Innovative Benefits for a Workforce with Diverse Needs
BY Katie Chambers September 17, 2026The 10,000 employees at Seattle Children’s Hospital are made up of a wide variety of professionals: nurses, physicians, environmental service technicians, facilities workers, supply chain employees, administrative support teams, researchers, and foundation fundraisers—to name just a few. Because of this diversity of experience and demographics, the organization needs a flexible, comprehensive benefits program that can serve them all. As workforces become more multigenerational, distributed, and varied in their needs, employers are looking beyond traditional medical and dental offerings to build benefits programs that support workers more holistically. During a fireside chat at From Day One’s September virtual conference, Keturah Hallmosley, deputy CHRO at Seattle Children's Hospital, shared how she is building benefits for the frontline workforce, using worker feedback to shape offerings and exploring creative approaches to healthcare, childcare, transportation, recognition, and more.Understanding the Diverse WorkforceSeattle Children’s tiered benefits structure was designed eight years ago. “Everyone has a very different family makeup, a different pay structure, and so [what] our benefit tiered structure does best [is] to meet employees where they’re at. And so, if you make more, you pay more,” Hallmosley said. “[We] want to make sure that we are continuing to evolve our benefits for the needs of what our employees have shared, and also make sure we’re aligning to the market, and this particular strategy really does help us do that.”Her team finds that AI has helped them better understand and respond to employees’ needs. In addition to launching Google Gemini organization-wide, “we have an interactive tool as well that’s specific to benefits.” The tool lets employees ask what their current benefits are, how they change, and provide family details to see how to best utilize what is on offer.Keturah Hallmosley of Seattle Children's Hospital spoke with moderator Corinne Lestch journalist and founder of the Off-Site Writing Workshop (photo by From Day One) “One of the challenges that we have today is that sometimes we get so much feedback, it’s hard to compile it into themes and be more direct and honest about what we are able to do and what we are not able to do,” Hallmosley said. “This year, we are in the process of implementing a new [AI] tool that will help employees to understand what’s right for them, and then also we’ll be able to look at the information from a trends and themes perspective to proactively think about what ways we can continue to evolve our benefits.” Building a Robust Benefits PackageIn addition to comprehensive medical and dental offerings, Hallmosley says Seattle Children’s offers additional options to fit the lives and varied generations of its workers, such as pet insurance and childcare and eldercare benefits. The employee assistance program can also be used to confidentially discuss options like mental health support or legal counseling. And while it may not fall in the traditional “benefits” category, Hallmosley acknowledges other perks that come with working at Seattle Children’s and can help attract, engage, and retain employees. “We have a very large community presence, so that’s where we partner with the engagement and retention team. If you go to this restaurant, you have these options. If you go to this gym, there are these options. The team thinks about it from a holistic perspective,” she said. There’s a staff member dedicated to focusing on well-being, and the organization launched a tool called Wellable, which links up with your smartwatch and tracks well-being activities. “You get points [and] when you’re at the top, you get entered into our system that we use for recognition to get some additional points, and you can cash those in for Seattle Children's Apparel as well as gift cards,” Hallmosley said. “I appreciate that pairing of well-being and recognition to reward individuals for taking care of themselves.” The team continuously tracks engagement in partnership with the vendor, teaches employees about the app during orientation, mentions it in employee forums, and offers competition events to encourage usage. Of course, the world of benefits is changing as rapidly as our culture. “Is there any sense of what direction the priorities are going to go in, or if there’s going to be any change in headwinds on the benefits front?” asked moderator Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder of the Off-Site Writing Workshop.“At this point in time, I think what people are looking at is, ‘What is the whole benefits package?’” Hallmosley said. That means covering every phase of life from children’s healthcare through retirement. “Where we’re working to be different is making sure that we’re being deliberate [in] involving our inclusion networks and also making sure that we’re gathering feedback from front lines. I think the challenge for us is that there is no shortage of ideas around how benefits can improve, and being able to communicate what is possible versus what is something that we cannot invest in is an item that we’re constantly challenged with.” Investing in the Future of the WorkforceFor full-time frontline workers, Seattle Children’s offers the same full package it allows everyone else, including tuition reimbursement and retirement options. “We are very intentional in helping people understand that Seattle Children’s can be a career for you,” Hallmosley said. “We have a multigenerational workforce, which is not uncommon, but I think being deliberate about the different needs and communicating that to our frontline employees is really important.” The organization also recognizes the unique challenges and opportunities of working in Seattle. The benefits and transportation teams work closely together to support carpooling, automatic deposits for Orca cards for public transportation, or even provide “commute bonuses” for those who work remotely.Going forward, Hallmosley and her team see “there is opportunity to continue to listen and to see what is possible and what we continue to build upon.” This can be a challenge, given rising costs. “We work hard to make sure that if we can’t do a particular coverage or benefit option, [that we] identify what might help meet individuals in the middle around covering medications or covering services, even if we can’t look at the whole package.” This individualized service within such a large organization is one of the things that sets them apart. “Our benefits team is very cued into if an employee is struggling, and [thinking], ‘How can we partner to figure that out?’ Always looking to say ‘yes,’ even if it’s not ‘yes’ to the whole thing. It’s listening and being creative about what's possible.” Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by Unaihuiziphotography/iStock)
Open Enrollment at a Time of Rising Costs and New Technology
BY Ade Akin September 15, 2026Kim Duck spent most of her time opening mail and processing papers when she started her career as a benefits analyst at Dow Jones in 2021. Twenty-five years later, she now oversees benefits for a global media empire operating in 44 countries. What set Duck apart was her curiosity. She asked questions nobody else wanted to ask. “If you have that question, someone else on your team also probably has that question,” Duck said. “There’s no bad question you can ask other than the one that you don’t ask.”Duck, now the VP of global benefits at News Corp, shared her career-long philosophy during a fireside chat at From Day One's September virtual conference. The session, “Open Enrollment at a Time of Rising Costs and New Technology,” was moderated by Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, a business reporter at The Seattle Times.A Portfolio of Brands, a Universe of Benefits ChallengesNews Corp may not be a household name, but many of its brands are. The company owns The Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins Publishing, the New York Post, Barron's, and Realtor.com, among others. Duck says she leads with three words that define the company’s ethos: passionate, principled, and purposeful. “You have to be passionate,” she said. “You have to love the ability to jump in with two feet and to help someone. You’re going to get on a call, or you’re going to get an email, and you don’t know what it’s about, but you have to be able to be excited about what you do every day.” For Duck, being principled means "doing the right thing all the time," especially when benefits teams must fix mistakes that affect employees' lives. For her, being purposeful means having a long-term strategy, such as planning benefits three to five years out with CFOs or entering union negotiations with a clear vision.The Hardest Renewal Season in YearsThis year, News Corp is conducting its first active enrollment in 10 to 12 years. The shift matters because employees have grown accustomed to benefits rolling over automatically. Duck’s team plans to spend weeks educating workers on their options, combating the misconception that paying more always means getting better coverage.Technology is central to that effort. “The experience you have from a benefits perspective and the experience you have in your shopping and the whole rest of your life; they shouldn’t be different,” she said. That means jargon-free communication.Kim Duck of News Corp spoke with journalist Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton during the virtual conference (photo by From Day One)Additionally, Duck’s long-range planning ability is now colliding with the worst cost cycle she has seen in years. “This is the hardest year that we’ve had in many years,” she said. “Many of us are facing double-digit increases, which wasn’t necessarily the case in the last two to three to five years.”The increases she’s referring to are the cost of health coverage for employees. Three main forces are driving costs up: employees are using more care benefits post-Covid, healthcare services are more expensive, and new, pricier treatments are entering the market. Boyanton provided data illustrating the national trend. She cited an Aon projection that U.S. employers will pay almost 10% more per employee for health coverage next year, pushing the average annual cost of covering one worker above $19,000. Facing these rising costs, benefits teams are reassessing their benefits plans. “We’ve all started looking at our plan designs and reassessing: is this fit for purpose going forward?” Duck added.Any answer lands on employees in one of two ways. Raising what workers contribute from each paycheck spreads the increase across the whole workforce because everyone pays it. Tightening plan design by raising deductibles, raising copays, and dropping covered services falls mainly on people who actually use care. That tension is the job. “How does this impact us as a company? But what does this actually mean to our employees?”GLP-1s and Emerging Benefits: Balancing Cost and CareNo conversation about rising costs is complete without addressing GLP-1 medications. Duck acknowledges that the topic is top of mind for every benefits professional. The challenge is twofold: the drugs themselves are expensive, and the eligible population is expanding.“Employers, for the first time, are having to take a really hard look at whether they can even consider continuing the coverage,” she said. Those that do are exploring lowest net unit pricing, BMI thresholds, and wraparound wellness programs that address nutrition and behavior change.The numbers tell a story of rapid retreat. The share of employers covering GLP-1 drugs for weight management fell from 72% in 2025 to 60% in 2026, according to Business Group on Health. Just under 15% of employers have already dropped coverage or plan to do so by 2027, up from 10% earlier this year. Pharmacy now accounts for roughly 25% of employers' total healthcare spending, with drug costs projected to rise by 12%.Like in the case of GLP-1s, employers have often raced to adopt point solutions. Duck loves the innovation of these vendors, working to solve specific health challenges, but foresees a correction coming. Duck describes the shift as a pivot toward intentionality: “If we’re going to spend the money, we want to know that it's the right product at the right time. It’s going to hit the right people.”Innovations in Health PlansNews Corp has embraced two structural alternatives. The first is Centivo, an alternative healthcare plan that focuses on primary care within hospital systems. Duck compared it to an old-school health maintenance organization (HMO), but with expansive networks such as Mount Sinai in New York and RWJBarnabas in New Jersey.“Employees really struggle with that,” she said. “They think it must be a worse plan because I can only see these doctors.” But the trade-off includes no deductible, low copays, and some free services, all at a reduced payroll contribution. “It’s kind of a win-win, but it’s a slow burn,” Duck added.The second innovation involves transparent pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). News Corp issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for its prescription carrier, hoping to move from one of the “big three” to a smaller, more transparent option. The numbers didn’t work out this time, but Duck believes the direction is inevitable.“The black box of prescription coverage and how it determines what your payment is—I think that’s going to be a thing of the past,” she said. New Tech in BenefitsAI is already transforming Duck’s daily work. She uses Gemini to locate lost emails in seconds rather than spending 15 to 20 minutes digging through her inbox. However, the far greater potential lies in aggregation.With nearly 20 point solutions under management, Duck’s team conducts dozens of annual reviews. AI can synthesize those conversations and highlight relevant themes.“The human brain can’t comprehend that and pull it together,” she said. “AI is going to help us have succinct conversations, to bring it to the forefront and be very pointed.” The result, Duck believes, is a more articulate benefits professional walking into leadership meetings.When asked for a go-to tool she can't work without, Duck didn’t hesitate to mention Slack. News Corp’s brands operate on different technologies, and Slack provides a common channel for benefits teams across Dow Jones, HarperCollins, the New York Post, and News UK.A Look AheadDespite cost pressures, Duck remains optimistic. She compared this moment in time to the Affordable Care Act era, when many predicted benefits would cease to exist. Instead, the profession adapted. In Duck’s view, artificial intelligence will strengthen decision-making and foster greater vendor accountability. “If you care enough about this and you’re intentional about what you’re doing, you can weather those tough years and still position yourselves as being the employer of choice,” she said. At their core, benefits continue to fulfill two essential roles: attracting top talent and retaining key employees, making distinct offerings critical. News Corp’s partnership with DoorDash, for example, gives employees a break from cooking on busy days. And GLP-1 coverage itself could become a recruitment tool, Duck suggests, for companies willing to keep it.“You weather the storm,” she added. “Do it smartly, and do it with heart.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by paripat niyantang/iStock)
How Employers Are Rethinking Worker Well-Being
BY Grace Turney September 14, 2026Tim Leier’s household runs on two directions of care at once. He looks after a parent and a child; his manager does the same for a parent, a child, and a grandchild. Leier, director of HR international benefits at Ecolab, described his own “sandwich generation” experience and said the company has leaned into on-site healthcare, wellness providers, and caregiving support that spans generations.It’s the kind of arrangement benefits leaders now build entire strategies around, as employees across multiple generations and life stages bring different needs, responsibilities, and expectations to the workplace.That reality was the starting point for a panel on holistic and inclusive well-being strategies for a multigenerational workforce at From Day One’s September virtual conference. “I believe this is the first time we have five generations working side by side in the workforce,” said session moderator Courtney Vinopal, a senior reporter for HR Brew. Populations Are Bigger Than Age GroupsThe panelists agreed early on that generation alone rarely explains what an employee needs. Jacki Schwartz, a global people solutions business partner at Concentrix, says her company of roughly 450,000 employees worldwide focuses less on age and more on life circumstances such as caregiving, family status, and financial well-being. “We approach it from a lens of inclusion and flexibility,” she said.That view held across industries. Julie Lawrence, VP, HR business partner, at ISS Facility Services, says that about 80% of her company’s workforce delivers services directly at client sites. With the majority of our workforce serving clients in operational environments, ISS has focused on creating an omnichannel employee experience that meets employees where they are. Whether through mobile technology, multilingual communications, manager-led engagement, or digital self-service tools, our goal is to ensure every employee has equitable access to information and support regardless of work locationMamie Wheaton, CFP, CFDA, CCC, and director of financial planning at LearnLux, put a finer point on it: two employees from the same generation can have completely different financial situations, so her team weighs life stage, income, and financial complexity ahead of age. “We don’t assume that someone’s generation tells us exactly what their financial needs are,” Wheaton said.The Importance of Supporting CaregiversSupporting workers with caregiving responsibilities also comes with difficult decisions about how much employers can afford to provide. Leier says the company has been looking for ways to provide meaningful support while keeping a close eye on costs. “The money’s not growing on trees, so we’re getting a lot of pressure every day to make sure we’re not overspending,” he said.Panelists spoke about "Holistic and Inclusive Well-Being Strategies for a Multigenerational Workforce" during the virtual conference (photo by From Day One)Lawrence also pointed to the growing need to support workers as they balance caregiving with their own health needs. ISS Facility Services introduced women’s health benefits covering reproductive care and menopause, along with specific benefits supporting men’s health, as employees navigate caregiving responsibilities alongside their own health needs, she says. “They’re not only trying to take care of kids at home or aging parents, but they also need to be prioritizing their own health,” Lawrence said. “We view well-being as both a people strategy and a business strategy. When employees have access to resources that support their health, financial wellness, and caregiving responsibilities, it contributes to engagement, retention, attendance, and ultimately the quality of service we deliver to our clients,” she said. Personalizing Choice Without Creating OverloadEvery panelist described some version of the same tension: employees want choice, but too many options create confusion. At Concentrix, leaders use a tiered flex benefit system paired with an AI-enabled benefits portal so employees can ask questions and select what applies to their families, says Schwartz. Leier said Ecolab is looking for opportunities to offer evergreen elections, so employees who are happy with their choices don’t have to revisit them every year. But even a well-designed benefit only helps if employees know it exists, the panelists agreed. Wheaton described sending LearnLux teams directly into manufacturing facilities to reach shift workers, planning around shift changes and offering support in other languages, including Spanish, rather than relying solely on a benefits website. Leier says Ecolab has found some shift workers prefer an on-site kiosk while some office employees favor a mobile app, so the company avoids a one-size-fits-all channel. He added that Ecolab wants personalization to remain associate-driven rather than relying too heavily on AI, and that the company is cautious about using AI for decisions involving HIPAA or other regulatory considerations.Cost Pressure Is Reshaping Every DecisionWith health care costs continuing to put pressure on benefits budgets, the panelists described approaches including preventive care, simpler access to benefits, and financial guidance to help employees make informed choices. “We focus on simplifying the employee experience because benefits only create value when employees can easily navigate and utilize them. Reducing fragmentation improves access, drives greater utilization, and helps ensure we’re maximizing our investment while delivering meaningful support to employees,” said Lawrence. Wheaton noted that LearnLux increasingly helps employees weigh premiums against deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums so they choose a plan suited to their actual needs rather than defaulting to the cheapest option.Utilization Isn’t the Only Measure of SuccessAsked how they judge whether a benefit is working, the panelists pushed back on relying solely on usage data. Leier, who described himself as “a recovering actuary,” said Ecolab’s employee assistance program has modest everyday participation but proved essential during crises in Ukraine and Venezuela, when utilization spiked sharply. Schwartz described bringing a leave-administration process back in-house after employee surveys showed the outsourced version added stress during already difficult moments, a decision driven by sentiment rather than usage numbers.Looking ahead, Wheaton predicted that the biggest shift will be rising expectations for personalization, as employees accustomed to tailored experiences elsewhere in their lives expect the same from their benefits. For a workforce spanning multiple generations and life stages, that growing expectation for personalization may be one of the most important challenges, and opportunities, facing benefits leaders.Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photo by AKart Design/iStock)
Brands That Endure: Authenticity in Action
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza August 04, 2026Companies once made public commitments to ethics and responsibility, but it became “acceptable, and maybe even a little trendy, for brands to quietly neglect those commitments,” said Sandra Moerch, global head of content and customer marketing Autodesk, which makes industrial design software. “That behavior just won’t cut it anymore. Authenticity is making a comeback because people are craving honest and pure and authentic transactions again.”During a panel discussion on brands’ enduring authenticity at From Day One’s July virtual conference on brand strategy, Moerch and a panel of additional marketing leaders spoke about the risks and rewards of brand realness.Marketers have to reach outside their own department to achieve authenticity in their messages. “Some of our best ideas really come from our sales teams, our engineers, our product management field teams, and most importantly, our customers,” said Diana Sanicki, head of North American marketing at construction technology company Doka. “We regularly talk with them and visit job sites, and those conversations help us create marketing that’s relevant instead of promotional.” Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the session among marketing leaders (photo by From Day One)Even the most global and wide-reaching brands need some level of localization to achieve authenticity, said Emma Riley, director of marketing and growth for the Americas Global at creative firm AKQA. “Backstory,” the Levi’s commercial that debuted during the 2026 Superbowl, features shots of the brand’s iconic back pockets and red tab on musicians, dancers, rock climbers, and even cartoons, with cameos from Grammy-winning rapper and singer Doechii and Woody from Toy Story, and a nod to the iconic cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A.. Riley said that these “influencers speak to who it is that we needed to talk to, but they are true. They are who they are. They really use the product.” Even Woody.‘Customers Don’t Buy the Story You Tell About Yourself’Customers aren’t looking for a sales pitch. They want an experience, like Levi’s can offer, or, as is more common in the B2B world, they want a solution.Yet customers aren’t always aware of the problems they have, said Todd Brown, VP of marketing for the financial institutions group at Fiserv, “not until they read a piece of thought leadership or they hear from someone on the team about a new solution.” Fiserv, which makes the technology underlying much of the financial services industry, expands mostly by selling into its existing customer base, so Brown must deliver a constant drip of education and customer testimonials. When a client has a particular need, they know Fiserv can meet it. “The best advocates for us are our clients who are telling the stories about the impact our partnership has not only on their business, but also on the communities they serve,” he said.Authenticity requires giving up some amount of control over the message and presentation of your brand—attaching your logo to a celebrity or handing the mic to a customer carries inherent risk. But any authentic relationship requires vulnerability. Believability begins with deferring to the customer point of view, which means letting the buyers say it for themselves. “Customers don’t buy the story you tell about yourself. They believe the story your customers and employees tell about you,” Sanicki said. “Years ago, companies owned the message, and today the customers own the conversation.”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 julief514/iStock)
Aligning Brand Promises With Customer Experience
BY Grace Turney July 21, 2026When Kentucky Fried Chicken ran out of chicken at its United Kingdom locations in 2018, the company didn’t hide from the blunder. It took out a full-page apology ad with its logo rearranged to spell “FCK,” admitted the mistake, and let the joke land. It’s the kind of recovery that sticks in Nizzi Karai Renaud’s mind years later as a great example of authenticity: not a flawless brand, but one that bridges the gap between what it promises and what it delivers, even when that means owning a very public mess.Renaud, Chief Brand Officer at Zazzle, the global print-on-demand marketplace headquartered in Menlo Park, California, explored that idea during a fireside chat at a recent From Day One’s July virtual conference. In a discussion moderated by marketing journalist Lisa Lacy, the two examined how brands earn consumer trust by keeping the promises they make, and why authenticity has become such an urgent topic across industries.Renaud traced the current consumer fixation on authenticity to a widening gap between what companies say, what they do, and what they actually value. “Authenticity is very unique in content, but universal in mechanism,” she said, noting that what feels authentic to Zazzle looks nothing like what feels authentic to a bank, even though the underlying test is the same everywhere. That test, she says, is whether a decision would still make sense traced back through a company’s history, or whether it only makes sense because it happens to be trending.Tone and alignment are related but distinct, Renaud added. A company’s tone, whether buttoned-up or unhinged on social media, is simply the outfit it wears. Alignment is the character underneath. She pointed to Duolingo’s owl mascot as an example of a chaotic tone that still tracks honestly with the app’s famously persistent reminders. Consumers forgive an unconventional outfit, she said, but not a character that doesn’t add up.Nizzi Karai Renaud, chief brand officer at Zazzle, spoke during the session moderated by journalist Lisa Lacy (photo by From Day One)At Zazzle, where customers design and personalize their own products, Renaud says every order is a promise either kept or broken. This makes authenticity as much an operational question as a marketing one. That philosophy shows up internally through what the company calls CHIA: creativity, heart, integrity, and amaze, a shorthand Renaud’s team uses when navigating difficult calls, including content moderation decisions and the rollout of Zazzle’s AI shopping agent, Z.Trust itself, Renaud says, is built over time through repeated interactions rather than a single standout moment, meaning brands should design for the hundredth customer interaction, not just the first impression. She recommended making fewer promises and keeping them consistently, while also planning in advance for the moments when a company inevitably falls short. Nothing collapses public trust faster than hypocrisy caught out in the open.Renaud also urged brands to hand storytelling over to their customers rather than narrating on their own behalf. She cited Lego’s fan-designed product line and GoPro’s use of customer-shot footage as examples of companies that let real users become their most credible advocates. The underlying psychological concept, she said, is “mattering,” a framework popularized by the late scholar Isaac Prilleltensky, built on the idea that people need to feel both valued and capable of adding value in return.As for brands that exemplify sustained trust, Renaud pointed to Costco, a company she described as a quiet master of brand integrity that has avoided reinvention or gimmicks in favor of relentless consistency. “Marketing can just be the mirror, not the mask,” she said. No amount of messaging can manufacture authenticity if the underlying operation doesn’t support it.In the end, Renaud’s advice circles back to a single idea: authenticity isn’t a campaign a brand launches, but a discipline it keeps. The companies that last, she suggested, are the ones willing to hold their values fixed while everything else, tone, channels, even the tools they build with, keeps changing around them.Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photo by skynesher/iStock)
Building a Brand That Earns Trust and Loyalty Across Every Channel
BY Ade Akin July 20, 2026A stop outside an Ashley Home Store during a 90-day tour of U.S. markets crystallized a troubling trend for John Mask: lower-income shoppers were no longer showing up in furniture stores.Mask, the EVP of sales and marketing at Ashley Furniture, shared that the solution to that problem is a two-step process that starts with building trust with customers before selling the product. He spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s July virtual conference, in conversation with Seattle Times business reporter, Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton. Mask shared how Ashley Furniture navigates a crowded marketplace, evolving consumer expectations, and the transformative role of AI in marketing. The fireside chat covered everything from global expansion to the return of traditional mailers. Yet, the central theme remained clear: cultivating brand loyalty today requires building trust, sharing stories, and engaging with consumers wherever they are; across all channels.A Saturated Landscape and the Shift to ValueMask started the conversation by identifying the greatest challenge facing today’s marketers: saturation. Thanks to the democratization of marketing tools such as social media, anyone can now reach customers on a one-to-one basis. “It’s become more crowded because more people can actually talk to that consumer,” he said. Consequently, standing out becomes essential within such crowded marketplaces.A fundamental shift in consumer behavior compounds this new reality. Mask says he has observed customers moving from a price-based mindset to a value-based approach when making purchases. “What can I get for the cost, as opposed to what’s the lowest cost that I can find out there?” he elaborated. This is particularly pronounced in a K-shaped economy, where lower-income consumers are short on cash and middle-to-high-income shoppers, the “five to eight consumer” on an income scale, drive the market. These potential customers have disposable income but expect quality, story, and a clear value proposition from the companies they shop with.Marketing Across ChannelsAshley Furniture’s staggering reach includes running operations in 23 countries, over 1,000 branded stores, and partnerships with over 24,000 retailers, he says. Operating on this scale demands a more nuanced approach to omnichannel marketing. John Mask, EVP of sales & marketing at Ashley Furniture, spoke during the virtual session (company photo)“We have a saying that we like to have our feet in many canoes,” Mask said as he described the company’s strategy of serving consumers wherever they may be. The company utilizes brick-and-mortar stores, e-retail platforms like Amazon and Wayfair, big-box partners, rental channels, and international markets. Importantly, tailored content drives each specific marketing channel. Although big-box locations emphasize pricing above all else, the company’s dedicated showrooms prioritize aesthetics, atmosphere, and narrative. Additionally, traditional advertising avenues like print media and billboards are undergoing a notable resurgence, offering fresh opportunities to capture consumer attention amidst increasingly crowded digital spaces.Storytelling and the Customer LifecycleA layered approach to storytelling is at the heart of Ashley Furniture’s marketing strategy. Mask outlined their strategy for constructing brand narratives that look past simple product characteristics and pricing to focus instead on the deeper emotional connections people form with furniture; how it makes them feel, how it fits into their homes, and whether it meets their functional needs. This is especially important when appealing to different customer demographics. Younger consumers, for example, are increasingly interested in sustainability and what a company stands for.This storytelling is woven into what Mask calls life cycle marketing. Furniture purchases are tied to major life events such as having a baby, transitioning a child to a “big kid” bedroom, getting married, or buying a house. Ashley aims to build a relationship that spans generations by engaging consumers across these milestones. “We want a consumer to know at every touchpoint they’re going to get the best service from Ashley,” he added. The payoff is clear: loyal patrons become returning customers and bring in their children, creating a multigenerational brand loyalty that dramatically lowers acquisition costs.AI in Marketing: From Content Creation to Agentic SearchMask also shared how AI is changing the marketing landscape. “We can truly create campaigns that are foundational, and then use AI to create customizations in the individuals that are in the ads, in the backgrounds of those rooms,” he said. This enables the company to tailor messaging for different geographies, showing the same product in a rural setting versus an urban one, without needing a massive marketing team.The bigger shift is how consumers now discover products, he says. He pointed to the rise of agentic engine optimization (AEO), the AI-powered successor to traditional SEO. “We’ve seen a 45% increase over the last month alone in terms of traffic based on searches started with some sort of an agent via Perplexity, ChatGPT, or any of the other services that are out there,” he said.With personalized AI agents increasingly serving as the primary tool for consumer search, brands must organize their data to feed these engines and shape the sources they reference for recommendations. Mask cautioned that if your brand is not visible to AI, “they just may never find you.”Building Trust in a Two-Step ProcessDespite all the talk about technology and marketing channels, Mask returned repeatedly to the foundational importance of trust. He described a two-step process: “Do I trust you, and then what do you have to offer me as a result of the fact that I trust you?” Consumers need to know who a company is, how it engages with communities, and what it stands for before considering product features. This applies especially to the younger demographic, who place greater emphasis on the principles a business stands for and its commitment to eco-friendly practices.Mask’s advice to other marketing leaders was hands-on: “Go out and test.” He highlights the value of conducting A/B tests on emerging platforms, listening more than talking, and actively engaging in forums to discover what consumers truly desire. In an interest-based economy where consumers are constantly bombarded with choices, the brands that succeed will be those that earn trust, tell compelling stories, and meet customers where they are; whether that’s in a store, on a social platform, or through an AI agent.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by ismagilov/iStock)
Reassessing Benefits, Reimagining Value for Today’s Workforce
BY Grace Turney July 17, 2026Ask a benefits leader what employees want most right now, and the answer may surprise you: it’s not just health coverage or retirement matching, but help simply making sense of the healthcare system itself. That was the message from Lenka Sloman, executive director and head of total rewards at WPP Media. Sloman spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s June virtual conference. The conversation about “Reassessing Benefits, Reimagining Value for Today’s Workforce,” was moderated by Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, a business reporter for The Seattle Times. A Navigation Problem, Not Just a Cost ProblemOne of the most persistent challenges Sloman hears from brokers is how to control costs, but she traced much of that cost pressure back to a navigation gap. Employees increasingly self-diagnose online before ever consulting a doctor, she says, then choose specialists based on guesswork rather than guidance. That pattern drives up claims because people end up seeing the wrong providers and undergoing tests that were never necessary in the first place.Lenka Sloman of WPP Media spoke with moderator Megan Ulu-Lani Boytanton of the Seattle Times (photo by From Day One)“If there was some sort of assistance for employees to seek and actually be guided in what doctors they should see, I think it would prevent a lot of the unnecessary costs that are happening to employers,” Sloman said. Boyanton could relate. “I am so guilty of the quick, “Let me check with WebMD and see where my symptoms align with,’” she said. Communication and Innovation as a Retention ToolBoyanton asked how Sloman keeps employees informed during periods of organizational change. “I just try and be as transparent as possible,” Sloman said. “I’ll send out proactive messaging, share links in real time, make sure that I’m always available. I’ll coach my team. I’ll tell them just to be good listeners.”When WPP Media recently sunset a physical-exam benefit that had become redundant with standard health coverage, her team treated the change as a teaching moment rather than a simple announcement, walking employees through how to get the same care through their existing medical plans.“Both utilization and disruption should always be considered when reviewing any type of changes to benefits,” Sloman said. A change that trims costs but unsettles a large group of employees, she argued, often ends up costing more once a company accounts for the exceptions it has to make to soften the blow.Sloman also described how her team is experimenting with AI agents to help answer employee benefits questions. “It’s a logic-based data source that we’ll use to answer the questions that’s positioned directly from the employee that is asking the question,” Sloman said. Rather than offering generic responses, the system is designed to pull from each employee’s specific plan elections, so a worker enrolled in a PPO with dental and vision coverage receives answers tailored to those exact benefits. Staying within HIPAA guidelines, she says, is central to how her team evaluates any new AI tool.Rethinking What Counts as a Family BenefitAsked about innovative offerings, Sloman pointed to something less conventional than the usual stipends and perks list: pet care.“It’s really something that goes a long way, because we do support so many family building benefits,” Sloman said. “This now also supports employees that may not have families, but have pets, and that’s their family, so it now encompasses the entire population.” “I had never heard of that before, so that’s a little bit mind blowing for me, but would be great for my cats,” Boyanton said.Sloman also detailed WPP Media’s approach to parental leave, which pairs standard bonding time with a part-time, full-pay phase-back option for parents returning to work after an extended absence, giving them a gradual reentry to their client work rather than an abrupt return to a full schedule.Closing out the conversation, Sloman offered a simple piece of guidance for other leaders balancing employee needs against business priorities: “Don’t go at this alone. Lean on your vendors, on your carriers, your brokers, whoever it is that you work with, and make sure that you work hand in hand with your leaders,” Sloman said.“The more that they understand what you’re trying to provide the company, the more that can be done for your employees,” Sloman said.Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photo by dusanpetkovic/iStock)
Balancing Care and Cost: Effective Benefits For Everyone
BY Katie Chambers July 14, 2026“The cost of healthcare is expected to rise between 6-9% this year,” said Courtney Vinopal, senior reporter at HR Brew, citing estimates from Mercer while moderating a recent panel at From Day One’s June virtual conference. Globally, estimates are even more dire at 9-12%, says Damilola Akinduro, global head of benefits at Equinix.Employees expect benefits that support mental health, family needs, and financial well-being, but employers must provide them while managing costs. Striking the right balance requires prioritization, creative solutions, and clear communication so employees understand the value of what’s offered. Which benefits are the most innovative and impactful today? Panelists answered these questions and more during the virtual session. There are numerous factors behind the rising costs of healthcare, says Akinduro. “Our primary drivers include medical inflation; of course, general inflation impacts that. We see an increase in utilization as well, and specialty care [such as] oncology treatments,” she said. Other specialty or chronic issues on the rise include musculoskeletal problems and diabetes care. Gillian Plummer, director of employee health and wellness at Quest Diagnostics, says medical advancements and new therapies, while beneficial, can also contribute to rising costs. “We see pharmacy trends with GLP-1’s and autoimmune cancer gene and cell therapies,” Plummer said. “And let’s not forget the impact of surprise billing, [which] is also driving costs. One other aspect is the use of AI for upcoding of claims.” This new reality is daunting. “Employers are always concerned about the burden this puts on their employees,” said Rebecca Liebman, CEO and co-Founder of LearnLux. Her team helps by incorporating healthcare coaching into employer-sponsored financial well-being programs. “In the United States, picking [one’s] own healthcare plan is the number one reason for personal bankruptcy. A lot of people might be contributing to their 401k, but they’re struggling with this medical bill…their kid broke their leg, or they have an unexpected expense,” she said. Panelists shared their insights on the topic "Balancing Care and Cost: Effective Benefits For Everyone" (photo by From Day One)Teaching employees to incorporate healthcare into their budgets can help them prepare, as can educating them on all benefits available. “If people are scared of the bills, they delay going to the doctor, and usually that ends up costing them and their company more later on. [Make] sure people understand what they have access to now, so it doesn’t build up and become incrementally or exponentially more expensive for them and their employer,” said Liebman. Monique Scroggins, VP of HR total rewards and operations at Lloyds Banking Group, and her team have launched a cost-containment strategy centered on wellness programs. “A lot of our higher claims came around GLP-1 and oncology claims, so we focused [on] return-to-office engagement [and] having people on site teaching you how to eat clean and healthy, and encouraging you to take walks on your lunch break.” Similarly, Quest launched “Healthy Quest” for its 40,000 frontline workers, centered on pillars of how we work, eat, move, and feel, each of which can combat chronic conditions. “It’s really important to have a strategy like that with an organization: not just communicating it broadly, but you physically need to be there on site with your employees and have your leaders and middle management be able to adopt the program,” Plummer said. Plummer’s team also provides over 50 health tests for employees through “Blueprint for Wellness,” collecting data that can help predict future health issues. “Many have changed their lives because of Blueprint for Wellness; they found out they were at risk of a heart attack. That’s very shocking, and that would also be a high-cost claim on our plan,” she said. Designing an Effective Benefits Program As noted, leadership buy-in for any benefits program is crucial. “We have a benefits design committee that consists of our CEO, CFO, legal compliance, [and] our CHRO. We meet monthly and go through all of our strategies,” Plummer said. HR reps should be prepared to articulate needs and potential positive outcomes to higher-ups. “We’re presenting this as a business investment rather than just a cost increase,” Akinduro said. There is one big paradox that can make pitching a benefits program tricky. “The primary goal is to get employees to use these benefits. Utilization is a metric that employers are looking at to judge the success of benefits, but as more employees use a benefit, that can also drive the costs [to] the company higher,” Vinopal said. It’s up to HR to balance those competing goals. For example, Plummer’s team at Quest has seen a rise in mental health claims, with the “anxious generation” of 18-34-year-olds consistently seeking support. “It’s a totally different generation that’s entering the workforce,” she said. While those costs are higher, they are also leading to more productive and engaged employees. Quest also offers free therapy sessions to employees to help combat those costs. “It [also comes] down to culture in your organization: how your supervisors, managers, or leaders are working with their employees impacts mental health too,” Plummer said. Looking at the DataMetrics of benefits engagement should be approached with diligence and nuance. Liebman notes that engagement data can be tailored to the specific benefits, noting that some apps are automated and may be working well but don’t require as much day-to-day engagement as something that relies on one-on-one customer care; both can still be highly effective. It also depends on the individual using the benefit. “It’s [about] understanding what people need from an accountability and engagement perspective, providing all levels of access so that someone can engage in the way that works best for them,” said Liebman.The best wellness programs are holistic, recognizing that various aspects of life and work impact health. “Organizations are realizing that financial health is health,” Liebman said. “Financial stress has major impacts on the brain and mood, cardiovascular, respiratory, gut, digestion, immune system, hormones, muscle, sleep, and recovery. Every single thing in your life that you’re working through from a health perspective gets impacted if you’re stressed about money. Financial planning is really just life planning, so that’s changed who might even own this function within the organization.”As employers continue to balance cost and care, they shouldn’t shy away from being transparent with employees about the value of what is being offered, Akinduro says. “People see the employer contribution alone, but they don’t understand the total value. From time to time, we have to make them aware that behind that is a whole lot of costs that you’re not privy to, and we go all out to make sure that you’re cared for,” she said. “Sometimes employees think that their benefits are not competitive, whereas they are competitive, [but] they just don’t understand it. In written texts, ‘ask me anything’ programs, all-hands sessions, HR sessions, we deploy quite a mix of communication strategies to get people up to speed.” Her organization even includes administrative costs in printed benefits materials, so employees understand the full value of offerings. With costs on the rise across all areas of life a comprehensive benefits package is a generous way to support employees that may be more affordable than salary raises or bonuses. “It’s hard to live without thinking about how every cost is going up,” Liebman said. “They can say, ‘Even though you’re only getting a one or 2% raise, we’re bringing in a benefit to help you understand what to do with your salary, and how to best utilize it.’ So it’s a way that they can still support their employees through times like this.”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by erdikocak/iStock)
Aligning Scale and Flexibility in Global Benefits
BY Ade Akin July 08, 2026Akamai shuts down five times a year. Not the internet infrastructure that serves as one of the backbones of global connectivity—the company itself.The company’s culture embraces occasional shutdowns that give employees three day weekends to rest and recharge, says Ken Wechsler, VP of global total rewards. He spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s June virtual conference, moderated by Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder of the Off-Site Writing Workshop.Akamai also offers five dedicated wellness days each year, deliberately scheduled around U.S. holidays such as Memorial Day and Labor Day, says Wechsler. Akamai’s commitment to mental health and recharging is part of a deliberate, global philosophy that balances scale with flexibility.Meeting People Where They Live and WorkThe company employs 12,000 people across 35 countries, spanning regions as varied as India, Poland, and Costa Rica. Designing global benefits that resonate across that many cultures and the life stages of each employee is no small job. “We recognize that employees’ needs, legal requirements, and cultural expectations vary across all the regions,” Wechsler said.The company relies heavily on employee feedback, demographics, and utilization data to determine which benefits to retain and which to discontinue. For example, the wellness allowance Akamai offers is available to all employees regardless of the region they work in, but the dollar amount varies. “We try to say, ‘What is the market average around there, and how can we meet people there at that same level?’”That sensitivity to local norms extends to benefits like family planning. For example, employees in India, where multigenerational households are common, increasingly want to include their parents on medical plans. However, those parents make up about 62% of the company’s healthcare costs in India. Akamai is now exploring cost-sharing adjustments to keep the benefit sustainable while remaining competitive. “Our benefit programs help us recruit and retain our employees,” he said. Remote Work as a Strategic AdvantageAkamai has doubled down on providing flexible work options at a time many CEOs are ordering workers back to their desks. Akamai’s employees can work remotely 100% of the time if they choose. “It allows us to differentiate ourselves,” he said. The numbers support Wechsler’s assessment. Attrition rates in the tech industry typically hover around 10 to 14%, but Akamai’s attrition rate is about half of that. Recruiters lead with policy, and tenure is longer. Ken Wechsler of Akamai Technologies spoke with journalist Corinne Lestch (photo by From Day One)Wechsler recognizes that remote work doesn’t work for everyone, though. “We may not be the right place for the right young people who actually really need to be in an office,” he said. His own son works at a financial firm and loves the commute and water‑cooler chats. For Akamai’s more mature workforce, though, the ability to integrate work with family is invaluable. “We always talk about work‑life balance; we really think it's work‑life integration,” he said.Holistic Total RewardsAkamai’s total rewards philosophy doesn’t stop at employee salaries. The company recently introduced a financial fitness center through LearnLux that offers sessions on budgeting, housing costs, retirement planning, stock administration, 401(k) education, and tax planning twice monthly. “We’ve received incredibly high satisfaction from that,” Wechsler said. It has also made family benefits a cornerstone of its global offering. With Carrot, employees have access to fertility treatments, surrogacy, adoption support, and even menopause or low‑T care. The program is inclusive across life stages for anyone building a family in whatever form that takes. Akamai has an aging workforce, so the company ensures that older employees, including those who are eligible for Medicare, can stay on its health plan if they choose to return from retirement, he says.Akamai’s most distinctive innovation is its network of mental health first aiders, says Wechsler. These are 100 trained employees who aren’t professional counselors, but serve as compassionate first-line listeners. The program was launched five years ago and has since expanded to every region of the company. “It’s no longer taboo, but people didn’t know where to get help,” Wechsler said. The first aiders can have that initial conversation and point colleagues to professional resources.Trust in the mental health first aiders has grown organically. Staff members gladly showcase their first aider badges in their email signatures, while word of mouth keeps the program prominent. “We have ongoing seminars a couple times a year just to let people know it exists,” Wechsler said.Additionally, while many employers are scaling back coverage for GLP‑1 drugs, Akamai refuses to budge. “We’re not reducing anything,” Wechsler said. The company covers the drugs for both medically necessary and lifestyle purposes. Akamai’s healthcare costs haven’t spiked as badly as some of its competitors. Wechsler partly credits the company’s wellness culture, which includes gym memberships, wellness days, and a holistic approach to health care, for keeping costs down. Advice for Benefits LeadersModerator Corinne Lestch asked Wechsler for his top advice as the fireside chat came to a close. “Know who you are, focus on your demographics, listen to your employees, try to figure out how to meet people where they are,” he said. He warned against blindly following benchmarks. “Just because everybody else is doing it doesn’t mean it’s right for your culture.”Wechsler also says building a long‑term plan is essential. Akamai is already mapping out 2027 through 2029. “It takes time to get there,” he added. “It’s okay to be different. It’s okay to say this is right for us because here’s how we'll help this population.” That human-first philosophy might be the most consequential product of a company that handles 30% of internet traffic. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by Parradee Kietsirikul/iStock)
Making Total Rewards a Strategic Retention and Engagement Tool
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza July 08, 2026“As HR professionals, we think in terms of compensation, health, retirement, well-being, and recognition, but employees think about things in terms of, ‘Can I afford my life? Do I feel valued? Does my company care about me?’” said Joshua Lemon, head of AI and compensation at smart home tech company Resideo. Lemon and four other leaders of HR and benefits were part of a panel discussion about using total rewards for engagement and retention during From Day One’s June virtual conference.And, indeed, communications matter. According to Mercer’s 2025 Health on Demand Report, 79% of employees that receive communications about their benefits say the company cares about their health and well-being. To better tailor their outreach, Resideo created personas for employee groups, like employees with young families, for instance, and target communications programs based on common needs and concerns, says Lemon. “That makes it much more approachable, much more relatable, and the messaging really hits a lot stronger,” he said. But, Lemon says, it takes more than just mailers and email blasts, no matter how segmented. “How well are your HR business partners and your managers scripted to talk about benefits?”Benefits access should also slide nicely into the flow of work, said Kate Duncan, the chief people office at benefits technology company Nayya. “If your employees are using Slack, can you get benefits information distributed in that way? If everyone knows to go to your intranet or your hub, make sure your benefits information is available there and accurate.” There are plenty of tech platforms meant to make benefits access as easy as possible, but can they nudge employees based on preferences and needs? And if they’re AI-powered, how accurate is the LLM?A company might have a robust package, but in a crisis, no one can shuffle through a dozen point solutions to find what they need. That’s why global business services provider APi Group uses a concierge service that connects employees to what they need when they need it. The point isn’t to sell vendors by their brand names or their value propositions, says VP of total reward Eric Roesner, it’s about meeting a need.Employers should consider those elements beyond healthcare and retirement plans, said Stacey Olson, who focuses on the physical environment for clients at the design firm Gensler. “You can provide all the opportunities for mental and physical health, but if the people don’t feel they have the capacity to make use of those things, whether it’s because they don’t have the time in their schedule, the space, the privacy, or a sense of security, then they will go unused.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, journalist and From Day One contributing editor, moderated the session (photo by From Day One)“Do they feel a sense of purpose when they come into their space—physical, intellectual, and so forth?” she said. “How are we designing space that allows people to connect?” Workplace relationships, especially with one’s manager, have an impact on employee engagement and retention, and Olson says employers should design physical spaces—whether offices or hospitals or shop floors—that facilitate those relationships.The small things matter too. “Finding and capturing bright moments to engage with your team is probably one of the most important things, and it doesn’t always have to be something huge,” said Micha Berkuz, CEO of employee recognition company Gifted. “If someone is sick at home, we will send them a small gift with a DoorDash, Uber Eats, or a Grubhub gift card, just to save them the trouble of cooking lunch. If you capture those special moments at the right time, it’s a low-cost, high-impact way to connect.” Personalization goes a long way, especially when it comes to messaging. More than half (54%) of employees say they want personalized benefits communications, according to MetLife’s 2023 Employee Benefit Trends study. Panelists agreed that AI can help make that possible. “All of our employees are at different stages of their lives, have different needs, and are in different circumstances,” said Duncan at Nayya. “We can’t expect them to remember the benefits that they enrolled in at open enrollment time, let alone the benefits that were newly rolled out two years ago.” Access to an informed GPT can remind them at the right moment.“You have a workforce, who, somewhat regardless of generation, understands what an LLM is, and they use it in their personal lives,” said Roesner at APi Group. “The part I find so interesting is the ability for it to retain and build on history.” LLMs learn an employee’s unique circumstances and what’s important to them. “It’s really powerful, and I also think it’ll be transformative.”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 Benjamas Deekam/iStock)
Elevating the Frontline Experience: Engagement, Growth, and Retention
BY Katie Chambers June 02, 2026Creatively engaging frontline workers can strengthen teams, improve retention, and dramatically speed up employee readiness. One recent solution: by pairing new hires with trained peer mentors during their first 90 days, Intermountain Health created a support system that helped employees feel welcomed, build confidence faster, and develop stronger connections across their teams. “In that first year, we were able to reduce time to independent performance by 41% across six departments, so that equated to $1.9 million in productive time that we were able to return to the business,” said Bette Kidane, senior director of learning & development at Intermountain Health, during a panel discussion at From Day One’s May virtual conference.Creating a Supportive Environment for Frontline Workers“Frontline workers power businesses around the world, day in and day out. Without them, we probably wouldn't be able to advance as an organization worldwide,” said Angie Parsons, director of product marketing at LumApps. But they are often at a disadvantage. “Those frontline workers typically don’t have the same tools and technology that the rest of the workforce has.” Equity and inclusion initiatives are key to helping them to feel just as connected as their in-office peers. Access to information and communications tools can impact “safety, productivity, promotion, [and] career growth.” Michelle Anderson, VP of global learning & development at AmTrust Financial Services, says the best way to address those needs is “listening often and responding visibly,” via pulse surveys with public results. Embedding growth opportunities within the flow of work is another way to encourage frontline development, she says, relying on software tools like Viva Learning and Microsoft Teams to push content during work hours. Keeping managers well-trained and consistent can help frontline workers feel secure and supported. “The immediate manager is the world to people,” said Yulia Denisova, VP of talent and development at Fanatics. “That’s the reason why people stay in the organization, and that’s the reason why people decide to leave the organization.” Making those pathways to information and support clear is crucial, both to the workers and to your overall business success. “Many times, frontline workers interact directly with customers, so when they have questions or are unsure about something, knowing where to get those answers quickly and confidently is critical, and that reflects both back to the worker as well as to the customer,” Kidane said. Tackling the Challenges of the Frontline ExperienceFrontline workers can often be harder to acquire and retain because of the unique challenges that come with their positions. One of the biggest roadblocks to retention can be a feeling of disconnection. “It feels like decisions are made to them, so things are happening to them, but they’re not with them. They’re not part of the decision process,” Anderson said. Clear, honest communication can help combat this, often requiring creative solutions to meet frontline workers where they are, in ways that are accessible in their unique position. Anderson’s philosophy is “engage, embed, impact,” meaning any engagement or professional development opportunities should be embedded within an employee’s workday, as they may not be able or willing to seek it out when off the clock. “What systems are they already in? What actions are they already taking? Are there meetings that are already happening that we can embed ourselves into?”Panelists connected virtually to share best practices for supporting the frontline workforce (photo by From Day One)In terms of hiring, frontline workers are often spread across various geographic regions, ages, languages, and demographics—but messaging still must be able to reach and inspire them all. “It’s very important that you are not discriminating against those things and you are as inclusive as possible, and very thoughtful in terms of your learning approach and in terms of your communication approach,” Denisova said. In an organization like Fanatics, which hires a high volume of seasonal workers, having a well-defined, attractive company culture can inspire those employees to keep coming back. Fanatics recently launched its BOLD initiatives, Denisova said: “B stands for Building championship teams, O for being truly obsessed with fans, L for limitless entrepreneurial spirit, and D for determined and relentless mindset. Finding that true differentiator for your company is helpful.” Parsons sees hiring and retention as a cycle with each impacting the other. “If there’s really terrible morale and culture, it’s going to impact [attrition], or the other way around. If the culture is great, then they’re going to want to refer their friends or for their family,” she said. Kidane agrees that word-of-mouth is of utmost importance. “That building the brand of your organization and the culture is paramount to attracting talented workers,” she said. “And when you create a culture of excellence and a culture of caring, and your advertising out in the community reflects that, then people want to come and be a part of it.” Investing in Frontline WorkersDenisova’s team has launched an ambassadorship program at Fanatics that lets frontline workers take on leadership roles to train new hires and teach them how to operate equipment, answer questions, and provide company onboarding. It gives those employees an opportunity to test out if they might be interested in becoming a shift manager down the line. “Those types of initiatives help create a broader engagement and a broader career advancement within the organization,” Denisova said. Sometimes, the best professional development programs are the simplest ones, says moderator Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder of the Off-Site Writing Workshop, citing “the benefits of not overthinking these programs.” For Anderson, it means incorporating growth opportunities in discussions that workers are already having with their managers. “First, reflecting on your own personal goals and values. What do you want to do? What do you like to do? Really getting to know, not what am I doing [now], but what do I enjoy?” Anderson said. “And then helping them build a realistic learning plan and equipping the managers to have regular development conversations with them,” which can help direct them to the in-house learning tools available. “Simplicity is what is going to drive adoption.” Offering mentoring opportunities and ways to engage in in-house networking through employee resource groups are excellent ways to encourage growth within the company. It’s also important to help frontline workers understand how their role impacts the business, to inspire them to want to do more. “Empowering the workers to see how their contributions to the business impact the bottom line can help them see, it’s not just me clocking in and clocking out,” Parsons said. “[This] coupled with performance checks and succession planning can also help inspire them to have those bigger aspirations for long term career growth.” Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by NewSaetiew/iStock)
Tech That Connects: Using Tools to Support Frontline Workers
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza May 28, 2026“In most workplaces, tech fails on the front line, not necessarily because the interface is wrong, but because nobody really engaged with the frontline workers about the problems they’re actually struggling with,” said Anita Jivani, global head of innovation at digital and cloud services firm Avanade. “It’s a design-thinking failure, not necessarily a budget failure.”In fact, small budgets can be “clarifying,” she said during a panel discussion at From Day One’s May virtual conference on frontline workers. Constraints steer the focus toward problems that need solving. “Picking one workflow or one friction point, and then co-designing it with [frontline workers] produces both adoption and relevance.”Jordan Lewis, the senior director of product at workforce management software Deputy, has recently watched companies move away from “top-down implementations where the senior leadership decides on the tool and then rolls it out, and employees have to work with the tools they’re given,” he said.Instead, he pointed out, companies are choosing a consultative approach “where the employees and those frontline workers are actually part of the evaluation process.” Businesses are recognizing collaborating on tools can reinforce engagement and retention—and that’s what they want, especially right now. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, journalist and From Day One contributing editor, moderated the session titled, "Tech That Connects: Using Tools to Support Frontline Workers" (photo by From Day One)Good tech also requires good access points. Facilities management provider ABM has a frontline workforce distributed across stadiums, airports, geographies, and buildings, “and oftentimes they don’t have access to meeting rooms or technology or desktops,” said Amber Rabo, the company’s VP of learning and development. In fact, many frontline workers don’t have access to devices of their own, or they may be first-time tech users, and some may be working in multilingual workplaces, so the company came up with its own easy-to-use in-house platform, called ABM Connect, which links frontline workers with operational and enterprise leaders for two-way communication, offers short training sessions, and simplifies log-in with facial recognition.Companies are building better tech for the frontline workforce by listening carefully. In June 2026, pharmaceutical firm Takeda will inaugurate a new CEO, and head of talent intelligence Heather Sepulveda has been taking part in listening tours with the new leader to “understand and hear things firsthand, instead of them funneling up through a game of telephone.”First, everything has to be mobile-friendly, said Sepulveda. She heard “loud and clear” from employees that they were missing out on company-wide announcements and job opportunities due to ineffective tech that wasn’t designed for frontline workers’ needs, working styles, and schedules. “Whatever it will take,” she said, “we have to make it easier for them.”At TeamSense, which uses text messaging to facilitate communication with the front line, VP of product, Alvaro Soto pointed out that “we didn’t choose SMS because it’s clever, we chose it because it works. “Someone on a 5 a.m. shift at a meat packing plant or a manufacturing floor may not have a company email,” said Soto, so TeamSense requires neither app nor log-in credentials, just the ability to text message, and it can currently support more than 30 languages.“We see the adoption of TeamSense become so fast and so powerful because we’re removing all that friction.” Why? Because it’s a tool built specifically for the frontline workforce, first.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 Patamaporn Umnahanant/iStock)
Bringing Leadership Closer to the Frontline Experience
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza May 27, 2026“Most organizations are trying to solve the right problems,” said Courtney White, the head of HR for the North American agricultural solutions arm of BASF. “It’s just that many start in the wrong place.”For instance, he says, companies might focus on engagement and retention, but those are the reactions from workers to the employee experience—and that’s where companies should start. “People decide pretty quickly if something works, and so the experience has to show up early, not in a promise, but in the reality of what people are living day to day.”White spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s May virtual conference on frontline workers, where he spoke about how companies can bring business leaders closer to the frontline experience.The goals of the worker and the goals of the business are not mutually exclusive—they seldom are—and companies lose sight of that. “Workers are trying to build something that works for their life. They want stable schedules, they want steady income,” White said. “Companies are trying to run efficient and reliable operations. Both of these things are correct.”Journalist and From Day One contributing editor, Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, moderated the session with Courtney White of BASF (photo by From Day One)The problem is that when companies design systems for the business, they often do so in their own favor, and don’t always consider the frontline employee experience. And the result is harmful to both—in productivity, efficiency, engagement, retention, and morale. If leaders were to pause and listen to the concerns of the front line, they would find that their goals are concordant.Both parties must be transparent about what they need. “If the company is worried about reliability, and the workers are worried about maintaining a stable schedule, then transparency between both will hopefully result in fair scheduling practices.”White said that what many frontline workers want, but don’t often get, is autonomy, which is “less about removing structure and more about being thoughtful about where it matters,” he said. “We hold tight in places that probably don’t need it.” For example, matters of process or safety conditions shouldn’t simply be handed down from on high—those workers and their managers are often the most qualified to address those problems. Not everything can, or should, be solved in the boardroom. “It typically needs to be solved by the people who are working closest to it, and local problem solving is one of the best forms of empowerment.”This goes for things like learning and development too. Leadership may mandate universal skills training but fail to tweak its delivery for frontline workers who seldom have the flexibility to spend hours in a classroom, nor do they tend to have regular access to email, “so when learning is long or outside of the flow of work, honestly, it just doesn’t get used,” he said. At BASF, skills training for frontline workers is delivered in small, 15-minute segments during the workday, and when it’s built into a shift, it doesn’t feel additional or interrupting. The purpose, he said, must also be clear. “People need to understand how what they’re doing is clearly tied to skills, access, or pay. When learning fits the job, people use it, and that’s when it matters the most.”In many cases, frontline managers are left out of the equation, but that’s exactly where companies should focus. When an email comes from the C-suite, what is the first thing an employee will do? They go to their manager to find out what it means and how it will affect them. That’s a huge amount of power—even more so than the powers that be, he said. “That tells us how important [managers] are.”White closed by encouraging leadership to loosen the reins, on workers, but also on themselves. “Companies sometimes think that the employees’ expectation is that the company is going to be perfect. I’ve not found any employee who, at the end of the day, really expects the company to be perfect.”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 JackF/iStock)
Delivering Large-Scale Frontline Workforce Development
BY Grace Turney May 15, 2026From the vast warehouse to the loud machinery, the first day inside a Humana pharmacy dispensing site can be jarring. Workers who walk in expecting something quieter and more clinical may feel shocked. “You don’t want the first time they see the inside of a dispensing site to be the first day on the job,” said Laura Bartus, head of learning at CenterWell Pharmacy, a division of Humana. That moment of surprise, she says, is a fully preventable failure of recruitment.Bartus joined moderator Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, a business reporter for the Seattle Times, for a fireside chat closing out From Day One’s May virtual conference. The conversation covered how learning and development (L&D) can drive both recruitment and retention, what it takes to earn organizational buy-in for training programs, and how large companies like Humana can preserve human connection across sprawling teams.Closing the Preview Gap“Job shock is real,” Bartus said, describing the moment new hires realize a role is harder or different than advertised. Her solution is straightforward: show candidates what the job actually looks like before they accept it. Humana’s pharmacy team now offers virtual tours of dispensing sites during the interview process, walking candidates through the physical environment, daily workflows, and the path a prescription takes through the system. Clinic teams are building similar previews for front-office staff.The goal isn’t to screen people out; it’s to let them opt in with full information. “I want them to realize that when they’re interviewing,” she said. Candidates who self-select based on an honest picture are more likely to stay.Retention, Bartus noted, is just as much about trajectory as transparency. Pay matters, and frontline workers are rarely compensated generously. But so does the sense that a current role leads somewhere. Replacing an employee can cost an organization $10,000 to $15,000 when recruiter time, posting fees, and leadership hours are factored in. The math makes career pathing a business imperative, not just a cultural nicety.Laura Bartus of Humana spoke with moderator Megan Ulu-Lani Boytanton of the Seattle Times (photo by From Day One)“Where you want to go is not divorced from where you are now,” she said. A call center agent, for example, is developing empathy, active listening, negotiation, and de-escalation skills daily. Those translate directly to sales, team leadership, and beyond. Bartus’s job, as she sees it, is to help employees see those connections and build a bridge.Winning Stakeholder Buy-InEven the best-designed learning initiative can fail without the right support. Bartus is direct about what separates programs that succeed from those that quietly disappear: senior leader investment. Not passive approval, but active championship.“If the senior leader over that area isn’t personally invested and doesn’t own it, that program is always going to fail,” she said. Her approach when launching something new is to secure that alignment before building momentum. She seeks a seat at executive leadership meetings, shares what’s being proposed and why, and makes the value explicit. “If you don’t show them the value of what you’re building, they’re not going to buy in.”She frames L&D not as a service function waiting to be funded, but as a strategic partner that earns credibility by speaking the language of outcomes. Learning leaders who want organizational support, she said, have to go get it proactively and in person.Building a Team That Talks to ItselfBartus leads a team of 67, and collaboration across that group doesn’t happen by accident. A few years ago, facilitation, design, operations, and product functions operated largely in isolation. The resulting training was fine, but it reflected the siloed thinking that produced it.Her fix was structural: a pod model that pulls people from different roles into biweekly working groups organized around a specific learning audience. Designers, facilitators, education leads, operations partners, and product partners now share a room and a common goal. The training they build together is more coherent because everyone is solving for the same end user.The social byproducts matter too. “They develop their own in-jokes and their own subculture,” Bartus said. “They champion each other and they cheer each other on.” At all-team meetings, the clinic side of her organization dedicates time to kudos—peers publicly recognizing each other’s contributions in front of the full group. In an environment where raises aren’t always possible and bonuses depend on the fiscal year, recognition becomes its own form of compensation.“We can always recognize the people around us for doing great work,” she said. “We can make them feel appreciated, and we can show them: your work is important to our success.”Cross-Training as a Competitive SkillThe same flexibility Bartus builds into her team culture applies to her staffing model. When facilitation demand drops and design work spikes, she doesn’t wait. Facilitators on her team have been cross-trained as designers, allowing her to redirect capacity without disruption.That model showed its value when Humana’s contracts with telehealth providers expanded GLP-1 offerings and the volume of related patient calls increased. Operations staff stepped up to handle the new call load, learning what the medications are, how coverage rules work, and what patients need to know. “People have been really wonderful about flexing new skills,” Bartus said. She credits strong frontline leadership for creating an environment where employees raise their hands for new challenges rather than waiting to be assigned.The throughline connecting all of it, recruitment honesty, stakeholder alignment, team cohesion, adaptive staffing, is permission. Permission to fail in training before the stakes are real, to grow in a direction that wasn’t on the original job description, and to be seen, recognized, and valued for work that often goes unnoticed. “We need to give them practice,” Bartus said, “and we need to give them space to fail while they’re with us.”Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photo by nortonrsx/iStock)
Smart Tools, Smarter Hiring: How TA Leaders Can Leverage Their Human Judgement
BY Grace Turney April 09, 2026Soha Kadam-Masudi recently sat down for a series of senior-level reference checks; and she barely picked up a pen. Microsoft Copilot recorded the calls, summarized the conversations, and handed her back something she hadn’t had in years of recruiting: her full attention. “It was such a meaningful conversation because I was focusing on the questions and what was actually coming back as a reference,” said Kadam-Masudi, director of talent acquisition for Aramark Canada.That shift from administrative executor to thoughtful evaluator is exactly the evolution talent acquisition leaders are chasing right now. AI tools have moved well beyond the novelty stage and into the daily rhythms of recruiting, automating the repetitive and liberating the human. But the technology still can’t do the most important things: read a room, sense reluctance in a team, or vouch for a candidate with conviction.This was the topic at hand during a panel discussion at From Day One’s March virtual conference. Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder of the Off-Site Writing Workshop, moderated the conversation with five talent acquisition leaders from companies spanning multiple continents and industries.Streamlining the MachineryFor many TA teams, AI’s first and most visible contribution has been streamlining daily functions. Angie Lombardo, VP, global director of operations for talent acquisition at Arcadis, described layering an AI system on top of her company’s applicant tracking system to compensate for its clunkiness. The tool automates workflow steps, surfaces qualified candidates from a database of a million people, and handles interview scheduling; a task that used to eat hours. “It saves the recruiters a lot of admin time and helps them focus on finding the right person,” she said.Leaders spoke on an executive panel during From Day One's March talent acquisition virtual conference (photo by From Day One)Kadam-Masudi echoed that—at Aramark (where the team recruits roughly 2,000 to 3,000 employees annually in Canada alone), AI screening tools and chatbots help manage the volume by answering candidate questions around the clock, routing applications, and reducing the administrative burden on frontline managers who would otherwise be doing a great deal of recruiting themselves. “Qualified candidates just go into the system, get interviewed, and then really the attention span for managers is: do a good job at the interview and get them hired,” she said.Pradeep Nair, AVP, global head of TA and talent center at Collabera, summed it up neatly: “AI should remove repetition, not the responsibility.”What’s Genuinely Useful, and What Isn’tNot every AI tool earns its place. The panel largely agreed that the clearest value comes from tools that handle high-volume, low-complexity tasks: screening questions, scheduling, workflow analytics, candidate matching. Skill-based assessment tools—which evaluate a candidate's capacity to keep learning rather than just their resume—generated real enthusiasm, with Nair flagging them as a strong emerging category for frontline and retail roles.Natalia Botero Penagos, senior director of talent acquisition at Publicis Sapient, pointed to an agent her team built that helps recruiters with interview preparation and candidate communications. The agent drafts messages calibrated to the company’s employer brand, at the right moment in the hiring process, and then hands them to a recruiter for a final human touch before sending. “The recruiter is the one that needs to review and add the personal touch,” she said. “It creates a more structured way of communication, a better candidate experience.”She also highlighted Claude as a tool gaining ground, particularly for teams outside highly structured corporate environments, pointing to its ability to help build replicable skills and scale the expertise of a strong individual recruiter across an entire global team.What the panel agreed hasn’t worked: giving AI the final say. Several leaders described experiments with fully automated decision-making for junior roles and pulling back quickly. “We were trying to get away with having AI do everything for very basic, very junior roles, and I don’t think we were comfortable to give that decision-making just yet,” Kadam-Masudi said.Lombardo was direct about the legal and ethical stakes: “We don’t have AI making decisions. We have AI automating and making recommendations, but it definitely doesn’t make decisions, because then you get into touchy territory.”Botero Penagos raised a point the group returned to several times: even well-designed AI agents can carry bias. The concern isn’t just about whether to hire a person, but how candidates are evaluated throughout the process. “The human in the loop is 100% needed,” she said.That oversight isn’t just an ethical stance; it’s a structural requirement. As AI begins to shape which candidates get seen, which get screened out, and how they’re communicated with, TA leaders are increasingly responsible for auditing the system’s outputs, not just its inputs.Early Careers in the Age of AIOne of the sharpest conversations of the session came when the topic turned to early career professionals. Chantha Nhem, global lead, new professionals, early careers global TA & development at Nokia, described a growing concern she hears from young workers: will AI take their entry-level jobs before they’ve had a chance to build the judgment those jobs are meant to develop?Her answer was neither dismissive nor falsely reassuring. Nhem referenced Gartner research suggesting AI won’t eliminate jobs so much as reshape them; but she was candid about what that reshaping means. “There’s a loss of natural progression that’s going to happen for early professionals, where you’re going to have to have a higher starting point of complexity in your role, and the learning curve is definitely going to be steeper,” she said.Nokia’s response has been to redesign early career programming from the ground up: shifting the emphasis from purely technical skills to adaptability, critical thinking, and decision-making, and aligning those programs directly to organizational strategy. “We have to make sure that they’re ready for this adoption and give them the confidence they need to contribute faster and integrate faster into our teams,” Nhem said. The talent acquisition and development functions at Nokia were united into a single team last April, a signal of how tightly linked the two have become.The Judgment Calls AI Can't MakeIn the session’s final stretch, Lestch asked each panelist for a recent example of a moment that required human judgment—something AI simply could not have handled.Nhem described looking at a project status dashboard for her early careers initiative and seeing everything marked green. AI would have called it fine. She knew better: team members were quietly anxious about their shifting workloads and new skill requirements. “AI did not flag that, nor could it accommodate the needs of our team,” she said. She organized a collaborative document to surface those concerns and keep the project on track.Nair described introducing AI tools into a recruiting workflow that had operated on Boolean searches and LinkedIn for years. The technology worked, but the people didn’t adopt it without help. “AI could analyze resumes or recommend candidates, but it couldn’t assess the readiness of people to change how they work,” he said. His team redesigned the rollout, leading with training, transparency, and success stories before asking anyone to change their habits.Botero Penagos recalled a talent search across five Latin American countries for creative roles supporting a European team. AI helped compile data and build dashboards. What it couldn’t do was interpret the ambiguity in a creative portfolio, navigate the language and cultural nuances across six countries, or explain the complexity of the landscape to skeptical stakeholders. “All of that comes from experience and from our team,” she said.Kadam-Masudi put it simply: even when AI hands you excellent talking points, you can’t just read them aloud. “It needs the element of you. It needs to be your kind of personality in those words. I’m still me.”Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photo by Ridofranz/iStock)
From Jobs to Skills: Inside the Shift Transforming Talent Strategy
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza April 07, 2026At eBay, which employs 12,000 people globally, senior director of global talent Zeenath Khan is using a pilot based approach to defining skills, which will support hiring and talent mobility—a newer alternative to traditional notions of hiring people for rigidly structured jobs with narrow and singular paths for growth. Influencing an enterprise of that size to rethink its talent strategy, and then actually execute that change, is a massive undertaking. “So what we wanted to do was start quite small,” she said, focusing on teams already motivated to embrace a skills-based strategy in support of career development or AI transformation.Khan was part of an executive panel on how HR leaders are adopting and experimenting with skills-based thinking, during From Day One’s March virtual conference on talent acquisition. Her team works as consultants to business units, running workshops and helping leaders identify the skills their segments will need now and in the years ahead. “With all of the fabulous AI tools, we’ve also created research projects on those topics to support those leaders in their thinking.”As the capabilities of artificial intelligence grow rapidly, some business leaders may be tempted to skip the foundational work and jump straight to replacing roles with AI agents. But Kathryn Withycomb, a senior learning strategist at Thinkhuman, recommends a different approach, starting with business goals, not headcount reduction. Framing the change this way helps keep expectations realistic and ensures that early pilots are focused on measurable, testable outcomes rather than sweeping assumptions about automation.Panelists spoke during a session titled, "Next-Gen Talent: Spotting Skills and Potential Before They’re Visible" (photo by From Day One)Skills-based thinking has been discussed in HR for several years now, but outside the field, the concept is still unfamiliar to most. To help employees understand the shift, Alorica’s senior director of talent acquisition, Danielle McCaffrey, encourages people to reverse-engineer their roles, asking questions like: What job do you have, and what skills do you bring to the table?“The key is making it clear that this approach creates more opportunity for them and not less,” she said. Where traditional, job-based organizations prescribe singular paths from the bottom to the top of an organization with little room for detours, skills-based organizations open up lateral and nonlinear routes—an approach that resonates with a workforce interested in flexibility and adaptability.“A lot of our positions are entry-level customer service roles, but if they demonstrate, say, analytical skills or training ability or a potential around leadership, we know that we can move them into workforce management, operations, training or even recruiting,” McCaffrey said. “When people realize that their skills are portable and visible across the organization, they start to see a much broader career path than the one that they were hired into.”The skills-based transformation doesn’t just appeal to the newest arrivals to the workforce. While the pace of change is accelerating, more experienced employees have already navigated major technological transitions. “There wasn’t Google when I started working,” eBay’s Khan noted. “That combination of folks who have lived experience of dramatic technological change plus emerging talent who bring in a fresh mindset and a completely different set of skills remains really important for us.”Some companies are taking their very first steps toward skills-based planning. Jay Park, the senior director of talent acquisition at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, is focused on building strong relationships with business leaders.“We’re setting up that foundation as a broader people team,” he said, positioning his function as a strategic partner and building credibility so his team can better understand the skills leaders are missing today and what they’ll need in the future. He’s keen on thinking differently about hiring, moving from traditional ideas of what a resume should include and instead welcoming unconventional candidates who appear equipped for a nonlinear career path.Finding the skills that don’t always show up on a resume is “where recruiting becomes both an art and a science, said McCaffrey at Alorica. “Resumes tend to show experience, but they really rarely capture the candidate's actual capability or potential.”To uncover qualities like empathy, resilience, and critical thinking, her team uses behavioral interview questions and situational assessments that require candidates to demonstrate how they would handle real-world scenarios. Yet human judgment remains essential. “A candidate might score a little bit lower on an assessment, but then demonstrates exceptional problem solving and conversation,” she said. “That would be a signal to a recruiter to see if their career path could take a different turn.”As AI gets smarter, Park added, “it’s going to be that much more important for us to assess candidates for mindset, growth, orientation, adaptability—those things that aren’t obvious on paper are going to require a recruiter.”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 Vadym Pastukh/iStock)
Rethinking Early Career Talent in a Changing Hiring Landscape
BY Ade Akin April 06, 2026The challenge of preparing the next generation of employees has been a personal mission for Monica Green, the global head of early careers and talent pipelines at State Street. She doesn't just worry about the thousands of applicants her team vets annually; she also thinks about her son, a college freshman who is navigating the same competitive landscape.“I tell him all the time: You need to start working on an internship for this summer,” Green said during a fireside chat at From Day One's March virtual conference “It’s a tough market right now,” she said.The conversation, moderated by Paige McGlauflin, a reporter at Morning Brew, explored how one of the world’s oldest financial institutions is approaching early-career recruiting with an open and inclusive lens while adapting to a rapidly changing market that's now being reshaped by artificial intelligence.The Human Element in a High-Tech Job HuntOne of the main themes of the discussion was the dual role AI plays in the modern recruiting landscape. Green acknowledges that the “application waves” have become application tsunamis as candidates use AI to instantly apply to hundreds of positions. This forces recruiters to become more efficient with leveraging their own technological tools to filter the increasing influx of applications.Green emphasizes that efficiency cannot come at the cost of losing the human connection. While AI helps to manage high volumes, human touch is still required to evaluate each candidate. “Recruiters are still looking at resumes. They’re providing that insight and having interviews with candidates directly,” Green said. “We want to make sure that we’re leveraging the tools to support us, to be as efficient as we can be, but really enabling the recruiters to play the role that they do in assessing the talent.”This human dynamic has shifted in the era of virtual recruitment. Green notes a growing trend of returning to in-person interviews among her peers as candidates become increasingly “savvy with the use of technology to be able to answer questions in the midst of an interview.” This has created a troubling gap between a candidate’s virtual prowess and their in-person reality.“You can go through an interview process virtually, and that talent may seem great, and then you get them in the door, and it’s like, ‘Wait, we’re not talking to the same person,’” Green said. This challenge has led to a resurgence of on-site interviews and campus events to ensure authenticity.Beyond the Campus QuadBuilding sustainable talent pipelines means looking beyond traditional four-year universities for global firms like State Street. Green detailed a strategy that combines strong relationships with target schools and innovative partnerships with community organizations to reach underrepresented and non-traditional candidates.Monica Green of State Street was interviewed by Paige McGlauflin of Morning Brew (photo by From Day One)“Partnerships with schools are our bread and butter,” she said. State Street also places significant emphasis on local engagement. Green highlighted a partnership with the Boston PIC, an organization that connects Boston Public School students with real-world workplace experiences. A group of high school students in the program even pitched a nonprofit idea to State Street leaders a year ago and secured funding for it.Another one of State Street’s key partnerships is with My HBCU Matters, which connects students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities with corporate leaders for mentorship and mock interviews. These initiatives help enrich communities while creating a more diverse and robust pool of future applicants. “It’s an opportunity for us to just have more interaction with some HBCU students, but also to help support them as they navigate what areas they seek to pursue,” Green said. A Global Philosophy With Local NuanceOverseeing early careers globally means balancing an organization’s philosophy with on-the-ground realities. While the core goal of building a future workforce remains the same, the execution varies wildly from market to market.“In some markets, the focus is on scale and operational readiness,” Green said. “There are others where it’s more niche skills and regulatory requirements.” Cultural expectations around hiring also differ.Green described one market where students have come to expect full-time job offers after internships. While State Street doesn’t guarantee job offers solely based on that expectation, recognizing the dynamic allows the company to manage the recruitment process transparently, helping the firm to maintain its status as a top employer in the region.“We definitely allow for that flexibility to take place, while still keeping that consistency and that philosophy across, no matter the location,” she added.Advice for All SidesGreen advises human resources and talent acquisition professionals to invest in manager readiness. She says the success of early-career hires often depends less on programs and more on the daily environment they enter. “A lot of that is really dependent on the environment that the early career talent is a part of,” she said. Green’s message for students and job seekers confronting a competitive landscape was to be relentless but purposeful with their efforts. Network, persist, and do your homework. “Every role is imperfect,” she cautioned, as she urged job seekers to focus on roles that are aligned with their skills. “Just applying to a job isn’t good enough anymore. You have to take your time to network.”Green practices what she encourages, crediting her own career progression to networks she created, including one that started with a message on LinkedIn. Whether it’s a high school student in Boston, a college sophomore, or a seasoned professional, the common thread, Green argues, is the power of meaningful human connection—a force that no algorithm can replace.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by nd3000/iStock)
How AI Can Help Identify the Right Skills and Build Stronger Teams
BY Kristen Kwiatkowski March 30, 2026Building a strong business starts with assembling the right team and delivering a thoughtful, effective hiring process. As AI and related technologies rapidly evolve, they are becoming an increasingly common part of how companies approach talent acquisition.Tim Wesson, SVP of global talent acquisition at IQVIA, spoke with moderator Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, business reporter at the Seattle Times, about AI and how it can be used to create strong, long-lasting teams in the workforce during a fireside chat at From Day One’s March virtual conference. With a background in sales and sales management, Wesson eventually found his way to the talent acquisition field. Now, with eight years at IQVIA, Wesson has firmly settled into his role at the corporation that provides many vital services.“Our mission really is to accelerate innovation for a healthier world, and we do so by leveraging our domain expertise, our tech, our data and analytics, bringing it all together to innovate,” said Wesson.How the Pandemic Changed HiringWhen discussing how Covid reshaped hiring, Wesson noted that the virtual hiring practices that emerged during the pandemic are still widely used today. He also pointed to greater flexibility in career paths and the expanded use of technology, including AI, as lasting shifts that continue to shape hiring.Tim Wesson of IQVIA shared insights on TA during the session (photo by From Day One)When asked what challenges exist today, Wesson stated that having to do more or even the same with less is often a challenging feat. Budgets are usually tight and that has been amplified throughout the past years, which puts pressure on talent acquisition. There’s also a large increase in applicants for the various roles. “I think, primarily because there’s not as many roles, but also AI is certainly helping facilitate people to apply to roles,” said Wesson. “And so you just have this massive amount of applicants that are coming in on a day-to-day basis.”Some of the applications coming in aren’t from actual candidates and this leads to an increase in the number of applications the talent acquisition team has to go through to find the right person to hire for the job role, he says. How a Company Can Attract TalentAs for how a company can remain attractive to talent, “I wouldn’t say there’s this new playbook that you have to write in order to remain attractive. I think it’s still about knowing what’s important to the people in the various talent pools that we recruit in and then taking a tailored approach to that individual.”There are more than 2,000 different job profiles at IQVIA, ranging from clinical roles to tech roles, and everything in between, he says. Therefore, the approach must be tailored to reach those individuals in all the different job roles. The recruiters need to be well-versed in the roles that they’re hiring for, know how to provide meaningful information to the candidate, and run a well-constructed interview process. Most importantly, they must have good communication with the candidate throughout the hiring process. In addition to offering a competitive salary and attractive benefits, Wesson said that it’s also important to provide flexibility, learning and development, and career growth opportunities. Overall, it’s vital to know what’s important to the candidate and focus on those areas, which will help increase the attractiveness of the job opportunity. The needs of potential hires also vary from a generational standpoint. “Certainly, stability is very important, and flexibility is important for Gen Z and millennials. I would also say meaningful work is very important. Probably more important, I think, to the Gen Z group than the others.” For IQVIA, which has a global presence, Wesson says the fundamentals of talent acquisition don’t really change. However, you have to be aware of certain factors, such as cultural nuances, laws and regulations, and social platforms. When recruiting in different countries, you should be knowledgeable of the various cultures. Some companies have recruiters all over the globe, which makes it easier to hire with this type of consideration in mind.With that said, hiring managers do sometimes have to interact with candidates outside of their country. “What we’re running into is hiring managers, say, in the US, having to interview and interact with candidates in other countries, and they’re not used to how you go about interacting, interviewing, etc. So, in the last year or so, we had to put together playbooks for hiring managers, educating them on those cultural nuances and kind of setting their expectations as it relates to interviewing people in other parts of the world.”AI and Hiring DecisionsAI plays a role at multiple stages of the hiring process, Wesson says, particularly in the early phases of recruitment, where it helps shape messaging that attracts candidates.“In regard to finding talent, creating those talent pools, we’re also using it to assist us in assessing a candidate’s experience or level of skills. So that’s where it’s primarily being used,” said Wesson.Wesson continued that AI is also used to review the skills that currently exist with their employee base for internal mobility purposes.Looking ahead, Wesson said he’s watching how organizations will evolve in allowing talent acquisition teams to use AI, and to what extent. With recent lawsuits involving AI tools making headlines, the path forward may depend in part on how those cases are resolved and how companies use the outcomes to guide their approach.There may also be some employees who are resistant to using AI and other similar technology tools. “I think the change management piece is really important, as far as really helping people understand the reasoning behind the tool, whether it’s AI or not AI, or why you decided to use it, how it fits the expectations around using it, the training and support after it gets rolled out, and understanding that people are going to be somewhat resistant to change,” he said. “You have to account for that.”Kristen Kwiatkowski is a professional freelance writer covering a wide array of industries, with a focus on food and beverage and business. Her work has been featured in the Bucks County Herald, Eater Philly, Edible Lehigh Valley, Cider Culture, and The Town Dish. (Photo by NongAsimo/iStock)
Designing Leadership Development for a Rapidly Changing Industry
BY Ade Akin March 18, 2026For Mark Monaghan, the future is something he’s eagerly awaited since he was a child, bonding with his father while watching Star Trek. The popular science-fiction show painted a positive picture of what a technologically advanced future could look like, and Mark couldn’t wait to be a part of it. “I remember even my mom, growing up one day, told me, ‘Mark, stop wishing your days away,’” Monaghan said during a fireside chat at From Day One’s February virtual conference. “And now it’s here. The future is here, and it’s happening so fast.”Monaghan, now the VP of global organizational development at iQor, a global customer experience company with 47,000 employees across 11 countries, is uniquely positioned to help shape that future. He detailed how his lifelong passion for science fiction has informed his real-world mission to use technology to deepen human connections through innovative leadership development during the session. The Data-Driven Foundation of CoachingiQor’s journey with advanced technology isn’t a recent pivot. Monaghan says the company purchased a big-data firm called Key Metrics about 12 years ago, long before artificial intelligence (AI) became a boardroom buzzword. This early adoption allowed them to begin analyzing the massive amounts of data generated in their 50-plus call centers, transitioning voice calls into digital data to identify patterns and coaching opportunities.Mark Monaghan, the VP of organizational development at iQor, spoke with From Day One's editor in chief, Steve Koepp (photo by From Day One)This data-centric approach became the bedrock of their internal coaching systems. iQor’s technology team built a proprietary coaching database called SCAN, with a new AI-integrated version, Coach IQ, on the horizon. One tool, dubbed “coach to coach,” uses AI to audit recorded coaching sessions between managers and supervisors, pinpointing specific areas for improvement. “We also learned a lot about AI, learned how the different models learned,” Monaghan said. “It’s just kind of soaked into us. We can use this.”The iLead Program: Measuring the ImmeasurableThe core of Monaghan’s work is the award-winning iLead mentoring program, which has earned 49 learning and development awards, including a gold Brandon Hall Award and a silver Stevie Award. The program operates on a leadership competency model that categorizes leaders from “leading oneself” to “leading a vision.” Each level is tied to five key competencies.iLead’s ability to measure development makes it revolutionary. Monaghan partnered with Fidello to build a system where mentors and mentees complete competency assessments. If a mentee rates themselves a five on “managerial courage” but their mentor gives them a two, a dashboard highlights the delta. The mentor can then assign a curated learning journey from iQor’s Skillsoft library that’s tied directly to that competency.“In Trinidad five years ago, we were able to identify that resolving conflict was the number one competency for our supervisors,” Monaghan elaborated. “We were actually able to move the needle from ‘needs development’ to ‘developed.’ That’s actually the first time I’ve ever been able to measure learning within the work environment that was measurable.”iQor uses a tool called “iTrack” to ensure these mentoring relationships are productive. iTrack allows mentees to confidentially rate each session. If scores dip, Monaghan’s team can investigate trends and offer gentle course corrections, ensuring conversations remain focused on career growth, instead of solely focusing on daily performance metrics.The Next Frontier: AI Mentors and Second Nature SimulationsAlways looking ahead, Monaghan is now introducing an AI mentor bot into the iLead system. The bot analyzes past session notes, assessment gaps, and learning assets to generate a tailored, 30-minute discussion agenda for mentor-mentee meetings. “As far as I can tell, this platform doesn’t exist anywhere else,” he added.Similarly, iQor is leveraging a simulation tool called Second Nature to train supervisors. Instead of just listening to calls, new hires can now practice complex conversations with realistic avatars. After the simulation, they receive complete feedback on what they could have done better, which can also be reviewed by trainers. “It’s a completely different level,” Monaghan said.Despite his passion for technology, Monaghan’s philosophy is firmly rooted in servant leadership. He worries about the loneliness epidemic and the role recent tech advancements have played in pushing people apart. His motivation now, in what he calls the “fourth quarter of his career,” is about legacy.“If I can help my leaders become servant leaders, help them remove barriers from their own lives, give them the confidence, recognition, and support that they need, you can really, really help people,” he said. “Every few months, I’ll get somebody from somewhere in my career that reaches out, and thanks me for a conversation. I think about that. That’s really what motivates me.” For Monaghan, the future of work isn’t just about using technology like artificial intelligence to build more efficient systems; it’s about using these tools to build more connected, capable, and confident people.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by PeopleImages/iStock)
How a Culture of Learning Equips the Workforce for What’s Next
BY Katie Chambers March 16, 2026When the pandemic hit, the hospitality industry lost many workers. At Soho House, the impact was dramatic, with roughly 80% of the workforce disappearing either temporarily or permanently. Rebuilding meant more than simply re-hiring. It offered an opportunity to rethink how people learn on the job. During an executive panel discussion at From Day One’s February virtual conference, Lauren Goodman, regional head of people and development at Soho House, shared how the company redesigned its learning and development approach from the ground up, creating role-specific onboarding guides and self-paced training that allow employees to build skills while working rather than racing through rigid certification timelines. The results were striking. Turnover dropped about 25% year over year from 2022 to 2023, and the company now averages around 32% turnover, below the hospitality industry standard, says Goodman. The shift showed how personalized, flexible learning programs can play a direct role in retention.What Employees Want to Learn TodayBecause the modern workplace is changing rapidly, employees are looking for programs to help them keep up. “One of the big things that is top of mind for so many organizations now is agility and learning and how to be more adaptable and resilient,” said Priscila Bala, vice chair at LifeLabs Learning. “The half-life of many of the skills that we have is about 18 months. Cycles are compressing so much.” So, faster and shorter are better. “We don’t have people asking for those large, generic programs anymore. They want short, practical learning tied to the job, real-time feedback from their boss,” said Marcus Cazier, head of L&D, Americas, bioMérieux. This is also due to shrinking patience and attention spans, Goodman says. Plus, they are looking to the future: “They’re also looking for us not just to train them on their job, but that growth mindset as well.”Of course, AI is one of the factors driving rapid change, so employees are hoping to stay abreast of the latest technology. “At Autodesk, it’s primarily around upskilling and AI, also the impact that AI is having on both teams, individuals, and the organization, in addition to specific workflows and how workflows are changing as a result of AI integration and building an AI native mindset,” said Michel Riyad Nabti, senior director of learning & development at Autodesk. Panelists spoke about "How a Culture of Learning Equips the Workforce for What’s Next" during the virtual session (photo by From Day One)Employees are also preferring less structured programs, opting for self-directed opportunities instead. “We’ve also noticed that when we do optional micro trainings, we get a more positive response and a larger response than when we have a formalized, mandatory two-hour training,” Goodman said. “To me, it’s helpful to know we might still do the full two hours, but we’re going to do it in a ‘micro’ setting, so that way it’s more appealing to our team, and hopefully they retain it better, too.” But Bala emphasizes that L&D shouldn’t feel too optional or separate from other business initiatives—otherwise, it will fall by the wayside in favor of what feels like more pressing work priorities. “The folks that are really successful are the ones that actually make it as part of an execution strategy, instead of treating learning as if it’s a separate thing that happens outside of business,” she said. “When people learn individually, you don’t get their colleagues to recognize what’s happening. They don’t have a shared language, it becomes so much harder to reinforce what are really the norms that are going to help us be more efficient and effective.”Building an Effective L&D Program AI can be an important partner in providing up-to-date, personalized learning plans to employees. “We’re making a transformation from L&D being a content provider, Content Manager, to being a strategic partner across the enterprise, and part of that transformation is building a learning ecosystem,” Nabti said. Autodesk has “internally designed learning programs in addition to external vendor provider programs that can provide that kind of personalization and an impact to each individual when meeting them, where their needs are.” Launching a one-size-fits-all program can be tricky among corporations with a variety of roles, from front-of-house hourly workers to designers, executives, and beyond. “How do you ensure that L&D is consistent among all those employees?” asked session moderator Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder, the Off-Site Writing Workshop. Cazier shares that his organization, which does business all over the world, offers peer-to-peer review and training sessions where participants can practice customer conversations with each other and give real-time feedback, which becomes especially important when educating each other on cultural and linguistic nuances. “It’s allowing us to immediately embed what they’re learning into conversations. And then we are also connecting these behaviors to their bonuses and to their merit. We have begun holding leaders accountable for how they accomplish things and to ensure that they’re doing it in the way that the organization wants things done,” Cazier said. “We have aggressive growth goals, but we also have a high ethical standard, and we have a very deep, humanistic approach that we’re proud of, and we don’t want to lose as we try to evolve the organization.” Soho House, which employs everyone from dishwashers to graphic designers, feels this acutely. “Making sure that everyone feels really valued throughout that training process is critical,” Goodman said. “Getting buy-in from several key stakeholders [is also crucial], because it’s not just one aspect of the business, but it’s really what makes the whole business successful.” Corporate brand, values, and identities should be embedded in all L&D programs, including how those values “trickle down” across the team. Then, you can demonstrate how different skills contribute to and uphold those values during day-to-day work. Skills assessments should ideally be paired with L&D programs to establish a baseline of current skills and assess whether training has been effective. “What are the skills and competencies that we are mapping so that the learning can be intentional? People want their capability-building to be purposeful,” Bala said. Panelists agree that providing L&D opportunities is also important to building a culture of psychological safety and freedom, allowing workers to feel comfortable experimenting, growing, and forging their own path. “That’s so crucial in this inflection point that we’re currently in,” Nabti said. “Having a culture of experimentation and agility that’s aligned to the company’s culture is crucial for our success, and also detaching us from this expectation that every initiative has to be successful. That culture of experimentation frees us up to explore areas where we may have really big performance goals.” Asking employees what they want to learn is key to building a healthy, sustainable, and attractive L&D program. Soho House includes a question about learning goals in its performance reviews at all levels. “What is it that they want to learn so that we can help support their learning objectives as a human and as an individual? Having that as a requirement has helped to create that culture of learning and development,” Goodman said. “None of us knows it all. Let’s ask you, on a formalized basis, what [do] you want to learn at the end of the year? Did we commit to that as the employer? Did we help support you there? If not, how do we do better next year?”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by kasto80/iStock)