation.Of course risk-taking requires curiosity, which employers can encourage. “As far as the people leaders go, we need to make sure that they’re coming into 1:1s with their direct reports with a level of curiosity to understand what’s going on with that employee, not just in the workplace, but outside of the workplace,” said Sony Das, VP of learning and organizational development at Hollywood production company Lionsgate. Panelists spoke about "Breaking Barriers to Personal Growth: Identifying What Holds Us Back" during the webinar moderated by journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza (photo by From Day One)She likes to ask her team to reflect on the previous week. “What tasks or projects were you involved in that filled your cup? What made it enjoyable?” With that information, managers can steer their employees toward roles and tasks that they not only enjoy, but that they excel in. “Some people are working jobs, and some people are working careers,” said Rebecca Degner, the assistant VP of HR at professional services firm Genpact. And both are OK. It’s simply a matter of hearing what someone wants from their job and helping them find their way. “Have regular check-ins with employees as much as possible,” she said. It can be hard to find the time, so Degner has an open-door policy: “Anybody can schedule time on my calendar at any point in time to talk about their career.”Culture is both an influence on and product of the way employees work with and relate to each other. Talkspace’s Magnuson posed this question to employers: Is your culture rigid and resistant to new ideas, or is it flexible? Further, do employees work in a series of closed loops or can they collaborate freely? Whether there’s cross-pollination can tell you a lot about company culture. This also goes for the way people talk. What’s the tone? Do employees one-up each other on stress? Do employees brag about exhaustion and burnout as badges of honor? A culture of strain is not a free one, nor is it an innovative one. If employees are to take risks, they have to have the energy and mental space to do so.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Talkspace, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Photo by Iconic Prototype/iStock)
How Companies Are Using Internal Mobility and ‘Good Friction’ in a Tough Labor Market
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza May 29, 2025The year 2025 has marked a change in the way companies have recently thought about workforce growth. Companies are laying off workers, shrinking management layers, and slowing down hiring to hedge their bets against an unpredictable economy. As employer caution changes the job market, it’s also changing workforce development.At From Day One’s NYC TA conference, leaders talked about how companies are handling a ballooning number of applications, making the best use of internal talent, and introducing “positive friction.”“Mobility is becoming more and more part of the recruitment conversation versus part of the retention conversation,” said Linda Marioni, head of US recruitment solutions at HR consulting firm LHH, who sat on an executive panel about how to improve the talent pipeline from end to end.“While it’s still a very important retention tool, companies are coming to us saying, ‘If we’re going through a transformation, how can you help us assess our internal talent and mobilize our internal talent so that we don’t lose that talent to the market,” she said.There are other ways to save on labor costs, of course. Previously companies used contract labor to patch holes in the workforce, hiring freelancers and part-timers for interim roles and non-core work, but that’s changing, says Marioni. Leaning on contract employees is financially more efficient for companies, and helps the firm stay more agile, able to dip into the market and pluck out niche skills when needed.Journalist and From Day One contributing editor, Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, middle, moderated the discussionSerena Hutton, talent acquisition manager at Publicis Media says internal mobility is core to her company’s operations. Internal candidates go through the same process external candidates do, though current talent is given priority. The policy is still relevant when recruiting, though. Recruiters pitch Publicis to candidates as a place for employees who want to grow and move. “It’s about the growth that they can achieve while at the company.” And Hutton said it works–very well.When companies do hire from the outside, the number of applications is a consistent problem. Tom Brunskill, VP and general manager at Forge, which facilitates job simulations, says it’s especially a problem for those seeking early career applicants. “We’re seeing companies that typically receive two, three, or four hundred thousand applications increase by 50% over the last 12 months because of what AI has enabled early talent to do in terms of the sheer number of applications that they can send out.” The applications look remarkably tailored to the job, but the candidate behind them is often unserious. Finding applicants that are truly interested in the company is the old needle-in-a-haystack problem.Brunskill described the importance of what he calls “positive friction.” One-click applications make it all too easy for job seekers, whether serious or not, to apply to open roles. And thanks to AI, job seekers can easily and rapidly produce lots of applications that appear to be high quality. The result is piles of irrelevant resumes. Positive friction can slow down bad actors or lazy applicants. Job simulations are one way to do this.The number of applications is growing, but the number of recruiters to read those applications is not, Marioni noted. Hiring teams are being asked to do more with less.Tech is sometimes able to fill in the gaps where recruiters need help. Steve Koepp, From Day One’s co-founder and editor in chief, noted during the discussion that employers are electing for devices like asynchronous interviewing platforms and scheduling tools to manage application volume. Even though they’re simple to use, they can slow down hiring in ways it’s needed most, generating the positive friction that gives recruiters time to find the gems. “There are plenty of choices,” Koepp said. “That’s the cutting edge.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Photos by Hason Castell for From Day One)
Groceries as a Benefit: As Workers Struggle With Living Costs, Employers Help Cover Basic Needs
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza May 21, 2025As the cost of living in the U.S. has climbed sharply in recent years, Stevi Evans, the head of benefits at Weight Watchers, has heard more often from the company’s hourly workers who struggle financially. Salaried employees might be bothered by increases in their health-insurance premiums, for example, but Weight Watchers’ hourly workforce, many of whom are part-timers and work second jobs, have been pinching every penny. The basics are increasingly hard to come by: Food prices in the U.S. rose nearly 24% from 2020 to 2024, according to the Consumer Price Index, and the cost of transportation grew more than 34% over the same period. Credit-card delinquencies are up in every state since 2022, reports the Urban Institute, a non-profit research organization. Wellness benefits have been growing incrementally. Since 2018, Weight Watchers offered a $200 annual wellness reimbursement for its hourly employees to use on things like sneakers and workout clothing. Employees liked it and used it, said Evans, but as the cost of living increased, she realized needs were growing even more basic. Evans has stay attuned to the social determinants of health, the non-medical factors that affect health outcomes and quality of life, for example economic stability and access to healthcare and education. She wanted to help satisfy those needs. “We heard our hourly population talk about economic hardships,” Evans said. “That’s when I thought, ‘Why don’t we just include groceries in the wellness reimbursement?’” So last year, Weight Watchers added them to the list of reimbursable expenses, and requests “rolled in like crazy,” she said. Ninety-two percent of hourly employees now use the reimbursement, said Evans. And 77% of those use it for groceries.Evans expected to see receipts from specialty grocery stores, indicators that people might be using it to treat themselves to something novel (which, for the record, she would have no problem with), “but these are from Walmart,” she said. People need the essentials.The Basics Can Include Everything from Utility Costs to EmergenciesIn years when employers were hunting fervently for workers, many companies engaged in a spirited game of benefits one-upmanship, offering the most unusual–and often eyebrow-raising–perks to get attention and gain a competitive edge. Most recently, those benefits ranged from pet leave to ketamine therapy. Before that, it was in-office ping-pong tournaments and beer taps that flowed any time of day.Now, as companies freeze hiring and many costs continue to mount, employers are increasingly aiming at the base of the needs hierarchy, furnishing essentials like food, shelter, and expanded healthcare.Sometimes it’s an emergency. Companies scrambled to supply basic provisions to workers in Los Angeles after wildfires ruined huge parts of the city in January. And now that natural disasters are endangering areas not historically considered to be disaster-prone, like Asheville, N.C., companies are bolstering business continuity plans with disaster preparedness plans.Natural disasters, rising auto-and-home insurance premiums, and mass corporate layoffs mean that many people are anxious about their financial well-being and looking to their employers for help. When Gallup asked survey-takers in early 2025 to identify America’s problems, economic issues topped the list. Sixty-seven percent said the affordability of healthcare is “a very big problem,” while 63% said the same about inflation, and 53% pointed to the number of Americans living in poverty.Why not just raise worker salaries? Companies have to stay competitive on that scale, but that’s often not enough to improve multifaceted financial health. “If you want to become a stand-out employer,” Manisha Thakor, founder and CEO of MoneyZen Wealth Management, wrote recently in HBR, “one of the most effective HR benefits you can provide is a base layer of what I call ‘financial health,’” meaning that employees’ basic financial needs are met and they understand how their money choices affect their lives. Does Worker Financial Well-Being Affect the Bottom Line?Employers are linking financial health with mental health with workplace productivity. Energy tech company Enphase Energy makes financial benefits a pillar of its overall wellness strategy, which also includes things like healthcare.Others are linking it to retention and engagement. During a From Day One virtual conference in March, Jason Simmonds, the global head of employee experience at Morgan Stanley, noted that some employees have even gotten themselves out of debt thanks to the company’s financial wellness benefits—and highlighting their success has increased uptake of the program.One popular way to cover employees’ basic needs is a lifestyle spending account, or LSA. Tom Kelly, principal consultant in the health practice at benefits brokerage Gallagher, told From Day One that there’s been an uptick in companies opting for this benefit.LSAs are employer-funded accounts that allow employees to file for reimbursement for various expenses designated by the employer. The list could be very long, and full of necessities or luxuries, like groceries, gas or other transportation costs, childcare, tuition and education costs, financial counseling, running shoes, fitness classes, or nutritional supplements. While the list is created by the employer, it’s up to the employee to chose what serves them best. The “ecosystem” approach recommended by Thakor in her HBR article is one that considers employees’ unique experiences in favor of a generalized approach.Amanda Verdino, a director at Forma, which runs lifestyle spending accounts, told From Day One that the employers that do use them are rapidly expanding the list of reimbursable expenses. It’s not uncommon for employers to cover food and tuition assistance benefits through their LSAs. One of Forma’s clients, a sportswear brand, just added the cost of heating and cooling to its list of reimbursable expenses.According to Forma’s 2024 LSA benchmark report, food expenses ranked second in terms of number of transactions, right after fitness-related expenses. Verdino said tuition assistance is rising in popularity in both availability and utilization, as is commuter assistance and childcare. Regardless of category, utilization for LSAs is high. For every dollar an employer offers in the food category, employees spend 75 cents.LSAs aren’t all. At Gallagher, Tom Kelly noted that their clients are rolling out grocery savings programs as well as home and car insurance discounts to great success. “For discount marketplaces and purchase programs, we see really high utilization, to the tune of 70% to 90% of employees using these perks platforms on a regular basis.”Companies are conducting benefit gap analyses to understand the needs of their workforce based on their demographics, he said. And many confirm that employees need help with the basics.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Featured image by Cyano66/iStock by Getty Images)
Building a Thriving Culture Through Comprehensive Health and Wellness Benefits
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza May 07, 2025Employee wellness isn’t just any one thing, and it should be treated accordingly, says Stacey Olson, the global wellness leader at architecture firm Gensler. It’s intellectual, it’s physical, it’s environment, emotional, and professional—just as a start. So when employers plan for workforce well-being, each deserves attention on its own.Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean programmatically. HR is wont to think of well-being as a set of programs or apps, says Deborah Olson, who leads well-being strategy at biotech company Genentech. “I think few teams thoroughly examine their culture, their manager training, and the behaviors across their population, and I think even fewer take the opportunity to assess the well-being of their workforce so they know where there are opportunities,” she said during an executive panel conversation at From Day One’s April virtual conference.The leaders on the panel made it clear: HR alone can’t ensure the well-being of thousands of workers, nor should it try. At chemical company BASF, director of total rewards and operations Melissa Tuscano enlists “well-being champions”: a network of employees that care deeply about mental and physical health to be ambassadors for the wellness program, exemplars of care, and sentinels of well-being in whatever department they work in. “Because we’re such a large organization, there’s no way myself or any part of my benefits team can talk to everyone as much as we might want to,” she said.At education tech company BrainPOP, chief people officer Kavita Vora set up “wellness circles,” or therapist-led discussion groups focused on coping strategies related to stressors. Her hope is that employees leave the circles with fewer stressors than when they arrived. She’s been collecting feedback from participants and iterating as she goes.The panel discussion was moderated by journalist and From Day One contributing editor, Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza (photo by From Day One)“For example, our Latinx community requested a meeting based on things that were happening in the news. So we had one, but we also made sure that the therapist facilitating was from the same identity group, so they felt that they really had a safe space and an understanding facilitator,” she said.Consider Access and Care NavigationAt Keysight Technologies, an electronics design firm, benefits director Heather Ostrowski’s strategy is a comprehensive one. The company’s slate of benefits is impressive: Think debt counseling, bereavement care and funeral services, concierge help with childcare and eldercare, postpartum care, menopause care, mental healthcare, and diabetes management, on top of the Cadillac of healthcare plans.Her challenge is navigation. Currently her team is the go-between for wellness vendors and employees, but she wants to hand over the controls to the employees themselves. When workers have autonomy and access, health outcomes improve.Ostrowski has been forging direct relationships between workers and providers with webinars and forums. “We have a calendar where people can see what webinar or what communications are going to be coming out. By reminding people how to get there easier—it’s been helpful for employees to feel supported.”Beware of Burnout Feeling good about work means being recognized for a job well done. Employee recognition is part of the wellness program at BASF, says Tuscano. “When people feel recognized, they are in a good, psychologically safe place. They feel happy, right? They may feel appreciated. This is all part of being well and feeling well.”But the right things must be rewarded, panelists noted. There are many paths to burnout, says Deborah Olson of Genentech. There’s overwork and long hours and lack of autonomy when it comes to decisions or style of working. Workers may edge toward burnout because they care about the work, and employees sometimes recognize and reward bad habits, even inadvertently. “So many times we are saying, ‘thank you for working long hours,’ or ‘thank you for calling in on your vacation,’” Olson said. That, too, is employee recognition. “We have the best intentions, so we should be shifting into recognizing behaviors that we want to see continued.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Photo by Parradee Kietsirikul/iStock)
The Personalized Benefits Playbook: How Smart Companies Can Win with LSAs
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza May 02, 2025“We’ve had over 100 years to perfect our company’s culture, and we found that the wellness program is truly part of the strategic plan within our company,” said Whitney Ayers, wellness program manager at Garver, an engineering, planning, and environmental services firm founded in 1919.The program, which has become a cornerstone of the company’s benefits, includes a $300 health reimbursement employees can use at their discretion. Despite its importance, there were ways in which the company hadn’t modernized the program in decades. Chiefly, its administration, which Ayers was still juggling across spreadsheets, costing her hours on tedious, manual tasks, she shared during a From Day One webinar.Employers would send receipts to Ayers, who would log them in an Excel spreadsheet by employee ID, make a few (manual) computations for tax purposes, then forward it to finance—a process that was becoming increasingly untenable as the workforce grew from 450 to 1,300 workers over about seven years. “Finally, I was like, ‘man, I’m doing a disservice to the wellness program because I’m not able to spend quality time on the strategic planning of my program. I’m spending so much time on administrative work.” Verdino of Forma spoke with Ayers of Garver during the webinar about "The Personalized Benefits Playbook" (photo by From Day One)Garver’s insurance broker proposed a solution: a lifestyle spending account, or LSA. These are flexible, customizable, employer-funded spending accounts employees can use for a wide array perks largely determined by the employer. With theirs, Garver funds perks like home gym equipment, nutrition programs, and fitness subscriptions. “LSAs are about employees being able to access things that matter most to them and bring value to their lives in various ways,” said Amanda Verdino of Forma, the LSA platform Garver brought on to lift the administrative burden and polish the program. “They’re super personalized, where everyone can access what matters most to them in a way that feels really valuable and meaningful.”After the switch to an LSA, “the administrative burden went down to zero, which was amazing,” said Ayers. “I’m saving countless hours from having to do manual work, and it’s helping decrease human error.” Now, Ayers has time to focus work on cost-effectiveness and planning. When the CFO calls to ask exactly what the company is spending on health reimbursements, Ayers can answer right away, and in detail. “We have a 97.8% participation rate in our wellness program,” Ayers said. “We provide an insurance premium discount, and 97.8% of those employees earned that discount, not only last year, but also in 2023.” Garver also sees better health outcomes as a result of the improved program—which pairs preventative care with perks like the LSA that allow employees to get healthy how they want to.“With the introduction of the lifestyle spending account, just last year we were able to invest in our people and pay out $233,000 in health reimbursements. That’s a 110% increase,” said Ayers. “The engineers checked my math.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Forma, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Photo by mapo/iStock)
Optimizing Hiring: Using AI and Automation to Enhance the Candidate Experience
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza April 07, 2025HR is a big job, and teams are feeling the pressure. SHRM’s 2025 State of the Workplace report showed that 62% of HR professionals feel like they’ve been overcapacity in the last year. Fifty-seven percent report being understaffed. The report also points out a promising development that can help teams get a handle on their responsibilities: artificial intelligence.From Day One gathered a panel of recruiting leaders for a webinar on using AI and automation to enhance the candidate experience, most of them well into their experiments with AI, and all of them ready to talk about how it’s saving them time and energy, and making the hiring process better.Panelists were eager to put to bed some common misconceptions about how AI is being used in hiring. First, that it’s used to auto-reject candidates. “I’ve never seen that happen, and frankly, most recruiters I talk to wouldn’t want that to happen,” said Kyle Forsberg, senior technical recruiter at biotech firm Thermo Fisher Scientific.Another is that recruiters are somewhat “brainless,” said Michelle Yoshihara, senior manager of talent planning at HR software platform Greenhouse. That they go through the hiring process allowing AI to make decisions for them and failing to advocate on behalf of their clients. Also not true.What it is doing is freeing up a lot of time, which lets recruiters source and interview candidates the way they’ve wanted to do it for some time. Polina Morozov, a senior technical recruiter at Grammarly, uses the company’s AI writing assistant to personalize candidate outreach and make messages more attention-grabbing. She’s been using it for two years, to great success. “Whenever I have any subsequent communications with candidates, I do run it through AI to make sure that I’m getting my point across, especially in written form.”Panelists spoke about "Optimizing Hiring: Using AI and Automation to Enhance the Candidate Experience" during the conversation moderated by journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza (photo by From Day One)When you have more time, you can expand your talent pool to find better candidates. “We’re making the process simpler for candidates,” said Chuck Kostomiris, who leads global executive recruitment at energy firm ConocoPhillips. “Not just less pre-screening questions, but more inclusive pre-screening questions to help hopefully more candidates come through that meet the basic requirements for a position.”At Google, senior technical recruiter Steen Whidden fills roles for freshly minted PhDs and other highly credentialed talent, often with 30 years of experience, which means he’s working with multiple generations at any given moment, and he’s using AI to tailor the candidate experience.“For people recently out of PhDs, maybe they just want a short prep call right before they start interviewing,” he said. And at the end of the process, “maybe some don’t want a rejection call, but would rather get an email instead.” More senior workers sometimes like a more high-touch style of recruitment, Whidden has found. Meeting candidates the way they want to be met hasn’t always been possible, simply because there isn’t enough time, but “as we get more time freed up, we can hopefully provide even better candidate experience,” he said.Others are using interview transcription. Kostomiris tells candidates ahead of time that he’ll be using a transcription tool—though the interview recording itself won’t be stored or recorded—and that they’re welcome to opt out. He likes that he doesn’t have to worry about taking notes, and instead can focus on building rapport with the candidates.Forsberg uses it to communicate with hiring managers who have more technical expertise than he does. “I can send them the recording they can hear straight from that candidate, instead of playing a game of telephone between the hiring manager and myself.”Introducing new steps in the process or augment existing ones won’t get you very far unless you persuade hiring managers to buy in. They have to know ahead of time that anything you ask them to do is deliberate and toward a very specific end. “Take a moment prior to all these changes and say, ‘This is the year we’re really focused on AI, so a lot of the changes you’re going to see are going to be us amplifying our processes with AI or automation so that we can make our process more efficient,’” said Yoshihara. When managers see the direction, they can trust that you’re not chasing trends or complicating the process unnecessarily. Disclose to candidates how and when you’ll be using AI, panelists agreed. And as far as possible, give them the chance to opt out. And if you’re going to use AI, don’t expect or require your candidates to totally refrain.But don’t introduce AI into the hiring process if it’s not necessary. “AI for the sake of AI is not what we need,” said Forsberg. “If it ain’t broke, you don’t need to fix it.”“It seems that there will be an AI solution for any number of challenges that businesses face,” said Yoshihara. “But for a recruiting team, as you’re thinking about the candidate experience, you have to consider where this is best applied.”There are some things AI can’t do. Morozov noted that the excitement of finally extending a job offer can’t be done with an AI assistant. And she doesn’t want to hand it over either.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Greenhouse, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Photo by Nuthawut Somsuk/iStock)
Managers Are Overwhelmed. How Leadership Development Can Help Them
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza April 04, 2025Shifting economic forecasts, mass layoffs, political turmoil, inflation, and exhausting news cycles have people feeling like they lack control. That troubled feeling is seeping into the workplace in the form of costly employee burnout.“Managers now really need support to address and handle the shifts and the impact on their teams, their functions, even, quite frankly, themselves,” said Rochelle Arnold-Simmons, the senior director of talent management at sportswear company Under Armor, during the closing panel at From Day One’s March virtual conference on employee engagement.Managers are taking on more responsibilities, and while their work is being supported by new innovations in HR tech, it doesn’t entirely solve the problem of being overwhelmed. Employers can step in to help alleviate their burdens, panelists said.The Problem of Unprepared First-Time ManagerIt begins with promoting and training the right managers.The first-time manager unprepared for the role is a major issue for employers. Managers often get the job because they were top individual contributors, “and a lot of times they lean heavily on what got them to that promotion in the first place, but being a manager is a totally different job,” said Derek Greenacre, head of talent management at commercial insurance firm AXA XL. Organizations, he said, need to do a better job of helping new managers “ruthlessly prioritize” what’s most valuable for the business.The problem is, executives don’t always bother to help. Executive coach Adam Weber gave this example: An executive team makes a big strategic change that affects everyone in the business, but they fail to give managers context or instructions on how to implement the changes. “As soon as they share this new bold initiative, their team asks the one question that the manager doesn’t have the answer to,” Weber said. “So the manager is in this really confusing spot: They can either fake it–and it’s really obvious to the team that they’re faking it–or worse, and more common is that they commiserate and join the team.”Executives need managers on board, but without support, they set them up to oppose the change, even tacitly. “As leadership teams, we need to share as much context as we possibly can when big decisions are made.” Gather managers for a town hall and ask, “What’s the toughest question your team will ask?’” Provide answers to those FAQs. “Equip them to be an advocate for the company,” Weber said.Feeling Safe Enough to FailManagers must feel comfortable and confident enough to press leaders for more information. It helps to have a culture where senior leaders are already candid about the mistakes they make themselves, said Kavita Juvvadi, director of HR tech transformation at Amtrak. This sets the tone for a team “where there is no fear of retaliation or criticism, a culture where mistakes are normalized and treated as opportunities to learn from, rather than failures.” In short: psychological safety.Of course, ask any manager and they will tell you that their team is psychologically safe, but how do you really know? “If all the decisions are escalated to the top level, that’s an indication that people don’t feel empowered,” she said, “They may be afraid to make the decisions for fear of being wrong.”Developing Managers Within the OrganizationMore than 11,000 Baby Boomers turn 65 every day, which means employers are facing rafts of retirements and open leadership roles. Not only are companies losing years of institutional knowledge, they have to spur succession plans and prepare new managers to climb the ladder.This is especially true for industries like accounting and insurance, which over-index for older workers. This is what Greenacre is facing at AXA XL. To prepare, the company has invested quite a bit of money into building skill profiles for key roles. They then map them across the organization and say, “I know you’ve only thought of yourself in this particular product line, but have you considered other places where you might be able to almost cross pollinate the other?”Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the panel (photo by From Day One)One way to avoid new manager regret is to begin vetting and training them years ahead of time. This is why Juvvadi prefers to fill leadership roles internally, “because we have an opportunity to observe talent over a longer period of time,” watching those who “may not have a title but are problem-solvers, who naturally identify inefficiencies, who are action-oriented, who are early adopters of technology and innovation. Future leaders are sometimes hidden stars in non-traditional roles.”Arnold-Simmons likes to identify high-potential people early and invest in their careers, in part to retain them, with things like executive coaching and career development. “We look to see where our gaps are, and then find those leaders that we believe can accelerate.”Even if you’re not regretting the promotions the company has made and you’re satisfied with your succession strategy, don’t neglect your people managers. “No matter how big your company is, it’s better to do something than nothing” to help them do their jobs, said Weber. He recommended two things: First, create a one-page guide on what it means to be a manager in your organization” expectations for one-on-ones, how to give feedback to team members, and how to delegate tasks. And second, gather managers to problem-solve together. “Have one person show up with a problem and let people ask questions, then start brainstorming ways to solve the problem together.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Photo by wenich-mit/iStock)