Reducing Change Fatigue and Building More Adaptable Teams
BY Carrie Snider July 15, 2026If the past few years have made anything clear, it’s that change is now a constant in business. That reality has left employees at every level grappling with change fatigue. How can leaders help their people adapt while reducing the toll of continual transformation?At From Day One’s Manhattan conference, leaders participated in a panel addressing practical approaches for leaders. Moderated by Tania Rahman, social media director at Fast Company, they discussed how organizations can move beyond reactive change management and instead build systems that help employees sustain performance through continuous disruption. Across the conversation, a clear theme emerged: change fatigue is not simply about the pace of transformation, but about how leaders communicate, support, and structure it.Reframing Fatigue With Better CommunicationWhen most people think of change fatigue, they think of the volume of change. But it could be more about how that change is communicated. Michele Moskowitz, group head of talent at TP ICAP, emphasized that leaders have more control here than they might think.“Change fatigue comes when change becomes tiresome,” she said, but added an important distinction: “people are never really fatigued by positive change, by things that are exciting and inspirational.” The difference lies in how the change is framed and reinforced.At TP ICAP, leaders focus on consistently answering a core question for employees: what’s in it for me? By clearly communicating why a change matters, whether it’s a merger, a new system, or a strategic shift, and repeating that message across channels, organizations can shift change from something imposed to something employees can connect with and even anticipate.Leaders spoke about "Change Fatigue Is Real: How Leaders Can Keep Teams Adapting," during the executive panel discussionEqually critical is moving beyond one-way communication. Moskowitz described a common failure point that leaders are relying on top-down messaging and expecting alignment to follow. “We have a leader who stands up at a town hall or sends out a big email and kind of expects the world to just follow their lead,” she said. Instead, organizations must invest in dialogue, not just announcements.That’s where managers play a pivotal role. Moskowitz calls them “meaning makers,” the ones responsible for translating strategy into reality and feeding employee sentiment back up to leadership. Supporting them with the right tools, training, and space to listen is essential to reducing fatigue. Without that middle layer functioning effectively, even well-designed strategies struggle to land.Acknowledging the Toll, Recognizing the EffortOne of the most overlooked aspects of change fatigue is its psychological weight. Naomi Dishington, director of consulting at Workhuman, pointed out that employees today are living inside a constant loop of change.“It feels like at least weekly, if not daily, we’re all embarking on that change again every day,” she said, leaving little time to process or recover. The result is a workforce that rarely gets the chance to fully move through the natural emotional cycle of adaptation.For leaders, the first step is acknowledging it, then they can move to fix it. That simple act of recognition can reduce stress and build trust, signaling to employees that their experience is valid and understood. From there, leaders can make change more manageable by breaking it into smaller, shared steps rather than presenting transformation as a single overwhelming goal, she says.Equally important is how organizations define recognition itself. In a constantly shifting environment, waiting to celebrate only outcomes is no longer sufficient. Dishington emphasized the importance of rewarding effort, not just success: “Recognize the process, recognize you raised your hand to volunteer, recognize you took a risk and you failed.”These moments reinforce the behaviors organizations need most right now, including adaptability, initiative, and resilience. Recognition becomes not just a reward system, but a cultural signal about what matters in times of uncertainty.Adaptability Is EssentialPointing to the growing importance of what’s often called the adaptability quotient, or AQ, panelist Cesar Salas, VP and head of HR operations, Americas at EXL, says roles are shifting faster than ever.“What I am doing now in my position is totally different from what I was doing two years ago, or one year ago, or even six months ago,” he said. That pace forces employees and leaders to accept a hard truth: what got you here won’t necessarily move you forward.At EXL, Salas is focused on turning adaptability into practice rather than theory. He asked his direct reports to identify “five mini projects” where AI could be applied to improve productivity. The key was not immediate execution, but identification and prioritization.By surfacing opportunities first, then selecting the ones with the highest impact, teams create momentum without overwhelming themselves. This approach builds what Salas describes as a “virtuous circle,” or small wins that reinforce learning, confidence, and continued experimentation.Adaptability, he says, is no longer optional. It is becoming a baseline requirement for both employees and leaders. Organizations that fail to build this muscle risk falling behind not because of technology itself, but because of how slowly people are able to adjust to it.Transparency Builds TrustIn times of constant change, employees are looking for more than transparency about what decisions have been made. They also want to understand why those decisions were made, what factors were considered, and the broader business dynamics that shaped them. Lacey McBurney, head of talent and culture at Wiley, emphasized that traditional communication often falls short because it focuses too heavily on outcomes rather than process. “Yes, you have to communicate what the change is, yes, you have to communicate why that change is important,” she said. “But we’ve been really focused on how the decision got made.”That distinction is critical. When employees understand the reasoning, constraints, and trade-offs behind decisions, they are far more likely to trust them—even when the news is difficult. Without that transparency, gaps are filled with speculation and skepticism.As McBurney noted, without context, employees often respond with questions like: “Why didn’t they consider this?” or “Why are they doing these things at the same time?”Wiley has also invested in continuous listening mechanisms, moving away from one-off feedback cycles. Instead of treating communication as an event-driven activity, the organization has embedded ongoing dialogue through leadership forums and smaller group discussions. This helps trust become part of the system, not just part of major announcements.Create Space for ChangeOne of the hardest truths for leaders to accept is that you cannot continuously add work without also taking something away. In today’s environment of nonstop transformation, creating space is essential.“You can’t have a conversation around this sort of change climate today without talking about where we can create slack in the system,” said Sallyanne Oettinger, senior director at LHH. Without that slack, even the best-designed initiatives risk overwhelming employees.The challenge is that prioritization sounds simple but rarely is. Teams often begin with the intention of streamlining work, only to find that “everything ends up in the urgent and important quadrant, no matter how hard we try.” Real prioritization requires difficult trade-offs, including saying no to initiatives that people value.That difficulty is amplified by the reality that change is no longer linear. “It’s simply not that anymore,” Oettinger said, describing organizations as “trying to swim to seven beaches at once.” In that environment, constant addition without relief accelerates fatigue.One solution is increasing employee agency over how those changes are implemented. That involvement reduces disengagement and helps people feel less like passive recipients of disruption. Ultimately, creating space is about resourcing people properly. “Employees need a little bit more slack, so that not everything is a burning priority,” she said. Without that breathing room, even strong strategies fail to land.In a business landscape where change is no longer episodic but constant, the leaders who succeed will not be the ones who understand and design for change fatigue and actively work to reduce its weight. Change fatigue isn’t going away. But it can be managed. And how organizations choose to manage it will define not just how well they adapt—but how well their people endure what comes next.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Comprehensive Workplace Wellness: Stopping Burnout Before It Starts
BY Jessica Swenson July 09, 2026Employee burnout can quietly erode engagement, productivity, and performance, especially in high-pressure fields such as investment banking, says Stephanie Chiodi, head of benefits at Moelis & Company. That’s the reason her organization monitors utilization of PTO and protected weekends—to make sure they’re being used. The company also invests heavily in targeted manager training, ensuring that deal teams and staff have the tools they need to build resilience and excel in their roles.Chiodi and a panel of cross-industry leaders discussed tools and benefits that help manage everyday stressors and avoid employee burnout at From Day One’s Manhattan conference. The session was moderated by HR Brew senior reporter Courtney Vinopal.Employers across industries are finding ways to detect burnout warning signs. Serina Pak, SVP of talent and total rewards for Danone, works with her team to use pulse checks, employee resource group insights, and biannual healthcare utilization reviews to understand the mindset of the broader employee population.“What we emphasize is really identifying early warning signs, and we do that by being very connected with our employees, doing pulse checks, and we also believe that a lot of this is about culture,” said Pak. The company focuses on connection and fosters a leader-led culture that empowers employees through a shared accountability model.Modern Workplace Wellness“Ten years ago, walking challenges were what we did for wellness,” said Nicole Wolfe, VP of B2B partnerships at Rula Health. “What an incredible evolution to what we consider wellness now.”Wolfe is seeing companies shift from a check-the-box mentality with regard to mental health to making wellness a foundational part of their employee programs. She identified three main pillars that many employees and employers are prioritizing: timely access to care, with no long lead times; authentic provider connections; and reasonable costs enabled by in-network care.Danone has a layered benefits ecosystem, says Pak, which evaluates every benefit against four pillars: physical, nutritional, mental, and financial health. This influences the company’s decisions not only around medical coverage but also flexible time off, fertility support, childcare leave, and more, to support thousands of employees. “We think about how we support every employee’s mental wellness.”Panelists spoke about "Workplace Wellness When Employees Feel They’re at the Breaking Point" at the Manhattan conferencePanelists also addressed how AI is entering the wellness equation. Sword Health’s AI-assisted care model offers employees 24/7 access to care, enabling care on their timeline while preserving PTO hours for rest and rejuvenation, says Kinsay Conner, doctor of physical therapy and clinical specialist with Sword Health.But AI shouldn’t be working on its own. All of the company’s solutions “pair members with a clinician, whether that’s a PhD psychologist or a doctor of physical therapy. The clinicians are providing 100% of the clinical oversight,” said Conner. “The AI is there for support.”Mental Health Support When It MattersChiodi uncovered a critical access gap at Moelis early in her tenure. Despite having very robust medical plans, employees often ran into 3-4-month wait times for mental health care in the UK and multi-week waits in the United States. Moelis found an organization to partner with that could connect employees with care within one business day, and eliminated barriers to care by completely covering that benefit for employees.“We made a decision as a firm to cover the benefit at 100% so that we were removing really any barrier that someone could come up with to access their own self-guided elements,” she said, “or to graduate into care [with a coach, psychiatrist, or psychologist].”Panelists agreed that the opportunity for genuine disconnection from work is critical to mental wellness, but methods vary between organizations. Wolfe noted a trending practice of normalizing mental healthcare by allowing team members to block out calendar time for therapy appointments.The ROI of Workplace WellnessMeasuring ROI on these comprehensive benefit programs is “an art and a science” said Pak. Danone analyzes not only employee survey data and benefit utilization statistics, but also turnover, leave of absence, and engagement scores to determine the company’s best path forward.Wolfe cautions that utilization alone is not enough—it needs to lead to results. “There’s a balance of ensuring that you can provide care regardless of where people are and what they need, but also they are utilizing it in a way that you can see results,” she said. “Engagement is important, but it’s also ensuring that the right people are using the right benefits at the right time.”Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Building an AI-Ready Workforce: Culture, Skills, and the Human Side of Transformation
BY Ade Akin July 09, 2026When LexisNexis rolled out its first AI skills assessment, HR leaders expected pushback. The voluntary program, offered to about half the workforce with no mandates, KPIs, or pressure, simply invited employees to gauge their AI skills. Instead of resistance, participation far exceeded expectations, with 91% of employees completing the assessment. The surprise challenge came from an unexpected group: managers.“We had to chase our managers,” Amy Liedke, EVP of HR at LexisNexis, said during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Manhattan conference. “Employees were coming forward in very, very high numbers. Managers were coming forward organically at about 40%,” she said. The gap revealed something deeper than a simple scheduling conflict. Liedke unpacked what the data exposed about leadership culture, psychological safety, and the surprising resistance from the very people expected to guide others through transformation during the fireside chat moderated by Jessi Hempel, senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. The Assessment That Became a MirrorThe introduction of the AI skills matrix at LexisNexis occurred within a broader strategic framework. The company released its first customer-facing AI product called “Lexis+ AI” in early 2023, and its CEO had been discussing AI adoption consistently for three years. The skills assessment was part of an approach to driving AI culture and fluency within the organization. It was paired with a tiered learning program—Explorer, Accelerator, and Transformer—that gave employees a clear path forward.The true revelation for Liedke wasn’t in the technology’s capabilities; rather, the insight lay in the surprising demographic patterns of its uptake. Employees embraced the opportunity to understand their current AI skills and create a plan for growth. Managers, however, were slower to participate, often pointing to packed schedules and competing strategic priorities that made it difficult to find the time. “It has a lot more to do with their own comfort and embracing of the tools, and how to change. Some of them, I think, are hanging on to certain old ways of working, and a discomfort with how they play a role in developing others on a skill that they might not yet have fully developed in themselves,” she said.Amy Liedke, EVP, HR, LexisNexis, right, spoke with Jessi Hempel, Senior Editor-at-Large, LinkedIn, during the fireside chatBuilding an AI-ready workforce requires a lot more than training programs. It requires confronting employee fear head-on. Liedke acknowledges that the constant barrage of headlines, such as job cuts and apocalyptic predictions about AI eliminating roles, makes the role of HR significantly harder.Liedke’s response has been to reframe the narrative entirely. Rather than positioning AI as a tool that replaces workers, LexisNexis emphasizes augmentation. The company has increased employee headcount steadily over the past year, using productivity gains from integrating artificial intelligence with existing systems to fund new work that was previously out of reach.The Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary, ShiftWhile headlines create fear that AI will upend the job market, Liedke sees a more gradual transformation. Rather than eliminating roles overnight, she expects AI to steadily reshape the tasks that make up individual jobs. To prepare for those changes, LexisNexis has formed a fifth “tiger team” focused on workforce engineering, developing a repeatable process for identifying how roles are evolving and the new skills employees will need.“A lot of the new skills are competency-based, right? It’s a lot of the more strategic work, it’s a lot of the more human, interpersonal, judgment-based work,” she said.The old model, writing a job description and leaving it untouched for a decade, no longer works. Liedke now advocates for reviewing job architectures at least once a year, preferably twice. The nature of work is shifting incrementally, and HR teams need a process to track those changes in real time.Liedke’s experience leading AI initiatives has revealed an unexpected lesson: hiring a single AI-savvy employee rarely changes an organization because the existing culture quickly absorbs them. Instead, she recommends hiring groups of AI talent who can reinforce one another and help sustain change. The AI assessment also gave employees a shared understanding of their skills and ownership of their development, but she says leadership must evolve alongside them.“Leaders have to be willing to make different types of decisions to move at a different pace and to challenge constantly,” Liedke said. “You can’t just do it with your CEO, and you can’t just do it with the workforce alone.”Don’t Wait to Be InvitedLiedke advises HR leaders to invite themselves to the table. In her case, she recognized her opening when LexisNexis’s CEO started asking for more AI natives. “I asked him, ‘Okay, I have my own idea around that, but what do you mean when you say AI native? What does that look like for you? What’s the definition of that for you?’” she said. That moment became the catalyst for the AI skills assessment rollout. Liedke understood that somewhere between a science experiment and “you know it when you see it” lies a space where HR can design practical frameworks that are simple, development-oriented, and safe for honest self-assessment.Now, she deliberately avoids using the term AI native because it suggests a closed club reserved for people who happened to be at OpenAI or Anthropic five years ago. Instead, she promotes “AI first” as a growth mindset. Everyone has a starting point. Everyone can gain fluency. “We can all have a starting point and say, ‘I’m here today, and I know how to experiment, and I’ve had new technology presented to me before, and that’s what I’m going to do,” she said.Liedke also points out an unexpected demographic twist: Gen Z and Gen Alpha are some of the most resistant to the AI technology revolution. It’s the first tech evolution where the youngest workers aren’t the early adopters. That’s another invitation for HR to step in to understand the why behind their reluctance, to increase participation, and to keep the conversation surrounding AI integration developmental rather than judgmental. “We have a role to keep this positive and developmental, and that’s one that we can definitely play,” Liedke said.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
The Employee Advantage in the Age of AI
BY Katie Chambers July 01, 2026AI is reshaping conversations across the workforce, but those conversations look very different depending on where you sit. A recent survey of 1,400 U.S.-based employees conducted by Stephan Meier, an author and professor at Columbia Business School, found that 76% of executives reported their employees were enthusiastic about AI adoption. But when those individual contributors were asked, only 31% expressed that enthusiasm. The fear of being “replaced” by AI continues to be very real. During a fireside chat at From Day One’s Manhattan conference, Meier shared how AI is less a technology challenge than a people challenge. Drawing on his research and recent book, The Employee Advantage: How Putting Workers First Helps Business Thrive, he explored what conversations leaders should actually be having about transforming their companies and what it takes to bring employees along in an era of relentless change.Encouraging AI Adoption at Every Level The survey results demonstrate that “there’s clearly a disconnect,” said moderator Cadie Thompson, executive editor at Business Insider. Meier notes that this “staggering” disparity between the C-Suite, middle management and lower-level employees is comparable in other questions, such as “Are you informed about AI?” and even “Is the organization employee-centric?” Meier says the gap speaks not only to a lack of employee data, as employers place greater value on customer data, but also to a broader issue of disconnect at the highest levels of leadership. “The reality of an executive with AI is very different from the reality of individual contributors,” he said. Uncertainty is perhaps the primary contributor to employees’ distrust of AI. “Everybody feels it in their bones: the exponential growth, the fast-paced change, and uncertainty [are] just really, really bad for enthusiasm [and] being optimistic,” Meier said. Especially as many organizations are explicitly tying their layoffs to AI, “executives are talking about opportunity; employees are feeling something very different,” Thompson said. Meier says he is personally “very skeptical” about how many companies are actually firing people and replacing them with AI, using it as “just a good excuse” rather than acknowledging other issues like over-hiring or overestimating company growth.Proper positioning in internal and external communication efforts is key. “It’s a change management program problem that we actually know a lot about [already],” Meier said. He suggests using the Five I’s of change management, which are also applicable to transparent communication regarding AI adoption: 1. Inform: Be explicit about what you are doing, when, and why. 2. Incent: Explain the potential value and benefits to the employees. 3. Involve: Give employees an opportunity to have a say in initiatives or at least provide feedback. 4. Inspire: Articulate the bigger vision behind the initiative. 5. Instruct: Provide training and upskilling opportunities tied to the new tools and goals. The driver behind so many employers’ statements about AI, Thompson says, is efficiency, cost savings, and productivity. “Have we become too focused on what AI can save and not focused enough on what it can create?” she asked. Meier feels we have. Eventually, he says, AI will become commonplace, a great equalizer among companies that will all find ways to incorporate its productivity tools. “Differentiation [among competitors] comes from creating something new,” he said. Using AI to Make Work BetterThompson quoted Meier’s frequent refrain that “the goal shouldn’t simply be making work cheaper; it should be making work better.” Of course, we all experience work differently. That said, he boils employee engagement down to four simple motivators: purpose, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. How will AI impact those drivers? Meier predicts the most “at-risk” motivator is autonomy, since so many AI tools are tied to surveillance or may simply leave employees feeling disempowered. “I think you can use it in a way that kills those motivators or enhances them and really creates beautiful work and potential humanity unleashed… like [a] Renaissance version of whatever you’re doing.”Stephan Meier, Author of “The Employee Advantage,” and Professor of Business Strategy at Columbia Business School, signed copies of his book for session attendeesTo reach that latter position of creative revolution, Meier says employers should focus on skill-building and implement enticing, achievable projects. “That’s what motivates people: having a task that is just right for their level. Around 40% of people quit because they don’t learn anything new,” he said. “AI can create something that is beautiful when it comes to skills,” such as implementing an algorithm to help identify the ‘just right’ task to keep an employee engaged and productive. “That’s what Netflix does. That’s what algorithms do really well: personalizing. You can apply that to those ‘just right’ tasks and those internal marketplaces that many companies are now using.” The threat of AI in the workplace is not just literal but existential, as so many people find a sense of value and personal identity through their work. “That’s a challenge that we have to deal with,” Meier said, noting that employers and workers may need to devise other complementary tasks that require a human touch, or at least leave humans to focus on the higher-level complex thinking while AI handles the rest. He also cautions against the fallacy of the “first-mover advantage,” noting that early adopters don’t necessarily end up with the best or smartest implementation of the product. “Just because companies can do something with AI, doesn’t mean they should,” Meier. “It should be intentional. Because we can do more, strategy becomes even more important.” He cites vibe coding as an example of an AI implementation that is easy and satisfying but often ultimately produces a mediocre product because it lacks a human expert at the helm. Asking employees for feedback and prioritizing their expertise will help employers implement AI in an impactful, sustainable way. “The companies that are intentional or really strategic are the ones that are going to win.”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.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Future-Proofing HR in the Age of AI
BY Grace Turney June 29, 2026Julia Johnson marked her second day on the job at Cognizant with a history lesson. As the company’s new SVP, global talent management leader, she reminded the room that IBM, which spent 115 years building one of the world’s most recognized brands, was once called Computing, Tabulating and Recording Company. The rebranding happened in 1924. The lesson? What we call things matters, and the names we give new technologies shape how we use them.“If we had a time machine,” Johnson said, “we would rename it augmented intelligence, because it really requires having a human complete it—not being a rubber stamp,” Johnson said during an executive panel discussion at From Day One’s Manhattan conference. Moderator Lydia Dishman, SVP of content strategy, narrative and thought leadership at Method Communications, opened by citing a striking data point: 88% of HR leaders say their organizations have not yet realized significant business value from AI tools, according to a recent survey. The question the panel had gathered to answer wasn’t whether AI would transform work, it’s already doing that, but how to move from experimentation to real transformation while keeping the human part of work intact.Job Elimination Is the Wrong FrameThe most persistent misconception about AI, panelists agreed, is the idea that it eliminates jobs wholesale.“AI is really, really good at doing certain tasks,” said Scott Turner, partner at Mercer, who previously built agentic AI systems at Disney. “A job is a whole stack of tasks. Replacing a job is a human decision. If all those tasks in a job can be easily replaced by AI, perhaps you didn’t design that great a job for the human in the first place.”Owen O’Neill, executive director of HR technology and operations at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, pushed back on the broader pressure and market noise around AI: “Everybody needs to do what’s right for the culture and readiness of your organization, at the pace that works for you” he said.The flip side of that caution is not ignoring AI’s genuine implications. “What I cringe at is when people talk to their employees like, ‘Oh, this isn’t going to have an impact at all,’” Turner said. “That’s just disingenuous. It’s going to have an impact. Let’s try to do this thoughtfully.”Transformation Begins With the Right QuestionWhen organizations approach Mercer wanting to deploy AI in HR, Turner says the first question he asks is deceptively simple: What are you trying to improve? That question is the antidote to FOMO-driven adoption—the tendency to implement AI because competitors are doing it, or because a vendor has a compelling pitch. The most successful AI transformations he’s seen share a common trait: they identify specific, high-frequency workflows, redesign them around what AI does well, measure the results against clear KPIs, and keep humans meaningfully in the loop.Johnson echoed this, pointing to one of IBM’s earliest high-impact use cases. Employment verification letters, the kind a senior manager needs urgently when closing on a home, used to require up to two days of back-and-forth. Now they’re generated in any country, in about 30 seconds, around the clock, which made a significant difference for employees. “Be pragmatic, have the use case, look at the ROI, embrace what will be used,” she said about the experience in her former role. O’Neill put it plainly: “Tell me what your HR priorities are and what your strategy is, and I will tell you what our AI roadmap is to enable that. Start with what those priorities are, not the technology.”Panelists shared their perspectives and best practices on the topic, "Future-Proofing HR With AI: How to Lead, Adapt, and Keep the Human Touch in a Tech-Driven Era"Efficiency gains are real, but panelists were candid about areas where the business case doesn’t always hold up under scrutiny.Resume screening is one. O’Neill noted that Regeneron could received 1000’s of applications for a single role, making AI-assisted screening appear essential. But he was quick to identify the risk: “How we’ve hired in the past doesn’t necessarily reflect how we want to hire in the future. A good hire two years ago is not necessarily a good hire two years from now.”Performance management is another. AI can remove some bias, consolidate feedback, and save managers time, but, O’Neill says, that misses an important point. “Performance management can be seen as a social contract between an employee and a manager. Automating that risks dehumanizing it. It’s about the conversation, not the document.”The Talent Pipeline Problem No One Is SolvingDishman raised a concern that has received less attention than job elimination at the entry level: what happens to the pipeline that feeds middle management when the entry-level roles that have historically developed that talent disappear?Paul Tiesler, SVP of talent development and learning strategy at Moody’s Corporation, offered a structural answer. The traditional pyramid-shaped org chart, he says, may need to become an hourglass. Under that model, entry-level employees sit alongside AI, learning from it and compressing their career timelines. Middle managers are elevated into more senior-level thinking as AI handles the processes that currently bog them down. The people organizations hire at both levels share a trait: strong judgment, discernment, and critical thinking, skills AI cannot replicate.“You’re going to be hiring for exactly the same thing,” Tiesler said, “more so than technical skills, especially as AI is able to automate some of those technical skills.” Moody’s has already seen this play out within software and product development. “We sat down with them and said, ‘How can we make AI do this better for you,’” Tiesler said of its middle managers, “and they’ve been able to elevate their role, and juniors on their team are now getting to do more interesting work.”Putting the Human In the Loop—IntentionallyBill Beegle, senior global business solutions architect at Degreed, offered a different model for how AI can augment rather than automate: scenario-based role play. Degreed uses AI to help employees practice high-stakes conversations, difficult performance reviews, sensitive feedback, the transition from peer to manager, in a low-risk environment where they can make mistakes and receive structured feedback.“Unlike automating a process, this is putting it like a flight simulator,” Beegle said. “You get to try, you get to practice, you can make as many mistakes as you want. You’re not really going to crash a plane, you’re just talking to AI.”The use case has found particular traction in regulated industries like biopharma, where the wrong word in a conversation with a physician carries real consequences. And it represents something the panel returned to repeatedly: using AI not to remove the human, but to make the human better at the distinctly human parts of their job.Johnson crystallized the logic: “What are humans no good at? Finding needles in haystacks. What does LLM do really well? They find needles in haystacks, or find trends. Look at what the human is good at and amplify that.”Building Trust in Times of ChangeThe panel converged on change management as the most underrated element of AI adoption. Tiesler was direct about what doesn't work: “Edicts from down on high don’t work. Arbitrary ‘we’ve got to cut X percentage of headcount, we have to automate Y number of processes’ – that doesn’t really work.”What does work, panelists agreed, is co-creation with employees – sitting down with business teams, mapping their actual processes, and identifying genuine opportunities for relief. Transparency matters too. Johnson described the framework she used at IBM: “We’re going to tell you what we are doing, why we are doing it, when we’re doing it, and how it will impact you. It’s not hard, but it’s so often overlooked.”Beegle pointed to one practical lever organizations underuse: making skills transparent. When employees can see how their skills map to other internal roles and what would help them get there, the internal mobility conversation stops being abstract. “It’s a really important part, so people understand that it can benefit them.”Closing the session, Dishman asked the panel directly: can leading with AI and keeping the human touch actually coexist? Every panelist said yes, with conditions.Turner returned to the limits of what AI can actually do. Its model of truth is built entirely on language. “It has no concept that this is actually a chair and I’m touching it.” That gap between what AI can know and what humans embody through experience is permanent, and it’s where design comes in. “We are going to have a completely different set of knowledge than the LLM can ever have,” Turner said. “It’s about trying to find that balance of where it can be applied safely.”O’Neill said on a closing note: “We’re at step zero of a race that is going to go a million miles. We’re right at the beginning.”Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Tailoring Workplace Wellness: Designing Personalized Benefits for Today's Workforce
BY Grace Turney June 25, 2026When Rebecca Liebman took the stage for a panel on personalized workplace well-being, she pointed out something the audience hadn’t yet noticed: unlike her fellow panelists, she was holding a handheld microphone instead of wearing a clip-on. The reason was simple: clip-ons don’t attach well to dresses, and she’d asked for an alternative that worked for her. It was a small moment, but it captured the panel’s larger message. For years, employee benefits have been designed for one default kind of worker, and everyone else has been left to make it work anyway.The panel at From Day One’s Chicago half-day benefits conference, brought together five benefits leaders for a wide-ranging conversation moderated by Kim Quillen, business editor at the Chicago Tribune. The discussion covered why generic benefits packages fall short, how data and communication strategy can close that gap, and what it takes to actually move the needle on employee engagement.Meeting Employees Where They AreLara Johnson, senior director of employee growth and well-being at Netskope, a global cybersecurity company, says personalization at her company starts with acknowledging how different employees’ lives look. With a workforce spread across roughly three dozen countries and a limited well-being budget, her team built a “growth labs” program offering workshops on psychological safety and burnout, paired with platforms like LinkedIn Learning for professional development. The goal is to treat well-being and career growth as connected rather than separate priorities. “We believe when our employees grow, NetSkope grows,” Johnson said.Joe Park, director of benefits at The Aspen Group, parent company of Aspen Dental, shared a story from earlier in his career that reshaped how he thinks about communication. A leader once told him about a family member who didn’t learn he had stage-four lung cancer until it was too late, a moment that pushed her team to stop sending the same “vanilla” wellness message to everyone. Instead, they hired a communications specialist, studied workforce demographics, and tailored messaging and visuals by audience. According to Park, engagement rose significantly within a year. “It’s about meeting people where they are,” he said. “It’s important to really look at your data, look at your population demographics, and think about how you personalize that to meet your workforce.”In Chicago, panelists spoke about "The Power of Personalization in Workplace Well-Being"Rahul Rajvanshi, director of benefits and total rewards at Montefiore Health System, framed the stakes in plain terms: a nurse working overnight shifts, a physician balancing patient care with family obligations, and a remote scheduler all need different things from their benefits. “We need to deliver benefits, what our employees want versus what is easy for HR administrators to admin,” Rajvanshi said. When Montefiore noticed physicians missing summer appointments because of childcare conflicts, the health system added dependent care and elder care benefits, and saw utilization of related services jump by half.Holistic Wellness, With Budgets in MindJane Lyons, SVP of customer success at SmithRx, a pharmacy benefit manager built around price transparency, says pharmacy benefits are often the most frequent point of contact employees have with their health plan, sometimes a dozen times a year, compared with an annual doctor’s visit.That frequency, she says, makes every interaction an opportunity to educate members about cost-saving options, copay assistance, and alternative medications. “It’s really understanding where they are on their health literacy journey,” said Lyons. “We want to maximize those moments that matter.”The same principle applies beyond healthcare: employees often need guidance not just in accessing benefits, but in making complex decisions about how to use them. Personalization and timely support can be just as critical when workers are navigating their financial lives. “Financial planning is just life planning,” said Rebecca Liebman, co-founder and CEO of LearnLux. “Financial well-being is just how do I want to live my life, and how can I put a plan together that makes sense for me.”Two employees with identical salaries and debt loads might want completely different approaches: one focused on aggressively paying down debt, another comfortable investing while paying it off slowly. LearnLux’s certified financial planners field everything from questions about employee stock plans to urgent situations, like someone facing repossession of their car within days, says Liebman. When her organization rolls out programs across dozens of countries at once, the priority is offering consistent access to services while adapting the messaging to fit local financial norms and attitudes toward money.The conversation around financial well-being also extends to healthcare spending, where rising costs are forcing employers to rethink how they support employees and manage expenses. Lyons of SmithRx also addressed the rise of GLP-1 medications for diabetes and weight management, noting that in some cases these drugs now account for roughly 30% of a company’s pharmacy spend. Pairing access to the medications with nutrition support and other wraparound services, she says, is essential to sustaining results.Letting Data Guide the StrategySeveral panelists pointed to data as the foundation for personalization. Johnson described noticing a sharp spike in mental health service usage among Netskope’s Taiwan-based employees and tracing it back to an HR manager who had actively promoted the program. This finding helped the company refine its broader approach to reducing stigma around mental health support. Rajvanshi says Montefiore expanded its employee assistance program to round-the-clock availability after recognizing that nurses working overnight shifts couldn’t access support during standard daytime hours.On reaching employees who don’t open benefits emails, panelists emphasized simplicity and channel diversity. Johnson says her team relies heavily on Slack to share curated updates, while Park encouraged stripping benefits jargon entirely. Johnson also runs an annual “Benefits 101” session that breaks down basic terms like deductibles and health savings accounts in plain language, which she said resonates especially with younger employees and those new to the U.S. health system.Asked for a final piece of advice, the panelists largely agreed: start with data, not vendor pitches; treat well-being as inseparable from performance; and remember that the goal isn’t to hand every employee the same microphone—it’s to make sure they all have one that works for them.Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Meeting the Needs of a Workforce at Every Life Stage
BY Katie Chambers June 23, 2026A diverse workforce calls for a comprehensive benefits package that meets a wide range of needs, and today’s workplace is more varied than ever. With employees spanning Gen Z through Baby Boomers, workers bring different priorities, goals, and expectations shaped by where they are in life.Designing effective benefits today means building in flexibility and choice so employees can be supported at every stage of their careers and personal lives. During an executive panel discussion at From Day One’s Chicago half-day benefits conference, experts broke down best practices. “Depending on where you are in your life, maybe you value child care, or maybe you’re older and you don’t need that, and you’re looking for a subsidized gym membership. Or maybe you need neither of those, and you’re just hoping to get a little help with public transportation,” said Athar Siddiqee, VP, global total rewards at Micron Technologies. Given the differences of workers within the workplace, from life stage to location, options matter. “We introduced a flexible benefits plan in India, and it’s been just a huge hit. Think of it as a menu of various options, and you have a pool of dollars that you can use towards choosing the benefits that are right for you,” said Siddiqee. A newer addition to the benefits space, beyond traditional health insurance and retirement options, is financial wellness. Simply offering a 401(k) is no longer enough, says Crystal Chen, senior director of total rewards at Westinghouse Electric Company. “It’s more than just offering the benefits for employees to access, but also [making] sure they have the confidence to make the decisions related to financial planning,” Chen said. Those financial needs shift across life changes, so guidance matters. The organization offers both open enrollment webinars and one-on-one support, says Chen. While finances are the leading cause of stress in the workplace, says Jon Simon, VP of sales at CareBenefits by Care.com, caregiving is the close runner-up. “We’ve seen an explosion in the cost of care recently, and a significant portion of the population now has caregiving responsibilities, whether it’s school-age children, aging parents, pets, or even for yourself,” he said. “That’s preventing people from being physically, emotionally, and certainly mentally present at work. Employers are recognizing that there are policy conversations around normalizing responsibilities that employees bear, but also connecting employees with different resources and benefits to support them on their caregiving journey.”Moderator Patricia Garland, adjunct instructor at Loyola University of Chicago, cited some of Simon’s research “that shows that about 75% of employees are caregivers in some sense of the word, but only about 35% identify themselves that way.” That stigma stems from the creeping 24/7 impact caregiving can have on a person’s life, intruding on their professional and personal identity. It’s also partially gendered, with more male caregivers now in the workforce, not because more men are doing the caregiving, but because women are increasingly leaving the workforce due to it, leading to approximately $300K in lifetime income loss, even for those who eventually return. Normalizing openness and flexibility about caregiving in the workplace is key to retention, Simon says, encouraging employers to talk about caregiving not in clinical terms but more as another important and respectable responsibility that is, in turn, supported by workplace benefits. It should not signal “lack of commitment” to the job. Panelists spoke about "Inclusive Benefits Strategies for a Multigenerational Workforce"For larger international corporations, benefits may need to be customized to suit specific cultures. For example, not all cultures are comfortable talking to a stranger on an EAP line, and some may feel better supported by family at home in a multigenerational household, Siddiqee said. But some young single people in those countries had been feeling totally isolated due to Covid, so Micron deployed “TMAs” or “team member advocates,” on-site licensed therapists to boost the company’s wellness portfolio. Keeping Employees Informed and EngagedProviding a great roster of benefits is one challenge; effectively communicating those offerings to employees is another. “We've leveraged some technology to be able to make personalized personas that represent different employee groups that can resonate with our employees to be able to talk about the experiences with our benefits in a way that will be relatable to them, in a way that is more tailored toward their experience with the benefits,” said Joshua Lemon, global senior director, head of total rewards, Resideo. A persona is a representation of a significant segment of workers, such as a young, family-focused office professional or a single factory worker nearing retirement, says Lemon. Specific case studies can make the flexibility of benefits feel both tangible and attainable. Technology can also help employers learn which benefits are the best fit for their workforce, and gauge effective deployment of packages. “[You should be] leveraging data for the power [of] detecting risk of rising cost, for detecting conditions that you need to manage, for detecting the various ways that your life stages and generational workforces might want to attack the benefits, and how they’re using their benefits today,” said Tom Sondergeld, senior director of analysis, research & solutions, enterprise employers at Truven. As generations intersect, they face various life-change challenges at different times. “We have to use the data to drive our communication strategy, and the way we design our benefits today, because one size fits all doesn’t work anymore.” Data offers a holistic approach to understanding a whole person and their specific needs: from pharmacy to short-term disability and beyond. Then, the human HR representatives, not the computer, can interpret it to better communicate what benefits would be most useful to them. Sondergeld cautions against using AI to analyze PHI (personal health information). “You have to be very careful because AI doesn’t have morals. It will go after whatever it needs to go after, unless you give it strict boundaries and a cage. And it’s totally discoverable,” he said, referring to its less-than-stellar ability to keep private information truly private. Direct feedback from employees is also essential. “For internal resources, we look at more than just benefits information, but look at all the employee cycles. For example, engagement surveys, exit interviews, and also we do pulse surveys, making sure we proactively ask people how they feel about the program,” Chen said. “A lot of times people don’t speak up unless they encounter some challenges using the program, so we try to use those opportunities to solicit some positive feedback [too].” Lemon suggests using “conjoint surveys,” which solicit anonymous but highly personal feedback from employees, encouraging them to choose among or rank certain current or potential benefit offerings to provide an honest look at what is most valuable to them. “It helps you balance the needs of your organization broadly in a balanced approach, because you can then go back and review that data to say, ‘How am I serving different employees at different demographics and different generations? Where are the biggest needs, and what would be a good way to allocate the limited resources that you have?’ It’s one of the things we’ve still been benefiting from a year later.” 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.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
The Evolving Benefits Landscape: Personalization, AI, and the New Era of Employee-Centered Strategy
BY Jessica Swenson June 18, 2026Many employers responded to increasingly diverse workforces and the pandemic-era talent landscape by adding niche benefits, only to find that employees either don’t know about them or aren’t using them. Amid continuously mounting financial pressures, those same organizations are now facing a renewed focus on the cost of benefits packages and their administration.“There is more focus from business leaders asking, ‘Do we need to be spending this extra money in these extra ways? Is this the right thing to do for our people?’” said Amy Waickman, global head of benefits at Arup. She suggests evaluating each benefit individually to determine whether it serves a clear purpose, is well-communicated, and is being used. “Because if it’s not, then what’s the value of having it out there?”In conversation with HR Brew reporter Mikaela Cohen at From Day One’s half-day Chicago benefits conference, Waickman discussed strategies to balance budget requirements with an optimized employee benefits experience.Growing legislation regarding pay transparency means that employees can more easily learn about and compare compensation with their peers. As a result, said Waickman, “benefits are going to become an increasing differentiator in total rewards packages.”While budget constraints can force difficult benefits decisions for employers, she recommends taking a structured, cautious approach rather than abruptly pausing or cancelling offerings. Organizations need to know why they’re pausing a benefit and what outcomes they need to see to make a go-forward decision. Communication is also key to keeping employees informed and maintaining trust.Amy Waickman, global head of benefits at Arup, spoke with Mikaela Cohen, reporter at HR Brew, during the fireside chat in Chicago Employers can optimize access to existing benefit programs by helping their teams better navigate their options, she says, especially during times of crisis. The ability to meet employees where they are and fulfill their unique needs simplifies the experience and helps reduce their anxiety. However, she shared that the old model of reaching out to an HR contact for guidance is shifting, as companies are now exploring AI to offer true personalization. She expects it to change how employees interact with their company’s benefits ecosystem—possibly within the next six-to-twelve months.“There’s a change now. In the past, it’s been really difficult to communicate and navigate well at a personal level. Now, with AI, I think there’s going to be an opportunity to help employees navigate that on a personalized, individual basis based on their circumstances,” she said. While AI has transformed the benefits landscape significantly, Waickman noted that it happened a little slower than the industry expected—which she thinks is a good thing. Her HR and benefits team has improved efficiency in some administrative and operational tasks by using AI to compare year-over-year plan documents, automate surface-level invoice checks, or translate foreign-language policies and handbooks.But an element of caution is also warranted. One area of focus for Arup’s leadership team is vendor AI practices. At each contract renewal, the company inquires how employee data is used in vendor systems to determine whether contractual guardrails are needed. “I think there is a danger there of not protecting our employees, and making sure that we’re getting the best outcomes for our people. We don’t want our vendors to be using AI or using data in a way that would inhibit that.”One challenge of integrating AI into HR operations is identifying and measuring ROI. In the planning stages, Waickman quantifies its value through time saved, but in later phases it can be difficult to retroactively confirm those projections.“We can say we’re freeing up X amount of time from our benefit professionals to do these other sorts of activities and things, but is there going to be a way to look back and say actually we did free up [a specific] amount of time, and what does that look like compared to what we expected?”To offset employee uncertainty about the advent of AI and job security, she takes an approach that shows how AI can support and elevate them. “All we can do as leaders is make sure that we are demonstrating clearly the ways that AI can help them become more efficient,” she said, “and then continually give them other opportunities to expand, so that they feel confident around their job security.”Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Recognizing and Retaining a Distributed Workforce
BY Jessica Swenson June 15, 2026Tangible recognition of the unique needs employees face on a daily basis is a key to engagement and retention, says Heidi DeSautel, managing director of client delivery at Growth Operators. This can show up as schedule flexibility, location flexibility, and customized benefit programs that enable employees to fulfill familial responsibilities and improve their quality of life in meaningful ways.“We see a lot of generational differences on our team. We really try to be intentional, to meet them where they are, and provide them with support that they value as recognition in our workforce.” she said. “Just really understanding and valuing where they’re at and being intentional about providing that for them, so that they can support our clients the best they can.”Methods to engage and recognize distributed employees were discussed by a panel of leaders at From Day One’s Minneapolis conference. The panel was moderated by Colleen Flaherty Manchester, professor of work and organizations and director of the center for HR and labor studies for Carlson School of Management. Elissa Beach, director of HR for WCG, saw her company embrace fully remote work after the pandemic, including a significant reduction in office space. WCG maintained its strong connections by establishing a cross-functional, multi-level project team that gathered data through employee research, focus groups, and surveys to inform a new strategy and playbook that help teams stay connected.The playbook helps employees and managers identify potential team activities based on time allotments, financial budgets, and specific target categories like communication, collaboration, connection, or community. “We were ultimately recognized for this particular playbook in the remote work excellence category, but we continue to evolve it and add to it over time, and it's been something that all of our employees continue to use daily,” Beach said.The group of leaders spoke about "Recognizing and Retaining a Distributed Workforce" on stage in Minneapolis Other organizations intentionally create connection opportunities through planned in-person and group events. Sherrie Kronforst, VP of HR for Thrivent, discussed the summits, meetings, virtual events, and collaborative technology that her organization uses to maintain strong intercompany relationships. Thrivent also offers a virtual recognition program through a platform called Pathfinders, and provides every employee an annual recognition budget each year. “Anybody can recognize anybody,” Kronforst said, “and every employee gets a budget every year, so they can [give] a social recognition, or a points-based recognition.”Beach acknowledges that employees want to be seen by their broader work community and not just their boss. By shifting employee recognition more heavily to Microsoft Teams channels, she says that WCG has seen broadened engagement and amplified social connection between teams. This helps take the onus off of managers as a single source of recognition and employee celebration. The continuous change and uncertainty in today’s workplace, especially regarding AI and job security, creates a clear need to build and sustain employee resilience. Acknowledging employee fears, creating supportive cultures, and encouraging peer support in collaborative spaces are some simple ways that employers can help teams to build that resilience, says DeSautel. In addition to virtual connection points like Slack, DeSautel says, she sees clients create geographical hubs that enable employees to get together in person. “They try and get them together in person a couple times a year, so that they are able to meet each other and create that personal relationship. I think that’s one of the things that helps employees the most with resilience.”Supporting a healthcare workforce that spans a variety of patient-facing facilities with varying roles, scopes of work, and computer access results in a completely different set of needs. Jen Bailey, VP of total rewards and HR shared services at Allina Health, spoke about the multi-faceted approach Allina takes to equip its leaders to recognize employees in real time. This model includes everything from digital social recognition platforms to in-person leader huddles, group conversations, monetary and non-monetary recognition, and care-on-the-spot acknowledgements.“It’s a really unique blend of trying to provide the leaders with the tools that they need and being able to meet the employees where they're at, so it's always evolving,” Bailey said.To position employees for recognition through development and advancement opportunities, some organizations are focusing on leadership competencies, talent pipeline maximization, and elevated performance appraisal systems. “We’re really looking at that senior leadership group to be the folks who are leading us into the future,” said Kronforst, “so we have recently reset expectations for leaders; we’ve created executive level competencies.”Through this refined performance management program, Thrivent’s leaders are better positioned for the proactive problem-solving and accelerated decision-making that will eliminate bottlenecks and maintain momentum on strategic organizational initiatives. Leaders are also expected to not only reach their goals, but reach them in a way that aligns with the company’s culture and values. “It’s not just the what, but the how,” said Kronforst. “So, making sure that we’re connecting the dots, [looking at] what are we developing and how are we rewarding and recognizing the right behaviors.”Increasing shortages of healthcare workers has caused Bailey and team to think creatively about how to maintain a strong talent pipeline. Allina has built apprentice programs for hard-to-fill clinical positions, creating internal mobility for existing Allina employees while opening up entry-level positions and career advancement options for external candidates.Employees are encouraged to explore new roles within system clinics, hospitals, and specialty sites before Allina seeks external hires. “Making sure that we’re leveraging our internal talent before we go to the external market has been another big piece of that internal growth and recognition,” said Bailey. “So, investing in who and how is going to fill those roles for us, then leveraging that internal talent. How do we ensure that we’re providing those growth opportunities?”For those external hires it does make, Allina launched a new program to improve the experience for first-year employees, which includes an in-house wellbeing navigation program designed in partnership with mental health physicians and EAP partners. Confidential navigators help employees locate and connect with the appropriate resources for their needs. The American Hospital Association has recognized this initiative, says Bailey, and the program’s growth is increasingly driven by word-of-mouth rather than internal marketing efforts, demonstrating the value derived by employees.She framed employee well-being support as a crucial element of HR: “from the retention standpoint, what can we offer as an employee that is unique and special for them, so that they can not only care for the community but for themselves.”Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer, content strategist, and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Designing Well-Being Strategies for Every Generation at Work
BY Ade Akin June 12, 2026When Ryan Seman sat down for his second therapy session, it wasn’t because he was in crisis, but rather because he wanted to know if the mental health benefit he had just rolled out to thousands of employees at Starkey actually worked.“I just completed my second session just to see what the experience is like,” he said during a panel at From Day One’s Minneapolis conference. “I have to tell you, it’s light years ahead of the traditional EAP programs that maybe we started our careers with.”That willingness to test-drive his own well-being initiative, and to talk about it openly, captured the spirit of a wide-ranging panel discussion titled “Holistic and Inclusive Well-Being Strategies for a Multigenerational Workforce.” The session brought together leaders from total rewards, generalist HR, health innovation, and hearing technology. Moderated by Megan Thompson, special correspondent for PBS News, the conversation moved beyond benefits checklists. It explored how listening, trust, and a fundamental rethinking of health benefits can reshape employee experience.Listening Before LaunchingOrganizations need to understand what their employees actually need for any benefit program to succeed. For Ashley Halvorson, the VP of HR at Thomson Reuters, that starts with a “stacked listening strategies” approach.“We do use the traditional organizational health index survey,” she said, noting that 79% of the company’s 27,000 employees take the survey each year. “But that’s one time a year, right? So we also do a pulse survey pretty much weekly with a very small portion of our employees to just kind of track along with what their needs are as well.”Halvorson also encourages informal touchpoints. “As much as we can get people together in person, whenever we have a leader visit a site, we’ll do a coffee chat, or we call it office hours, and kind of open it up just to whatever people need. Sometimes benefits come up, sometimes not, but usually you can hear a little bit more about what’s stressing them,” she added.Joshua Lemon, the global senior director and head of total rewards at Resideo, takes listening a step further with data. “We actually specifically tried to hone in on the trade-offs that they wanted to make, specifically around their benefits. We did a conjoint study to try to end up digging another layer deeper,” he said. Resideo also created a Total Rewards Insight Team, gathering select managers across the business to relay what they hear from employees, an approach that sometimes highlights needs traditional surveys might miss.Breaking the StigmaSeman, the VP of health and well-being at Starkey, immediately identified a glaring gap when he joined the hearing-aid manufacturer two years ago. “A clearly significant void we had was a mental well-being solution,” he said. “We had a limited service in the U.S. and nothing outside the U.S.” Starkey settled on a global provider after a year-long Request for Proposal (RFP) process. The target engagement rate was 10% in the first year. “We hit that after three months,” Seman said.Panelists spoke about "Holistic and Inclusive Well-Being Strategies for a Multigenerational Workforce" in Minneapolis The success hinged on confronting stigma head-on. “I don’t want my employer to know I went to the EAP; they’re going to know I went, they’re going to wonder why I went, and I don’t want that cloud hanging over me,” Seman added, articulating the unspoken fear many employees share. Starkey’s solution offers both virtual and in-person options.Halvorson emphasized the power of peer influence in driving the adoption of well-being benefits. “One of the things that we found to be really successful is to find those influential people within the business, maybe not even at the leadership level, to try out some of these programs and be able to talk about it themselves from personal experience.” Starkey took that advice literally: ambassadors wear branded shirts with QR codes on the back that link directly to the mental health app. “People are more willing to engage or pick up the phone because they’ve seen proof of concept,” Seman said.A New Paradigm for HealthDr. William Ferro, founder and CEO of Betr Health, brought a provocative diagnosis to the panel. “The CFO is putting a lot of pressure on benefits now to say, 'hey, these costs are growing so high, and essentially, what are we getting for it?'” he said. “HR is saying to the benefits, 'my people are exhausted mentally and physically, none of this stuff seems to be really moving the needle, so there’s a pressure cooker happening.'”For Dr. Ferro, the deeper problem isn’t just which benefits companies offer, it’s the belief system behind them. “If the belief system is that people lack willpower, lack motivation, it’s their age, it’s their genetics, then you’re going to come up with a program and a paradigm that’s going to lead them down the wrong road,” he pointed out. “We’re blaming and shaming people all the time that they’re having issues with their weight, their sleep, their mood, they’re constantly being put on medication after medication. So one day we can retire, they give us the watch, and now we become a professional patient for the rest of our lives.”Ferro advocates a gut-first, food-as-medicine approach through Betr Health, emphasizing that many well-being solutions are “built on the wrong paradigm.” He pointed to stark workforce data: “95% of the people come in with low energy, 78% come up with back pain, neck pain, and joint pain. 65% have sleep issues, digestive issues. So this is your workforce coming in every day.” His recommendation is deceptively simple: “We need to make sure we’re giving them the right input so they can get the right output.” At Resideo, Lemon takes a three-pillar approach that addresses mental health, physical health, and financial well-being simultaneously. “For mental health, we make a resource available that goes deep into the mental wellness space, beyond meditation, but also including access to psychiatrists and therapists,” he said. The company also runs financial workshops and wellness challenges centered around nutrition and physical activity.Focusing on EquityWith a workforce that includes Gen Z to Baby Boomers, the panel wrestled with how to ensure fairness without offering identical benefits to everyone. This can be especially difficult in times of constrained budgets. Every panelist acknowledged the growing tension between ambition and budget regarding well-being benefits. “Financial restraints are a reality for most of us,” Seman said. “Where are you getting optimal engagement with a measurable ROI? Every vendor will tell you they’ve got the greatest ROI. If that were the case, we’d all have 81-point solutions in place. The reality is not everything works for every individual.”“We try to focus on making things equitable, but not equal, necessarily,” Halvorson said. “We have a lot of different benefits across our offerings, and it’s just what people really choose to engage with and interact with.”Lemon emphasizes that a benefit’s value isn’t captured in utilization numbers. “We might still consider a benefit program to be successful because of the way that it ends up making our employees feel about working for our company,” he said. “It might be something that you choose to offer because you want to create an inclusive environment for your employees.”Halvorson described Thomson Reuters’ “work from anywhere” policy, which allows employees to work remotely for four to eight weeks at a stretch. “We don’t say what they have to do, or we don’t constrain it to what they can do while they’re away,” she said. “I’ve seen some new moms say, ‘I got to get out of the Minnesota winter, and I’m going to be down in Florida for two weeks, so that my kids can be outside and on the beach.’ I’ve even seen people say, ‘I don’t want to commute to work in the middle weeks of January.’ We don’t judge how people use it.”For Halvorson, the future of well-being may lie less in adding new benefits and more in personalizing recognition. She shared an emerging conversation at Thomson Reuters: “At times when we have top-performing employees, we give out a cash bonus, or maybe some equity. Would you appreciate it more, though, if we said, " Hey, I know that you’re really into wellness. Maybe I’ll pay for you to go to a wellness retreat for a week instead, or maybe I’ll pay for your gym membership.” The goal, she said, is to signal to employees: “We know them, we value them, and we want to give them a little bit of choice in how they feel recognized and valued.”One unifying message stood out as the panel discussion came to an end: an effective well-being strategy requires listening deeply, challenging old assumptions, and trusting employees to know what they need. Simply rolling out as many benefits as possible isn’t enough. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Finding True North: How to Lead Organizations Authentically and With Moral Clarity
BY Katie Chambers June 08, 2026What does it mean to be an authentic leader? “I’ve always wondered why that’s a hard question,” said Bill George, author of True North: Leading Authentically in Today’s Workplace, Emerging Leader Edition, and former CEO of Medtronic, during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Minneapolis conference. “I think a lot of people are afraid. They feel like they have to go into the workplace and wear a mask. Being authentic is being genuine; it’s being who you are. You [should] actually constantly grow as a leader. You’re adapting to a situation.”During the session moderated by Kristen Painter, business editor at the Minnesota Star Tribune, George shared practical strategies and techniques for navigating today’s complex world, including advice on personal values, crisis leadership, and self-awareness.What Is a Leader’s True North?In his book, George defines the new true north as a call for leaders to step up in an era of intersecting crises. “It’s easy to follow your true north, follow your values, your purpose, until you get under pressure, and you have to decide between two options,” George said. “And that’s the real test. Where there may be sacrifices you have to make, do you have the moral courage to step up and follow what you believe, or do you back down?”Painter noted one recent crisis: the sudden rollback on corporate DEI pledges. “Do you think moral courage is actually in decline, or has the cost of exercising it simply gone up for leaders?” she asked. George does think leaders are afraid of the current government, so even though they might quietly continue all DEI practices personally within the company, they don’t want it explicitly stated. He cites Costco leader Ron Backer as an ideal example of a leader who stood up for his beliefs in the face of DEI backlash and received an overwhelming 98% vote of support from his shareholders. It’s these moments that matter for an organization. “Do you stand up and be counted? Everyone’s watching you inside the company and outside the company, and they frankly don’t believe anything you say if you don’t stand up under pressure,” George said. Contrary to some belief, having a moral center is actually good for business. “You have to act. Everyone’s so worried about short-term earnings. You better worry about long-term building your organization with the right people.” A leader’s primary obligation, George says, is always to their employees. “Without employees, there’s no support for your customers.” One recent practical, and harrowing, example: Operation Metro Surge, the ICE invasion on Minneapolis. George advised companies to issue statements to their employees. “Our employees’ welfare is the number one thing we have to do, and we have,” he said. “We’ll provide a safe workplace, we’ll provide for your security, and we will do everything to provide for your well-being. And if there are any issues, we will send in our security teams and our lawyers to support you and to help you,” he said. He would have issued a blunt, honest statement like that to employees, and done so quickly. He feels that while some local business owners eventually rose to the moment, they generally waited too long. Why Nuance Is Effective “A lot of leaders snap back to what you’ve identified in this book as sort of a command-and-control style of leadership. I’ll call it an old school way of leading, very top down, very much it leads to micromanagement, which is a disempowering feeling for workers,” Painter said. Engaged leaders, rather than those blanketly issuing orders, are more effective. George cites Corie Barry of Best Buy as an example: during Covid, she closed 1,083 stores and furloughed 82,000 workers, once she could ensure they would be covered by government unemployment benefits. Then she encouraged each local store to convert to a warehouse for online shipping, letting the store decide how best to manage it for their own community. “She gave everyone the authority. So that to me is an engaged leader, an example of how you should lead in a crisis. But she didn’t just hang back in our office and say, ‘you guys handle it.’”Bill George signed complimentary copies of his book True North for session attendees George says one of the toughest problems faced by middle managers is when the top tier of leadership implements a “command-and-control” style, while the manager still wants to lead with morals and heart. “What you have to do is stay true to your values, your purpose, and perform. And if you perform, you’ll be okay, but you still have to be an empowering leader for your people. You can’t just flip [when times get tough],” he said. He encourages organizations to be ruthless when it comes to toxic leaders: move them out before they become too damaging. Middle managers should be empowered as leaders of their portion of the business, to inspire their own teams and take ownership over results. George advises that leaders “have the courage to be the voice of our values, and not to be rules-based, but to be empowering, and to make moves to ensure that we have empowering leaders throughout our organization.” That means going directly to workers to talk one-on-one about problems and work together on solutions, rather than relying on secondhand feedback that may be filtered. The future is less “hero leader” and more “coach.” And coaches care about their people. “Let them be in the part of the organization where they can use their greatest skills. Then align them around your purpose and values,” he said. “This is not soft. Challenge people! Ask them how they can do better. Work with them to solve problems.” 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.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Bringing Employees Together at a Time of Rapid Change
BY Ade Akin June 03, 2026Patty Babler, SVP, HR, global employee & labor relations and HR operations at Cargill, opened a fireside chat at From Day One’s Minneapolis conference with a candid assessment of the company’s employee experience. Babler discussed how Cargill is rethinking onboarding as part of a broader effort to better support its 155,000 employees worldwide.“Our onboarding process is complicated, with lots of systems to navigate for a brand-new employee,” she told moderator Allison Kaplan, director of innovation and engagement at the Minnesota Star Tribune. Her frankness set the tone for a wide-ranging discussion that touched on employee experience, AI-powered recruiting, a global portal launch, crisis leadership, and more. Closing the Frontline GapUntil recently, Cargill’s production employees’ top question for HR was how to access time, pay and benefits.“Many of our programs were really focused on our professional workforce,” said Babler. To close that gap, Cargill launched Powered by Plants, an initiative that gathered feedback from frontline workers and turned it into action – creating a work experience based on employees say matters most. It is a multi-year program to improve the end-to-end experience for our plant employees. The results included addressing the pain points and improving the hiring process, automated scheduling, an employee portal for pay and benefits, and a move away from paper forms. Patty Babler, SVP, HR, global employee & labor relations and HR operations at Cargill, left, spoke with moderator Allison Kaplan, director of innovation and engagement at the Minnesota Star TribuneThe most dramatic changes were made in the Talent Acquisition processes. Cargill once took up to two weeks to make job offers, while competitors were hiring on the spot. The company deployed an AI-powered recruiting assistant named Ana to address its slow hiring process and improve candidates’ experience. “We’ve reduced our time to hire from over two weeks to within a day,” Babler said, closing a critical gap in Cargill’s talent pipeline.From Using AI to Doing AIBabler drew a distinction that she repeated throughout the session. “Instead of thinking about using AI, we have to ‘do’ AI.” The difference, she says, is between applying AI to existing processes and rethinking those processes entirely. “It’s really challenging that process mindset we’ve all been used to,” she said. “If we don’t stop ‘using’ and get into ‘doing’ AI, I think we’re going to be behind as HR professionals.”Consider an unlikely candidate for AI: employee relations. Cargill recently built an agent that drafts interview questions, synthesizes case data, analyzes credibility, and sequences events to flag potential problems and creates an investigation summary report for review by the team, saving time.“Our employee relations specialists are able to focus on what matters most, providing proactive employee relations support and consulting,” Babler said. The goal is to free specialists for work that requires human judgment, she says. One Portal to Unify 155,000 EmployeesCargill had a vision of an integrated employee experience for more than a decade, and recently launched its new employee portal, “CargillNow.” recently launched. CargillNow it isn’t only about the HR experience; it’s built on the ServiceNow platform and unifies HR, IT, procurement, and finance resources into a single portal accessible from any device. “We launched a global deployment in four functions for all of our employees,” Babler said. Over 19,000 employees had already accessed the system just after the portal’s launch, and Babler describes the rollout as “really, really smooth.” Babler credits her team for the successful rollout. “I think it’s because of the people and the team we have, and I’m so proud,” she added.Leading Through Crisis, Grounded in ValuesWith operations in 70 countries, Cargill navigates a constant stream of geopolitical, environmental, and local disruptions. Babler described a crisis action network that connects employee relations teams around the world to respond to disruptions such as plant fires, labor disruptions, or natural disasters. Babler says Cargill’s approach is consistent: Put people first, engage managers, and empower local leaders. For example, Cargill deployed on-site employee assistance program sessions, on-line group sessions, and individual support during Operation Metro Surge occurred. “We empower our leaders and are flexible and adaptable based on what our employees need, depending on the situation,” Babler said.Underpinning that flexibility is a set of values Babler says she has found only at Cargill. “We put people first, we reach higher, and we do the right thing,” she said. “No matter where you are in the world, our values come out everywhere.”The Road Ahead: Skills, Speed, and Hyper-PersonalizationLooking forward, Babler pointed to strategic workforce planning as a critical opportunity. “We now can leverage AI to think about where those talent needs are, where we have critical roles,” she said. She advocates for shifting focus from jobs to skills, but technology alone won’t close the expectation gap. Employees, regardless of generation, are demanding a different employee experience. “We’re seeing different expectations from an employee experience perspective,” she said.Her vision involves hyper-personalization that includes using the CargillNow platform to orient new hires before day one, share the company’s story, and accelerate proficiency, providing a more welcoming experience for new employees. “How can we do that in a tech-enabled world that is very personalized? It’s hyper-personalization going forward,” she added.Kaplan closed the session with a question about the future: In a year, with CargillNow humming and AI tools fully embedded, what changes? “I do think we’ll be much more proactive, we’ll have way better insights and perspectives,” she said. “Think about where we were 12 months ago from an AI perspective and where we are today. It’s not getting slower; it will be even faster.”Babler ended the conversation with a saying she often returns to: “If your head and your heart are pointed in the right direction, you never have to worry about your feet.” That grounded mindset may be the most enduring tool of all for a 160-year-old company navigating a revolution in HR. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Skills That Stick: How Tech and Tools Are Boosting Learning and Development
BY Grace Turney June 02, 2026When Christine Karel, head of enterprise learning at Ameriprise Financial, joined early conversations around enterprise adoption of Microsoft Copilot, she pushed for learning and development to be included from the outset to ensure the investment translated into real business value. She observed that many AI rollouts are initially centered on technology, risk, and compliance, without a clear strategy for how employees would apply these tools to drive performance and productivity outcomes. Karel emphasized that deploying AI at scale is only part of the equation. Organizations are now focused on closing the gap between access and impact by helping employees build the capability to use AI in meaningful, role-specific ways. When done well, this shift enables faster decision-making, improved productivity, and a stronger return on technology investments“If you launch a massive investment like Copilot across an organization,” said Karel, “how are we, as talent and learning and HR, supporting that initiative?” That question, and the lessons behind it, set the tone for a lively panel discussion at a From Day One’s Minneapolis conference. A panel of leaders dug into how companies are scrambling to build AI fluency among employees, why the pace of change keeps outrunning their strategies, and what it will take for L&D to earn a permanent seat at the table. The panel was moderated by Evan Ramstad, business columnist for the Minnesota Star Tribune.When the Tool Launches Before the TrainingThe story Karel told about Copilot wasn’t unique. Michelle Anderson, VP of global learning & development at AmTrust Financial Services, described almost the same experience. “A couple years ago, we launched Copilot to the entire company without us, they didn’t come to L&D at all, and then they wondered, ‘Well, why did this fall flat? Why isn’t anybody using it?’” The company pulled the tool back and is now building its own internal solution. L&D has a seat at that table now, Anderson says, but only because the first attempt failed.The pattern reveals something important: AI adoption isn’t primarily a technology problem. It’s a learning problem. People arrive with wildly different baselines: some treat AI like Google, others are genuinely uncertain what it can do. And without a deliberate strategy to meet them where they are, even well-funded rollouts stall.Anderson’s team at AmTrust has responded with a framework called Grow, designed to weave learning into employees’ daily workflow rather than tacking it on as a separate task. The system uses job descriptions and self-reported skills to recommend relevant development, surfacing nudges through Microsoft Viva Learning directly inside Teams. Managers are expected to reinforce the habit (a minimum of one hour of learning per month is company policy) because, as Anderson put it, “if your manager doesn’t support something, you’re not going to find the time to do it.”Measuring Comfort, Not Just CompletionOne of the sharper debates among panelists was how, and whether, to assess employees’ comfort with AI tools. Anderson said AmTrust deliberately chose not to survey its workforce on the topic. “We were worried that there would be fear associated with it,” she said. “And I don’t think we’re ready to address that fear yet.”Panelists shared insights on "Skills That Stick: How Tech and Tools Are Boosting Learning and Development" during the discussion in Minneapolis Carita Hibben, VP of HR at C.H. Robinson, took a different approach. About two years into what she described as a comprehensive AI transformation at the logistics company, her team conducted a pulse survey asking employees to rate their comfort with AI in their daily work. Around 73% said they were comfortable—a result Hibben called encouraging, and one that also yielded “actionable insights on areas that we might need to dive deeper into.”C.H. Robinson has also leaned into AI-powered role-play simulations. Using a platform, employees and managers can practice challenging conversations by either playing themselves or switching roles to see the scenario from the other side. The same kind of simulation is used by the company’s sales and account management teams to prepare for difficult customer conversations. Hibben noted that utilization spikes during performance review periods and other high-stakes moments, even without formal requirements to use the tool.AmTrust has built out similar functionality through LinkedIn Learning, with the added ability to create custom simulations tailored to specific roles. The platform scores participants and recommends follow-on coursework based on performance. Anderson’s team is now exploring how to embed those simulations into new-hire programs for claims associates.Closing the Loop at the C-Suite LevelMoses Berkowitz, chief revenue officer at Censia AI, works closely with CHROs, CFOs, and CEOs on workforce strategy. He offered a bird’s-eye view of what’s driving urgency at the top of organizations. “This is a CEO and board-level conversation right now,” he said, “and the conversation in 10 out of 10 rooms is that this is going to have a massive impact on our workforce. Not in a scary way, but jobs are really going to change.”What gives him optimism, Berkowitz said, is that conversations previously happening in silos are now happening in the same room: What skills does the business actually need? What do our employees have? Where’s the gap? That alignment, he says, is the foundation for meaningful progress.Karel echoed that framing, describing how Ameriprise’s AI Leadership Council, originally composed of technology, risk, and compliance leaders, has expanded to include talent, communications, and business unit representatives. The lesson she drew was pointed: you can only get so far with a tool. “The people that run the tool, that think through the tool, and actually work around the tool are really what we need to be thinking about.”Berkowitz added a striking data point from his firm’s work with one of the world’s largest consulting companies: out of 400,000 employees, the single heaviest user of their internal AI tools is the CEO. “That sends a message to everyone that we take this seriously.”The Half-Life ProblemSkills are expiring faster than ever, and AI is accelerating that trend at a remarkable pace. Berkowitz says that the half-life of a skill has collapsed to under five years, and for anything AI-adjacent, it’s compressing even faster.The implications for L&D are significant. Berkowitz described working with a university that invested $250,000 in an AI training program. Six months after launch, the program was obsolete—the underlying technology had moved on. “As the half-life of skills compresses, we need to think about how we build programs differently,” he said.The panelists largely agreed that the answer isn’t to build more programs faster, but to build differently. That formal, comprehensive training curriculum may simply become too time-intensive to justify, says Anderson. “We’re going to have to get to the point where we’re not building big giant formal programs anymore. We’re building more in the flow of work, in the place that they need it.”Karel put it plainly: AI makes it faster and easier to create content, but that won’t solve the structural problem if organizations are building around the wrong model entirely. What will endure, Karel says, are the foundational capabilities: critical thinking, adaptability, ethical judgment. “Those are old skills. If you could just base the foundation on some of those things, those are going to be the things that take you along the way.”The Human Element Doesn’t DisappearAs the conversation turned to productivity, Berkowitz gently pushed back on the framing that tends to dominate headlines. “The topic of productivity, it’s all we want to talk about in the media, and we’re replacing workers, but I think it’s a bit of a red herring.” The more useful question, he says, is how organizations can deliver more value to customers per unit of human capital. He cited the example of bank tellers after ATMs arrived: The work changed, but the role didn’t disappear. Tellers shifted from handling cash to greeting customers, and the experience actually improved.Anderson made a similar case, pointing to research suggesting that some roles could see 40% to 50% productivity gains through automation. But she was quick to add the counterweight: “There has to be a human at the center of it. How do we teach people to be better critical thinkers and thought partners?” She envisions a future where managers become more important, not less, not because AI will replace their authority, but because coaching, psychological safety, and human judgment will matter more as digital tools handle more routine tasks.What L&D Looks Like in Five YearsClosing the session with a rapid-fire look ahead, each panelist offered a vision for where learning and development is headed.Karel predicted that the function will shift its focus from teaching specific topics to shaping workforce design, with learning as one lever among many, grounded in deep knowledge of what skills the business actually needs.Hibben emphasized agility above all else. “What we know is that there’s going to be continuation of skills needed, and those talent practitioners need to be flexible and agile.”Anderson was less focused on where L&D sits in the org chart than on whether it maintains strong partnerships with the business and stays aligned on outcomes.Berkowitz offered a challenging take: the United States spends roughly $150 billion annually on upskilling and reskilling, he says, and he believes that figure still dramatically underestimates what’s needed. “If I were to wave the magic wand, we’re going to invest a lot more in L&D.” The catch is that it will be managed like a business. “We’re going to run it like a P&L.”Anderson’s response was immediate: “I would be okay with that.”Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Leading HR Through the AI Transformation
BY Carrie Snider May 26, 2026AI is actively reshaping how organizations hire, develop, and support employees. But the biggest challenge now isn’t access to technology. It’s ensuring people stay engaged, trusted, and connected to their work as change accelerates.During a panel discussion at From Day One’s Seattle conference, industry professionals highlighted a shared reality: AI transformation is fundamentally a people challenge. The discussion was moderated by Seattle Times business reporter Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton.From rebuilding trust and redefining meaningful work to reinforcing human value and responsible governance, the conversation made one thing clear: future-proofing HR means strengthening the human side of work, not replacing it.Addressing the Trust GapEmployees have been through a lot in recent years. Cathy Peterman, chief people officer of tech at Wayfair, doesn’t shy away from the reality many employees are experiencing, which is uncertainty layered on top of years of disruption. “We’ve dropped this AI transformation on six years of cultural and trust debt,” she said. Between the pandemic, economic instability, and waves of layoffs, employees are carrying a backlog of concern about whether they have a future in their current role. Panelist shared insights on "Future-Proofing HR With AI: How to Lead, Adapt, and Keep the Human Touch in a Tech-Driven Era"Context matters. Leaders can’t introduce AI purely as an efficiency tool without acknowledging the emotional landscape employees are navigating. Peterman emphasized transparency and shared ownership. “We’re all kind of figuring this out as we go,” she said. Peterman encouraged a collaborative approach. “Let’s be in it together. Let’s figure it out together.”This shift is about rebuilding credibility. Ignoring the past risks widening what she called the trust gap, while addressing it directly creates a path forward. As she noted, “We’ve had a tough six years together.”In a moment where AI brings both excitement and anxiety, trust becomes the differentiator. Organizations that acknowledge uncertainty and invite employees into the process will be better positioned to move forward together.AI Requires Human AwarenessFor Liz Friedman, senior director of HR AI transformation at Microsoft, the promise of AI in HR comes with a clear responsibility: staying grounded in human experience. Technology is advancing rapidly, but organizations can’t forget about their people. “We need to meet people where they are right now,” she said. This is especially true as employees feel stressed and overwhelmed by the pace of change.That emotional reality cannot be separated from AI adoption. Friedman described the current moment as “a very emotional place to be,” where questions about job security, purpose, and long-term impact are unavoidable. She also warned against over-reliance on automation itself. “One of the biggest dangers right now is that people are letting it do the thinking for them,” she said. This can lead to what she called “AI slop.” Instead, Friedman encouraged using AI as “a great thought partner” that expands thinking rather than replaces judgment.Ultimately, responsible AI is about intention, Friedman says. Organizations that slow down enough to ask better questions, acknowledge employee concerns, and protect critical thinking will be the ones that use AI not just efficiently, but wisely.Helping Employees Feel They MatterAmanda Myton, head of learning and development at Snowflake, underscored that one of the most pressing challenges in the AI era is deeply human. “The thing that was falling fastest amongst employees was a sense of mattering,” she said. In fact, employees are increasingly asking, “Does the work I do matter? If AI can do all of these things, how do I matter?”For leaders, that question cannot be left unanswered. Myton emphasized that managers play a critical role in helping employees reconnect to purpose by guiding reflection on value and contribution. She said, “What am I doing that is uniquely human? What value am I bringing?” framing it as a necessary lens for navigating AI-driven work.Myton also cautioned that adoption metrics alone can be misleading. “Teams can have high AI adoption, but low human connection, and on a dashboard they can look the same.” The real differentiator is what leaders do next. “It is where that manager reinvests those gains back into their teams that makes the difference,” she said.Ultimately, Myton framed this as a core responsibility for HR and learning leaders. “How are we making sure that folks still understand what their unique value is?” In a rapidly evolving workplace, reinforcing meaning is essential for maintaining engagement and motivation.Responsible AI Requires Strong GovernanceShannon Flynn, VP of corporate HR at Fortive, emphasized that the speed of AI adoption has forced organizations to rethink governance much earlier than expected. “We set up our AI machine learning team, but we quickly had to put in some governance in place,” she said, adding that experimentation alone is not enough once tools scale across an enterprise.Flynn also noted that governance cannot remain static. “The governance that we put in place seven years ago does not stand, and we have to continue to reinvent it,” she said, highlighting the need for continuous adaptation as AI evolves.A turning point in her thinking came from a personal experience with AI-generated misinformation. After using AI for research, Flynn discovered the system had fabricated a source. “It hallucinates, so you have to know that it will make stuff up because it wants to make you happy.”Because of this, she says, strong guardrails are essential. Organizations must clearly define: “Here is what you can use it for, and here is what you cannot use it for.” Ultimately, humans should begin a project and end a project, and AI can help in the middle.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Personalizing Benefits While Keeping Costs in Check
BY Jessica Swenson May 22, 2026Employers are shifting employee benefit models away from fragmented vendor ecosystems toward integrated solutions focused on outcomes rather than utilization, says Cara Dochat, PhD, clinical specialist at Sword Health.“We want options that are easy to use, easy to access, that help us manage our everyday conditions—not just the catastrophic ones when we’re in crisis—and that also feel personalized to us,” Dochat said.As budgets tighten amid continuously escalating economic pressures, organizations are seeking ways to improve employee health, engagement, productivity, and retention through personalized benefits, all while reining in spending. This was the topic of a panel at From Day One’s Seattle conference, moderated by journalist and healthcare communications specialist Alexis Hauk.By collaborating with vendor partners whose programs meet employees where they are, says Paris Ramsey, VP of health solutions for Aon, employers can help their teams reduce absenteeism and burnout through personalized care. Aon has identified an employee demand for virtual care pathways since the pandemic; virtual care also benefits workers who may live in areas known as care deserts. “Working with vendors that have really good access to care in that virtual manner allows employees to get the care that they need when they need it,” she said. Panelists spoke about "Personalizing Benefits While Keeping Costs in Check" in SeattleDochat described the evidence-based, personalized mental health services available to users through Sword Health’s clinician-driven, AI-supported platform. By shifting away from a session-based model of care to an always-on solution, she says, the company is able to offer in-the-moment mental healthcare to an expanded audience.An increasingly diverse global workforce means that organizations must also consider customizable benefits menus that can flex for local customs and culture. Ongoing employee feedback and demographic awareness has been critical to program design for her organization, says Vivian Hung, head of total rewards & HRIS at Enphase Energy. “The approach we take is global guardrails with local execution. We standardize on our global strategy and guiding principles. We make decisions based on external market competitiveness, internal equity, statutory compliance and, of course, employee experience,” she said. “Then we allow flexibility for our regions to execute based on what is best suited or best trending for that particular country.”However, even the strongest benefits programs can fail if employees don’t know what is available to them or how to use it. Panelists agreed that employee education and communication is key. For example, veterans transitioning from the military to a corporate environment may not know the differences between government healthcare and private employer systems, says Nick Rettenmyer, VP of total rewards at Shield AI. “When you have a population that hasn’t necessarily grown up in a corporate environment, there’s a big opportunity there to make sure that they understand the benefits, and what it can mean to them and their families.”Some companies use AI technology to drive engagement and help with decision-making. Hung highlighted ways that Enphase is “finding creative ways to optimize the programs [they] offer.” The company hosts monthly educational sessions about existing benefits and provides on-demand libraries of AI-produced videos that help employees learn more about how to engage and utilize those benefits, she says.“We’ve put a lot of tools in the hands of employees to help them to navigate that, especially around health benefits in the U.S.,” said Tristan Orford, VP of total rewards and M&A for SentinelOne. “You need to do the education to help employees understand what [specific health plans] look like in their own situation.”AI-powered decision support during open enrollment helps Aon employees proactively ask risk-based questions to narrow down solutions, reducing confusion, says Ramsey. “You get the engagement that you’re looking for because employees feel that they had a hand in the decision-making process, and they also understand what they’re buying at the same time.”Rettenmyer and his team are building a total rewards portal that will demonstrate the value of employee benefits programs in a meaningful way. By offering “a consolidated place where [employees] can start to self-select,” he said, “your spending becomes much more effective.”Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Designing an Employee Experience That Engages, Recognizes, and Supports
BY Katie Chambers May 20, 2026How do you build a culture of care at a construction site? It’s all about perspective. “We’re one of the most inclusive industries in the world because it takes 300 skill sets to put together a project any day of the week,” said Kabri Lehrman-Schmid, project superintendent, SeaTac construction leader, at Hensel Phelps. Taking care of a crew’s needs can mean anything from setting up a coffee station to applying for parking permits for them with the city. It’s all about paying attention to employees’ unique needs, and responding accordingly. A great employee experience considers all facets of a worker, from well-being and compensation to recognition and growth. Creating an environment where employees feel genuinely engaged and supported throughout their development was the focus of a panel discussion among leaders including Lehrman-Schmid at From Day One’s Seattle conference.Today’s Workplace TrendsPost-pandemic, many organizations are leaning into what Maris Krieger, senior director, talent, learning and development, at Hearst Corporation, calls a “culture of care,” It’s all about doubling down on providing additional healthcare and childcare benefits as well as learning opportunities. “We are a global company, a very diverse portfolio company, so we are continuously working to make this experience that we have feel connected and shared across the globe,” she said.As many workers return to the office, they are again spending “10 to 15% of employee time commuting,” said Chinmay Malaviya, co-founder and CEO of Ridepanda. “Post-pandemic, more people now acknowledge and recognize this as a painful, stressful, anxiety-inducing time. Employees are expecting different things,” he said. Malaviya identifies this as an opportunity to provide solutions that ease the strain and help employees make the most of their time, such as in-office wellness activities to preserve their free time or carpool options to improve affordability. Ridepanda works with employers to rethink commuting as part of the overall employee experience rather than just a logistical necessity, says Malaviya. By working to address the daily frustrations tied to commuting, it aims to support employee well-being while also helping companies strengthen workplace satisfaction.Due to remote work options, many large corporations are now finding their employees scattered across different locations. At Hensel Phelps, says Lehrman-Schmid, employees already felt this way, given the nature of the company’s work spread across many individual job sites. It’s HR’s role to bring everyone together, despite the physical distance. “I’m in that position as a job site leader, to be able to take the great initiatives we’re doing at a corporate level and actually make it applicable to the production-oriented systems that we have in very dynamic projects that could be high rises, that could be tunnels, and make it applicable to our people in the work that they do daily.”Where Culture and Benefits Intersect Katie Bunker, VP, HR, North America at Cotiviti, said leaders should be “very deliberate about the employee experience. It’s like culture. If you don’t look after it, it just happens.” This means understanding the experience of stakeholders at the organizational, managerial, and individual levels. “We set out to define what we wanted the employee experience to be like. What does it mean to work here, and what does it mean to experience it? What’s our mission?” Bunker said. These should guide every touchpoint, from first applying for a job through retirement. Her team relies on employee engagement surveys to gauge whether their strategies are working, and they just closed one with a 91% response rate. “That’s because you created a culture where they feel like their opinion matters,” said moderator Diana Opong, independent reporter and host. Panelists spoke about "Designing an Employee Experience That Engages, Recognizes, and Supports"At Hearst, Krieger said, “We have shared culture, we have shared principles, but we still need to give flexibility to different organizations.” For example, their New York office is now mostly in-person with some hybrid options, while the Seattle office skews more remote, especially for tech workers who were initially hired to work exclusively remotely during the pandemic. To keep those folks engaged, the company has one week per month with in-person collaboration events. When it comes to AI, organizations should focus on educating employees while also allaying their fears. Krieger’s company asked staff “AI champions” to opt in and help educate their peers while emphasizing the human element of using the technology, “the critical thinking, the judgment, even delegation. We are really trying to make it non-threatening,” she said. Hensel Phelps is using AI to augment and improve existing processes, such as using an app called “Smart Tag It” to identify hazards associated with each day’s tasks. “This is a process that has existed forever, but in taking AI to it, not only are we providing education to teams [and] to leaders that traditionally have not received education in technology, but we are also providing feedback on, ‘Was that an interactive session? What questions can you ask your crew to make sure that they better understand this situation?’ It’s building these collaborative skillsets in positions that have not traditionally had that opportunity,” Lehrman-Schmid said. While Krieger has seen how AI has put some areas of her organization’s business, including social media, “under attack,” it’s also provided more human opportunities as employees continue to upskill in new technologies. “We have been doing more things in collaboration across the organization, I feel that it has even strengthened human collaboration. We haven’t switched to tools and machines and robots and AI, but human collaboration comes very naturally [in] that different functions and teams are coming together and trying to solve a problem.” As HR teams look to amp up the employee experience, Bunker encourages them to approach it from a business perspective rather than an HR one, especially when seeking buy-in from leadership. “So, it’s not a ‘me versus you,’ [instead] it’s a data set.” Be prepared to share the hard numbers demonstrating the financial and business benefits of investing in employees’ well-being. The people should always be the priority. “My grandmother used to say, ‘You spend five days out of every seven at work, so you better like what you’re doing and you better like who you’re doing it with,” Bunker said. “And I think in the roles that we have, we’re stewards of that, and we can really influence that. So, we try to be very intentional about that.”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.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Leading Through Digital Transformation: Redesigning Work and Keeping People Connected
BY Grace Turney May 18, 2026Todd Reeves spent years running payroll early in his HR career. “Don’t ever do that,” he joked to the audience at From Day One’s Seattle conference. “There’s no good outcome other than perfection in payroll.”The joke landed, but it also illustrated something true about the function Reeves now leads at the highest level. Human resources has long been defined by operational precision, by getting the details exactly right. What Reeves, chief people officer at Zoom, described in his fireside chat was a profession on the cusp of shedding much of that burden entirely.The conversation, moderated by Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, business reporter for the Seattle Times, covered Zoom’s pandemic-era transformation, its evolving AI strategy, and what it means to lead a global workforce through a period of relentless technological change.From Video Calls to Completed WorkZoom turns 15 this year, and Reeves is quick to note how much the company’s ambitions have expanded since its founding. “We started out with the mission of just making video communications easy, accessible, and simple,” he said. Today, the company is focused on something it calls “C to C to C,” conversation to completion.The idea is that AI can turn the things people say in meetings into action, without anyone having to follow up. Reeves offered a simple example: if someone in a call says they want to schedule a meeting, it’s already on the calendar before the call ends. A request to send a proposal might generate a draft presentation on the spot. “How do we make that conversation turn into work during the meeting, shortly thereafter, or provide intelligence for you to use later on?” he said. “It’s a real transformation.”The Pandemic’s Lasting ImprintNo conversation with a Zoom executive sidesteps Covid. The company tripled in size within 24 months of the pandemic’s onset, expanding from an enterprise-focused platform to a tool used for weddings, parliamentary sessions, and school classrooms around the world.Reeves wasn’t at Zoom during that period, but the culture it forged is one he inherited and described with evident pride. When schools scrambled to shift to online learning, Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan made the decision to distribute licenses to 125,000 schools globally, at no charge. “That’s emblematic of how we think about Zoom and what we do for the community,” Reeves said.The operational intensity of those years also left its mark. A bias toward speed and a low tolerance for bureaucracy became embedded in the company’s culture, and Reeves said both remain defining traits today.Todd Reeves, the chief people officer at Zoom, spoke with moderator Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, business reporter at the Seattle TimesBoyanton asked Reeves about competition in this changing space, not just from Microsoft Teams, but from the expanding universe of AI companies entering the communications space. His answer pointed to three areas where Zoom believes it has an edge.The first is ease of use, a principle the company treats as a core competency rather than a feature. The second is AI capability: Zoom uses what Reeves described as a federated AI model, selecting from among the best available AI systems depending on what a user needs, an approach he said has produced top scores on rigorous academic benchmarks. The third, and perhaps most durable, is context. Because so much workplace communication runs through Zoom, the platform accumulates a rich layer of conversational data that can power AI tools in ways a newer entrant can’t replicate.The Future of HRWhen Boyanton asked where the HR profession is headed, Reeves didn’t hedge. He sees much of the transactional work of HR, such as tier-one employee support, routine queries, and administrative processes, being fully automated within five years. Zoom is already redesigning its internal knowledge base to be read by AI, and he expects a conversational HR chatbot to absorb 20 to 30 percent of his team’s workload.What remains, he says, is the work that genuinely requires a human: talent strategy, organizational design, leadership development, employee relations, culture. “Spend more time on the parts of the job that really require a human to influence and be a factor,” he said. “The other things will get taken care of.”The advice extended to how HR leaders make decisions in general. Reeves described himself as a data convert: someone who has learned to bring numbers and evidence into discussions that typically run on opinion and intuition. When a recent internal policy debate arose, he asked how many employees it would actually affect. The answer was 12. “I said, okay, then I think we can make a simple decision around this.”Even without formal metrics, he encouraged his team to find ways to gather information. Talk to 20 employees, run a small experiment. “There are ways to get data even if you don’t feel like you have the specific metric.”Connection in a Changing WorldWhen Boyanton asked how Zoom manages its worldwide workforce, spanning R&D teams in China and India, sales organizations across multiple continents, and employees in dozens of time zones, Reeves answered with a laugh: “We use Zoom.”The practical answer was more layered. He described a design philosophy built around local, intact teams that can operate largely independently, without requiring a manager on the other side of the globe to make decisions. Clear goals, recorded meetings, and accessible documentation help overcome the obstacle of distance. And as a leader, he said, accessibility has to be intentional: he runs town halls in the evening and again in the morning to make sure employees across regions can participate.The session ended with an audience question about keeping teams meaningfully connected amid constant noise and digital overload. Reeves’ answer was simple: don’t overcomplicate it.Have a team meeting. Start with something enjoyable. Make room for humor. The nature of work will keep changing, he said, but people are still people—-trying to solve problems together, trying to connect.“Have some fun,” he said. “Remember the Zoom happy hour chats? Just do stuff like that. And I think everyone will be fine.”Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Rethinking Hiring and Talent Strategy in the Age of AI
BY Ade Akin May 14, 2026Dani Monaghan knows exactly what’s going on when a job candidate pauses mid-sentence before answering questions, their screen suddenly switches, or their eyes dart to the side during interviews.“There’s a lot of tells,” she said. As the SVP of global talent enablement at Expedia Group, Monaghan has learned to spot the subtle signs that someone is using AI to cheat during the hiring process. However, Expedia also wants to recruit people who are skilled, comfortable, and ethical in their use of artificial intelligence. It’s a fine line, and one that Monaghan explored in detail during a fireside chat with Rob Smith, the executive editor of Formidable, at From Day One’s Seattle conference.Preventing candidates from cheating the hiring process with AI doesn’t require banning its use. Instead, Expedia sets explicit boundaries. “We are very clear with candidates where they can use AI in a process, and where they cannot use AI in a process,” Monaghan said. “We want them to use AI. Those are the people that we want to hire, people who know AI, and are comfortable with AI, but ethical standards are equally as important to us.”Expedia uses both human observation and technology to catch dishonest candidates. Monaghan notes that the company even employs one of its vendors’ AI cheating-detection tools. The line becomes particularly delicate for roles where problem-solving with large language models is part of the candidate’s assessment. “We want them to problem solve and be able to explain to us how they solve the problem with AI, ethically and responsibly,” Monaghan said. Candidates who can articulate how they tested for bias, trained their models, and validated outcomes demonstrate the kind of AI literacy Expedia prizes. Those who try to game the system, however, reveal a character mismatch that outweighs any technical brilliance.Mapping Where AI BelongsExpedia didn’t rush to deploy AI in hiring and then figure out the ethics later. “If you just put AI on a bad process, you have a worse outcome,” Monaghan said. Instead, the talent team remapped its entire hiring journey, deciding precisely where AI excels and where humans must retain control. “We’ve built a roadmap for where we would use AI, where AI does its best work, and then where we would use humans, where we do our best work. But ultimately, the human is the final decision maker and the stamp of approval.”Dani Monaghan, SVP of global talent enablement, spoke during the fireside chat with moderator Rob Smith, executive editor at FormidableThat roadmap has already produced powerful tools. Monaghan described an AI agent that handles hiring manager intake meetings, generates job descriptions, gathers competitive intelligence, and even estimates time-to-fill, all in real time. “For those of you that are in the recruiting world, sitting in front of a hiring manager at an intake meeting and being able to talk about all of that in that same meeting, instead of going back and researching, coming back in two weeks, is a game changer,” she said. This week, the team is also rolling out an automated AI scheduling tool that promises to untangle the complexity of coordinating interviews across 70 countries and multiple languages.Getting Rid of Bias Before It BeginsAI bias is one of the most discussed risks in talent technology, and Monaghan emphasizes that Expedia approaches it with a preemptive, rather than purely reactive, strategy. “You’ve got to de-bias your training data before you actually train the model,” she said. Beyond cleaning the data, Expedia audits its models continuously and keeps a human in the loop for final decisions. All experiments happen inside walled gardens until they’re ready for production, where monitoring remains intense.This disciplined approach reflects a broader philosophy Monaghan calls “AI optimistic, but balanced by AI responsibility.” The company aims to harness AI’s speed and scale without allowing opaque algorithms to make high-stakes choices about people’s careers.The AI Knowledge GapSmith asked whether universities are preparing graduates for an AI-driven workplace. “I don’t think they’re doing that yet,” Monaghan replied. Yet the interns and young candidates she meets are remarkably AI-literate. “They are teaching themselves,” she said. Her real worry is about access. “If you’re not taught AI at school or in university, and you don’t have the means to access technology, I think the gap is bigger than it will ever be before.”Expedia has embedded AI questions into its new behavioral interview framework to address this internally. Every candidate, regardless of role, is probed on their curiosity and willingness to learn about AI. For technical positions, the company sets up live scenarios with language models and watches how candidates think, test, and explain their solutions. AI as a Travel Companion, Not a ThreatShifting from talent to the core business, Smith asked whether generative AI tools like ChatGPT threaten Expedia’s relevance as a trip-planning platform. Monaghan acknowledged that the leadership team obsesses over the question, but she sees durable advantages in the marketplace model. “They have access to incredible deals and bundles and supply and data,” she said. They have payment processing, very sophisticated, multilingual, multi-country payment processing systems. They have fraud detection systems. They have customer support. I think that will be hard to replace.”The battleground, she said, is the top of the funnel, the inspiration and planning phase. “Rather than going to ChatGPT or one of the other models to plan it for you, go to Expedia, and our AI needs to be as good or better.” The endgame is AI-fueled personalization that uses Expedia’s vast customer data to craft trips so uniquely tailored that travelers won’t want to go anywhere else. “That personalization can be really, really special,” Monaghan added. Optimism With GuardrailsMonaghan offered a practical path for organizations without Expedia’s scale. “You’ve got to start somewhere,” she said. Her team began with AI education, then created playbooks, and then built a governance structure. Having top-down endorsement helped: the CEO mandated that everyone become AI-literate by understanding the technology’s capabilities and limits. “You can take small steps, and you can also in your personal life, which I think everybody here had their hand up at some point, everyone is playing with AI.”Monaghan, an enthusiastic fly fisherwoman, confessed her own favorite personal use of artificial intelligence. She uses AI to determine which flies to pack for specific waters, which fish are hatching, and what she might catch. It’s a small, joyful illustration of a tool that, when deployed responsibly and with a clear governance framework, can enhance the quality of human life.Monaghan returned to the theme of dual vigilance and hope throughout the conversation. AI is advancing faster than any technology shift she has witnessed since the advent of the personal computer, the internet, and mobile. “What is possible and what is probable is boundless. What is likely is going to be bounded,” she predicted, citing constraints like governance, regulation, privacy laws, the cost of building massive data centers, and electricity. Monaghan’s final call to the audience was to leave feeling optimistic and excited about what’s ahead. “Yes, it’s scary. It’s a scary ride. I myself can see that it could be a really scary thing, but I’m just hoping people walk away feeling, ‘Actually, this is a good thing.’ It has so much potential for mankind, health care, education, space exploration, it’s just going to multiply our ability to do these things—but with the caution around responsibility, guidelines, governance and knowing where humans are still important.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Cut Costs, Not Corners: Effective Marketing in Lean Times
BY Jessica Swenson May 13, 2026Don’t be afraid to question things you’ve always done, says Allison Gillespie, VP of marketing for O'Reilly Media. “We as marketers always need to look at that, while also leaving room for experimentation, because everything is changing and the playbooks we’ve been using for years are not working anymore,” she said.Rapidly changing landscapes in technology and customer behavior are forcing organizations to think creatively about fundamental shifts in their marketing effectiveness. This was the topic of a panel discussion moderated by Workforce Observer founder Subadhra Sriram at From Day One’s Silicon Valley marketing conference.Traditional qualified leads can feel like a marketing-driven initiative without any sales buy-in. That’s why Kumarbabu Vanapalli, VP of digital experience & engagement for Infineon Technologies, worked with junior sales reps to co-define valuable leads and experiment with continuous feedback loops and weekly iterations to refine lead targeting. “Our job is to enable salespeople to sell, not tell them which leads they have to go after,” he said. This strategy grew Infineon’s lead pipeline to over 55,000 per year over the course of three years.With customer indicators coming from multiple sources, customer voice, leads, socials, marketing now requires an omnichannel approach, says Gillespie. She believes it is crucial to find the right mix of channels and be flexible enough to redirect underperforming initiatives into new opportunities.Leaders spoke on the executive panel titled, "Effective Marketing in Lean Times: Creative Approaches to Delivering Value"AI search functionality is quickly reshaping marketing measurement as we know it. Hugh Burnham, head of search (SEM / SEO) at Ford Motor Company, shared that 70% of informational Google searches do not get past the AI overview, which makes traditional metrics like website visits and page flow less relevant. He encourages active optimization of your website content for AI-driven discovery.“Being passive and looking at your Google Analytics or Adobe is last year,” Burnham said. “You really need to change things, like crawlability, citation score, sentiment analysis, and how is your citation viewed?”Echoing the need for updated metrics, Andrea Cutright, VP of marketing for Upwork, says that Upwork replaced over one-third of its KPIs within its most recent annual planning cycle. “If you haven't swapped out a lot of your KPIs, you’re not watching where the market’s going.”Sajag Chikarsal, VP of marketing at DigiCert, advocates for a shift to revenue-aligned marketing measurement. By redirecting his marketing organization’s focus from top of the funnel to metrics like deal velocity, average sales cycle, and average sales price trends, he is able to connect focus areas back to specific marketing channels. “Now you can even say how many leads or MQLs or engagements am I getting from the AEO,” Chikarsal said, “and are they converting at a faster pace than the leads that I’m generally getting from the website from just pure SEO?”Rather than building content based on brand messaging, Burnham suggests researching real user questions and using FAQ structures and schema markup tools to create content that’s more easily discoverable by AI agents. “What ends up happening is, your answers from your website populate the Google ‘also asked’ questions. That also helps get a signal to the AIO so your data ends up showing your circuit.”Treating FAQs as living documents and ensuring they are written conversationally, says Vanapalli, makes your content more likely to match AI query patterns, increasing the chance that it will show up in searches.Internal AI transformations can drive marketing value as well, as long as organizations avoid some common mistakes like misalignment with customer needs and focusing solely on AI as a tool rather than a broader strategy.A clear definition of success and structured experimentation are important steps to effectively pilot and implement AI, says Cutright. Lack of confidence in outcomes can create barriers, but working together to define success provides a tangible, shared goal for teams to pursue. “You can visualize or feel your path to that success, rather than what I’ve seen some peers struggling with, where you just need to move to AI. That can be a little bit overwhelming, and it can’t really feel real.”To ensure consistency and avoid legal risks, warns Burnham, companies must standardize any LLM tools used by their teams, including the capability to monitor use and inputs. It’s also critical to reskill talent from authors and creators to editors and strategists. When using AI for content, journalistic integrity is paramount. “Make sure that your editors are also very good at prompt data and make sure that they read it. They just don’t copy and paste it.”Framing AI as a growth opportunity rather than a threat can help gain marketer buy-in and encourage skill-building, says Cutright. Show employees how they can eliminate repetitive or disliked tasks, she suggests, and create environments that are safe for experimentation. She told the story of Upwork’s Festival of Failure, which celebrates learnings based on failed initiatives, creating a safe space for employees to explore new things and learn from each other.Marketing leaders also embrace unconventional methods to drive ROI. To maximize his team’s cost efficiency, rather than investing in expensive event sponsorships, Chikarsal sends sales development reps to events with meeting quota targets. This has reduced their cost-per-opportunity from $23,000 to $6,500, while giving them better insights from direct customer interactions and breakout sessions.In-person engagement through trade shows, dinners, and events are outperforming digital marketing for O’Reilly Media, says Gillespie. People want to see that there is a human behind the brand, so direct interaction, especially at trade shows, helps reinforce trust. “Going back to that very human face-to-face is actually moving the needle. And we get so much direct attribution from trade shows.”Cutright advocates for a simple solution that empowers teams and helps integrate new processes: “Just give people permission to move in the new direction without trying to hang onto what’s in the past.”Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
The Invisalign Story: A Case Study in Marketing a Revolutionary Product
BY Jessica Swenson May 11, 2026While Invisalign is known for changing lives through innovative digital orthodontics, the company has had to think creatively to actually earn that relevance among its customers and partners.The evolution and strategy behind its marketing approach was discussed by Kamal Bhandal, SVP of the global Invisalign brand for Align Technology, during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Silicon Valley marketing conference. The session was moderated by independent video host, journalist, and producer Claire Reilly.“Really identify the stakeholders in your customer journey, so that you know that you’re attacking points of failures or points of delight,” said Bhandal. Invisalign started by identifying the service providers who would comprise its delivery network, and invited them to help test and refine its products, she says. To maintain the partnership and trust of their clinical partners, the company makes continuous efforts to understand and meet their needs. “We’re looking to understand their business needs, their clinical needs, and the clinical outcomes that they’re looking for, and then designing products that meet those clinical needs,” she said. Kamal Bhandal, SVP, global Invisalign brand, consumer & Americas Marketing at Align Technology, spoke during the fireside chatInvisalign also engages in peer-to-peer training, education, and certification programs to prepare clinicians to use its products, as well as conferences and specialized sessions with deep dives into treatment techniques. Other key stakeholders in the Invisalign customer journey include end users, decision-makers or influencers, and frontline staff. Understanding each of these stakeholders is important, she says, as each can impact those points of failure or delight. The company spent its early days proving that the product worked, before shifting to a lifestyle marketing approach that highlighted how Invisalign could seamlessly fit into consumers’ lives. Continuous innovation prepared the company to manage increasingly complex cases, which broadened its scope. “We always first start with understanding the consumer, understanding the person, and what their lives are like,” said Bhandal. This helps the brand focus its marketing less on product features and specs and more on solving key pain points that matter to the customer. By studying the real lives of teens and parents, from social pressures and confidence issues to practical constraints like family schedules and multiple responsibilities, Invisalign can position itself as a product that reduces friction by fitting into the user’s life rather than disrupting it.She cited two examples that appeal to decision influencers (parents): damage to traditional braces during sporting events can cause emergency orthodontist visits—with Invisalign, these visits are greatly reduced. Additionally, the simplicity of hygiene as compared to traditional braces makes it easier for teens to maintain. For the teens themselves, the draw becomes straighter teeth and increased confidence without the stigma of traditional braces.Solving these problems for families also earns Invisalign its relevance in current culture. “We think about not talking at people, but really creating a conversation and being a part of culture,” says Bhandal. “Brands who integrate into culture, who move at the speed of culture, are brands who win.” Invisalign shifted its branding from a top-down to a community-driven approach, using real stories from patients and doctors to shape the brand. Cultural participation and user-generated content are key.As a healthcare-focused company backed by science and technology, however, it doesn’t tie itself to any one category of social influencers. It partners with lifestyle, fitness, beauty, and health influencers who represent the brand’s typical customers and showcase Invisalign as one part of their well-being process.A core takeaway from Invisalign’s brand evolution is to become obsessed with understanding your customer and what their life is like. “Not through just quantitative data and quantitative data analysis,” said Bhandal, but really dig into who your consumer is, who is influencing the decisions along the way, and what they are thinking about. “Become super obsessed with understanding human behavior of those that are involved in your buying journey.”Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)