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Pregnancy Loss Is One of the Most Overlooked Forms of Grief. It Needs to Be Recognized in the Workplace

BY Lisa Jaffe October 29, 2025

When I suffered a miscarriage just 10 weeks into my first pregnancy, I was left to deal with the emotional consequences on my own. I was expected to go right back to work and operate as if nothing had happened. It’s not as if it was a baby, people said. Better it happens now than later, they said. It seemed not just unhelpful, but cruel. An estimated 10% to 30% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Yet most families face that loss in silence, with little acknowledgment from their communities or workplaces.That silence is starting to break. Empathy,  a leading technology company transforming how the world plans for and navigates life’s toughest moments, is expanding its Loss Support product to include a program dedicated to pregnancy and infant loss.“Pregnancy and infant loss are deeply personal and often invisible forms of grief,” said Sophie Ruddock, Empathy’s chief operating officer. “It’s one of the most common experiences employees face, yet it remains largely unrecognized in workplace policies.”Empathy’s latest Grief Tax Report (2025) highlights why this issue matters, not just emotionally but organizationally:54% of those experiencing a loss used their own funds to pay for post-loss costs, even if loved ones had plans in place; out-of-pocket expenses per loss average $12,500.92% of people experiencing loss report health consequences such as panic attacks, weight changes, or anxiety.Out-of-pocket costs average $12,500 per loss.Work disruptions can last more than a year, often leading to absenteeism or resignation.78% of employees who suffer a loss don’t feel supported at work.“Our research shows that employees who experience pregnancy loss report similar concerns, including thoughts of leaving and fears about job security,” Ruddock says. “This is not just an emotional crisis; it is a workplace one.”A New Kind of Support“People were using and finding comfort in our Loss Support platform program to cope with pregnancy losses,” Ruddock says. One HR leader who had used the program after an early miscarriage reported to Empathy that the experience “validated my grief and reminded me I wasn’t alone,” she said. Recognizing this need, Empathy set out to create dedicated resources tailored to this experience.The new Pregnancy and Infant Loss program builds on Empathy’s existing infrastructure of care managers, mindfulness tools, and digital resources. After enrolling, employees receive a personalized care plan, daily guidance to help rebuild structure and confidence, support for workplace communication, and one-on-one sessions with trained care managers.Expert resources were developed in partnership with Jessica Zucker, PhD, a leading psychologist specializing in reproductive and maternal mental health. The program also includes dedicated tools for non-carrying partners, a group often overlooked in traditional bereavement support.“Our approach recognizes that pregnancy loss affects everyone involved,” Ruddock said. “Any parent or parent-to-be has imagined a future that suddenly feels taken away. Each deserves care and space to process that loss.”Compassion Meets TechnologyAt Empathy, technology and human care go hand in hand. As Ruddock explains, technological innovation like AI allows Empathy to deliver “deeply personalized care at scale. Our technology helps tailor each care plan based on the user’s experience, stage of recovery, and expressed needs. It also automates administrative tasks. like paperwork reminders, so our team can focus on what matters most: human connection.” AI, she adds, is a “force multiplier.”Beyond Loss: A Broader MissionThis launch is part of Empathy’s broader effort to support people through major life transitions. The company recently introduced LifeVault, which helps families prepare for the future through estate planning, and Leave Support, a partnership with MetLife designed to help employees on short-term leave return to work with confidence.Sophie Ruddock, Empathy’s chief operating officer (company photo)“Loss is universal,” Ruddock said. “Every employee will experience it, yet few companies are truly prepared. Addressing grief is not only compassionate; it is smart business. It builds loyalty, accelerates return-to-work timelines, and helps people feel seen.”For HR leaders, the takeaway is clear: do not wait for a crisis. “Employees remember how they were treated when life was hardest,” Ruddock said. “Those who show care build trust that lasts far beyond recovery.”Empathy continues to expand its specialized care journeys to support people through all of life’s hardest moments. The goal is simple: to make comprehensive care the new baseline for employee well-being. “Grief is inevitable,” she said, “but disruption does not have to be.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Empathy, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Empathy is a leading technology company transforming the way people plan for and navigate life’s toughest moments. Serving more than 45 million policyholders across North America with loss support, Empathy currently partners with eight of the top ten U.S. life insurance carriers and handles one in five life insurance claims in the U.S. beyond the payout. With $162 million in funding from top-tier venture firms including Index Ventures, General Catalyst, Adams Street Partners, and other leading funds, as well as strategic investment from global financial institutions and Empathy Alliance partners, Empathy combines cutting-edge innovation with compassion to provide unparalleled support for bereavement, estate management, legacy planning, and more. Recognized by Apple, Google Play, and Fast Company, Empathy is setting the standard for modern family care and workplace benefits. Learn more at empathy.comLisa Jaffe is a Seattle-based writer who specializes in issues about health, wellness, and the healthcare industry. (Featured image by PeopleImages/iStock by Getty Images)

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How AI Innovation Can Unlock a New Era of Benefit Personalization for Employees

BY Stephanie Reed October 23, 2025

Recent surveys show that 93% of Gen Z employees use two or more AI tools weekly. Employees use AI to boost productivity, research benefits, strengthen managerial abilities, and build critical leadership skills. In this pivotal digital era, HR professionals have a unique opportunity to shape how AI is applied across industries.“AI is becoming an integral part of your workforce, and it will increasingly be so over the years to come,” said Marthin De Beer, the founder and CEO of BrightPlan during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s San Francisco conference. “So each and every one of us needs a strategy as to how we embrace that and how we implement that,” he said. Beer presented a call-to-action, encouraging HR to “step up” by working with AI to personalize and effectively implement employee development in the session titled, “AI Innovation Unlocks a New Era of Benefit Personalization for Employees.” AI as a People and Tech Opportunity BrightPlan provides organizations with technology, education, and coaching for employee financial wellness. Its revenue quadrupled in 3 years of AI integration, says De Beer. The company uses AI to combine employer compensation and benefit information with individual employees’ financial data. BrightPlan then provides hyper-personalized financial advice. Employees receive advice on spending, budgeting, debt management, investing, retirement planning, estate planning, and more. BrightPlan’s exclusive access to comprehensive data combined with human-driven, empathetic guidance is “key for driving benefits optimization and ensuring the business is making investments in initiatives backed by tangible workforce needs,” De Beer said. The results support the finding that financial wellness is a top benefit concern in the workplace. As employees’ financial wellness scores doubled within 6 months under BrightPlan’s coaching, according to its research, engagement improved by 59% and retention by 30%.HI (human intelligence) and AI (artificial intelligence) must work in tandem. HR leaders play a crucial role in providing training and human oversight to ensure AI output reflects empathy, accuracy, and compliance. “You can literally ask it anything, from ‘can I afford a Ford Mustang’ to ‘my dad just passed away, what should I do? Or what benefits should I select for me?’” As a result, AI coaching can now address about 90% of employee needs, including benefits-related questions.Marthin De Beer, founder and CEO of BrightPlan, led the sessionWhile AI can process static data quickly and efficiently, HR leaders are now being called to the forefront of AI transformation. Their focus will increasingly center on integrating people strategies with technological innovation. Beer notes that AI lacks human social, ethical, and emotional intelligence—making human oversight an essential part of AI training and implementation.“You already own culture, policy, and ethics. You need that for AI. It’s becoming part of your workforce. You already guide how people work. Right now, you can help guide how AI works with them,” he said. The Call-To-ActionModern AI integration undeniably delivers effective, personalized benefits for both clients and employees. It brings continuous innovation that drives productivity and efficiency. As a result, HR’s role is expanding beyond its traditional scope. De Beer emphasizes that a more people-centered approach is essential to enhance personalization, improving both the employee experience and the overall lifecycle. So, how can organizations begin to realize the full potential of this pivotal era in the workforce?First, experiment with AI by taking classes or practicing ChatGPT to create presentations or strategies. The incentive is getting more done than ever before. Next, build a culture of ethical and empowered AI usage. De Beer suggests considering your company’s goals for AI applications and the potential circumstances surrounding them. “Use AI with purpose. Understand the context of what is being asked for when it comes to AI,” he said. Finally, establish clear policies, training, and oversight, covering several crucial aspects. This includes limiting AI hallucinations, using feedback loops to generate code for engineers, producing RFP responses for sales teams, and ensuring HR leaders monitor AI output to provide contextually aware and financially responsible guidance.BrightPlan’s AI coach is reviewed and improved weekly, De Beer says. This ensures that strict guardrails and creativity controls minimize hallucinations. “We've talked about the future of work for a long time. This is the future of work. AI is faster, HI is better, and it will keep getting better as it innovates together.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, BrightPlan, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Stephanie Reed is a freelance news, marketing, and content writer. Much of her work features small business owners throughout diverse industries. She is passionate about promoting small, ethical, and eco-conscious businesses(Photos by David Coe for From Day One)

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Humanizing the Employee Experience in a Time of Increased Systems and Decreased Connection

BY Christopher O'Keeffe October 21, 2025

Despite an explosion of HR tools and platforms, most employees still feel lost in their own companies. “How many of you feel like your organization makes it simple for employees to find what they need when they need it?” asked Gavin Paczosa, Head of North America at Humand during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Austin conference. Only a few hands went up.“The way that we work has dramatically evolved,” he said. “But the experience of work—how we engage, connect, and have access to what we need—has not kept up.”Across industries, teams are dispersed across time zones, channels are fragmented, and systems don’t talk to one another. “We’ve added more tools, but not more connection. More systems, but not more clarity,” Paczosa said. “In this mess of systems and logins, it’s easy to forget the most important part of every organization: the people.”Humanizing at ScaleAt the heart of Paczosa’s message is a deceptively simple question: how can companies humanize the employee experience at scale?“To me, humanizing doesn’t mean just adding a wellness app or sending a survey at the end of the month,” he said. “Humanization comes from building systems and cultures where people feel informed, valued, and empowered to act without friction.”That’s why, at Humand, the team focuses on creating what Paczosa calls a digital home for employees. “Because oftentimes we’re not in the office together,” he said. “This has to be a place where people don’t just log in; they belong.” When employees are informed, valued, and empowered, he says, they perform at their best—and stay engaged.Communication, Connection, and CultureTo build that digital home, Paczosa pointed to what he calls the three Cs: communication, connection, and culture.As work becomes increasingly digital, he urged leaders to “meet employees where they actually are,” the spaces where they chat with managers, recognize peers, and collaborate on projects. “When you put engagement first, every HR process follows naturally,” he said. “Policies get read. Training gets completed. Surveys get done on time.”The key isn’t adding yet another platform, but unifying what already exists. Humand’s approach integrates HR systems, learning management tools, and communication channels into one seamless interface. “No workflow should be more than a tap or a click away,” Paczosa said.That simplicity, paired with the use of Humand’s AI assistant, Sami, helps employees find what they need instantly, from pay stubs to compliance training, without hunting through multiple systems, he says. Building for Both Employees and AdminsGavin Paczosa, the Head of North America at Humand, led the thought leadership spotlight The employee experience, Paczosa emphasized, has to work on both ends: for the people using the system and for the HR teams running it. “Many of you have already invested heavily in enterprise systems,” he said. “We’re not going to ask you to rip and replace those. What we do is integrate with them.”The result, he said, is a “win-win”—employees get a single, intuitive access point, while administrators can keep using the tools they already know and trust. The platform’s flexibility allows organizations to turn features on and off as they evolve. “Just like a physical home, your digital home deserves care, attention, and the occasional refresh,” Paczosa said.Paczosa shared a case study of success. When Siemens wanted to create a digital home for its global workforce, Humand helped build a unified system centered on communication, connection, and culture. The results were striking: 98% monthly engagement and 95% workflow completion across a worldwide employee base, he says. With all workflows running through one platform, Siemens’ HR teams could finally see the full picture of the employee experience—“no more guessing, just actionable data,” Paczosa said.The Human Future of WorkFor Paczosa, this evolution is not just technological—it’s deeply human.He compared the workplace to an airport: HR admins are the air traffic controllers, managing complex systems behind the scenes, while employees are the pilots, who need only the essential information in one streamlined dashboard. “It’s not about ripping and replacing your systems,” he said. “It’s about creating the right access point for the people who need it most—your employees.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Humand, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Chris O’Keeffe is a freelance writer with experience across industries. As the founder and creative director of OK Creative: The Language Agency, he has led strategy and storytelling for organizations like MIT, Amazon, and Cirque du Soleil, bringing their stories to life through established and emerging media.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)

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Elevating Employee Voice: Turning Voice into Real Impact

BY Elizabeth Beaupre October 16, 2025

Organizations that truly listen to their people are 4.6 times more likely to retain them and enjoy 23% higher workforce productivity, according to research by Explorance. They’re also significantly more likely to unlock breakthrough ideas. Yet here’s the uncomfortable truth: many organizations still struggle to operationalize employee listening. During a From Day One webinar about “Elevating Employee Voice: How High-Performing Organizations Turn Input into Impact,” leaders from Explorance shared candid thoughts on why listening efforts often stall—and how businesses can pair technology with a comprehensive ecosystem of strategies to transform their employees’ voices into a catalyst for lasting, positive change.Why Listening Efforts FailEmployee listening efforts often begin with the best of intentions but falter due to avoidable missteps. One common problem is what’s known as “drive-by sponsorship,” said Shawn Overcast, general manager, enterprise solutions at Explorance. Shawn Overcast, general manager, enterprise solutions, spoke during the webinar (company photo)At the outset, executive teams show enthusiasm and visible support for the listening initiative, only to disengage as competing priorities emerge. This inconsistency leaves employees questioning whether leadership was ever genuinely committed, she says. Some organizations often fall into the 80/20 trap—investing the majority of their time, budget, and energy into survey design and data collection, while leaving little for meaningful follow-through. The result is a trove of insights with no clear path to action.Neglecting to invite employees to the table when solutions are finally discussed is another common misstep, says Overcast. HR and management teams take over the response, sidelining the very people who understand the problems best. And even when data reaches frontline managers, it often arrives in the form of dense dashboards with little guidance. Without support to interpret and act on the results, managers are left feeling overwhelmed, and the listening effort stalls before it can spark meaningful change.Together, these pitfalls turn promising initiatives into missed opportunities. To truly harness employee voice, organizations must stay engaged, close the feedback loop, invest in action, include employees in crafting solutions, and equip managers to lead with insight.The Listening Gap: From Feedback to Follow-ThroughOvercast and colleague Peggy Parskey, principal consultant shared that the difference between high-performing organizations and those that merely track their employees’ sentiment lies in intentionality, leadership, and, perhaps most importantly, trust. They shared eight levers that make employee listening work:Establish Feedback Channels: Carefully evaluate available mechanisms for gathering employee input. You might opt for a mix of structured tools, such as online surveys and more informal methods, like interviews or casual conversations. Manage Data Responsibly: Ensure the tools and platforms you use for data collection respect employee privacy and meet ethical standards.Commit to Transparent Communication: Before launching your listening initiative, inform your employees about the process, clarify its purpose, timelines, and the guardrails you’ve put in place to ensure confidentiality. Bring Your People on the Journey: Invite your people to co-create solutions. You can do this by asking them to interpret feedback and shape action plans.Act on Feedback: Remember, turning feedback into real change requires more than just listening—it demands translating insights into decisive action plans.Engage Your Managers: Managers need to be empowered with the skills and insights to reinforce your organization's listening efforts.Set the Tone from the Top: Embedding a culture of employee listening requires sustained executive-level commitment and strategic ownership.Maintain the Momentum: Establish long-term feedback loops with regular check-ins, continuous improvement, and visible impact tracking.Measuring Maturity: From Emerging to Leading Explorance has developed a maturity model to help businesses assess the maturity of their employee listening capabilities. First, emerging organizations—those just starting to tune in—show early signs of listening, often through basic feedback tools and informal responses, but their efforts are sporadic and largely reactive.As organizations move into the foundational stage, they establish more consistent channels for feedback and begin to act on what they hear. Communication and follow-through become more routine, though execution may still vary across teams, revealing gaps in alignment and accountability.Established organizations take things further. Listening has become a well-structured practice, and leaders are committed and visibly involved. Employee input doesn’t just get acknowledged—it results in tangible action. These companies demonstrate that listening is more than a process; it’s a principle embedded in how they operate.Advanced organizations elevate listening to a strategic capability. They integrate sophisticated feedback mechanisms directly into business planning, using insights to shape priorities, improve performance, and drive outcomes. Listening isn’t just reactive—it’s predictive and intentional.At the top of the model are leading organizations. Here, employee voice is a catalyst for innovation, a driver of strategic decisions, and a cornerstone of culture. Listening is deeply embedded at every level, shaping not just what the organization does, but who it is.Interestingly, most businesses don’t progress in a straight line. “The reality is that for organizations, you may go from crawling to walking and may never get to running, or you may find yourself in a situation where lots of things change and you're back crawling again,” said Parskey. To keep momentum, an effective listening strategy requires infrastructure, follow-through, and involvement of employees at all levels. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Explorance, for sponsoring this webinar. Elizabeth Beaupre is a freelance B2B writer and editor based in Wisconsin.(Photo by FG Trade Latin/iStock)

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HR’s Role in the Shift From Performance Evaluation to Performance Enablement

BY Paul Kersey October 15, 2025

“At the beginning of the year you get a goal, you meet with your manager, maybe, if you’re lucky, in June, you have a conversation about your own development or personal growth.  And at the end of the year, on an employee's favorite day of the year, they get to sit in intense anticipation, anxiously waiting to hear from a manager where they score on a scale,” said  Jamie Aitken, VP of HR transformation at Betterworks. Aitken was describing a process that often doesn’t inspire workers, employers, and managers alike–performance evaluations. It’s no wonder companies are looking for alternatives. During a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Austin conference, Aitken shared an alternative approach, called performance enablement. She believes that a continuing process of feedback and coaching serves employees and companies better.  This steady process encourages mentoring, produces fairer assessments, and opens up opportunities for employee growth.The annual performance meetings can be nerve-racking. These sessions determine the prospects of so many employees.  And yet the whole process is rushed, with evaluators tempted to just go through the motions.“Managers didn’t like doing it. [They] felt it was burdensome. Employees certainly didn’t enjoy the experience at all. Leaders don’t feel like it actually moves the needle, but rather, it’s a bit of a check in the box,” said Aitken.  A Shift to Performance EnablementJamie Aitken of Betterworks led the session about "The Big Shift to Performance Enablement: HR’s Role in the Age of AI" (photo by Josh Larson for From Day One)Performance enablement is a distinct approach to enhancing worker performance, says Aitken. The focus is less on critiquing and more on coaching. Feedback is more regular and incorporated into everyday office interactions, and credit for progress is more immediate. Making work more meaningful is key. “Frankly, all of us still strive and yearn for meaningful work.  We still want the connection to the values and what the organization is trying to achieve.  That becomes very important for us to see how we’re contributing to that,” said Aitken. When done right, performance enablement brings that desire for meaning in work to the fore, she says. Overcoming Obstacles to Performance EnablementBut to make performance enablement work, attitudes and habits need to shift throughout the company. HR leaders need to think of the process differently.  They no longer own or control the system. Their job is to design a process for goal setting and coaching, but then they should let employees and managers create their own goals and open up spaces for coaching, says Aitken.   Instead of chasing managers for evaluation forms, HR works to make the experience work smoothly, so it becomes easy to incorporate goals, tracking, and coaching into the working day. Meanwhile, employees need to become more active–they are no longer passive listeners as their managers offer critiques and kudos. Their role is to contribute ideas for goals and set their own paths for development.  The Importance of LeadershipManagers, for their part, cannot simply fill out an evaluation form and be done with it for the rest of the year; they need to give feedback on a more regular basis. They need to think of themselves as coaches, teaching skills and reinforcing high performance in real time.  This can be tricky because managers are frequently chosen for technical skills.  They want to solve problems quickly, but performance enablement requires more patience and people skills. Coaching may involve letting a team work through a problem rather than stepping in to diagnose and fix it oneself, which takes patience.  These are traits that managers can’t always learn overnight, says Aitken. Lasting change starts at the top. C-suite leaders need to model a culture of regular feedback and coaching, setting the tone for performance empowerment rather than handing off employee development to middle managers or HR.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Betterworks, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Paul Kersey is a former attorney and freelance writer based in Chicago, IL.  His articles on labor and employment issues have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit News, and other Midwest newspapers.(Photos by Shutter2U/iStock)

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Navigating Change and Uncertainty Through the Lens of Organizational DNA

BY Christopher O'Keeffe October 10, 2025

Change has become one of the defining challenges for today’s organizations. From succession planning to mergers to periods of rapid growth, today’s leaders are under pressure to steer strategy while supporting their people in environments that never stop shifting. For Miles Overholt, founder and CEO of Strategia Analytics, the starting point for tackling this complexity came decades ago, during his unusual dual career as both therapist and organizational development consultant.During a From Day One webinar, Overholt recalled early moments when the workplace itself seemed to be the root of employee distress. He described working with a couple employed in a copper plating factory whose rotating shifts and exposure to toxic substances had taken a toll on their mental health. What struck him most was that the problem wasn’t inside the people, but in the environment around them. “The problem was the work environment,” he said. “How do you get the best out of your people? How do you connect with your people? How do you make it a healthy work environment?”Dr. David Lopez, SVP of systems research at Strategia Analytics, placed these insights into a broader intellectual lineage. He pointed to the work of psychologist Kurt Lewin, whose framework emphasized the interplay between individuals and their environments. “Kurt Lewin had a very simple idea. He just said, behavior is a function of the person and the environment,” Lopez said during the webinar. “There are things within individuals and there are things outside of individuals, and those two things interact to shape what you do.”For Lopez, Strategia’s approach has been distinctive because it takes this complexity seriously, rather than reducing behavior to individual traits.Making Complexity SimpleManaging complexity, Overholt said, is at the heart of organizational change. Leaders face constant variation across teams, departments, and even within the same workweek.Miles Overholt and Dr. David Lopez of Strategia Analytics spoke during the webinar (photo by From Day One)“People are very complex, and you put them together in organizations, and that’s incredibly complex,” he said. “What organizational change is, is trying to figure out the complexity and make it simple.”Even with the rise of artificial intelligence, he added, the human element remains the most important and most variable factor in organizational life. “People do the work,” Overholt said.Mapping Organizational DNATo make sense of that complexity, Strategia Analytics developed its concept of organizational DNA, a framework that measures four strands: strategy, leadership, culture, and execution—and how well they align. Unlike traditional engagement surveys, the model avoids labeling environments as good or bad, instead focusing on fit.“To be blunt, I think we measure differently,” Overholt said. “Measuring DNA allows us to put it into different buckets and see the different influences that parts of your DNA have, just like an individual, different genes drive different behavior.”Lopez emphasized that the same environment could be productive for one group and counterproductive for another. “Work environments are not, by definition, either good, bad, or indifferent,” he said. “What we look at is whether the skills, knowledge, behavior, mindsets of the employees match the particular environment they happen to be in.”Overholt described how Strategia’s tools convert data into clear roadmaps that help organizations understand where people are and how to guide them. “We think we can make it simple,” he said. “We create road maps of how you operate.”A Case Study in TransitionOverholt pointed to a three-year project with a mid-sized manufacturing company undergoing leadership succession. Employees were anxious, recalling a poorly handled transition 15 years earlier. Strategia’s initial measurements revealed a divided executive team and unclear values.When the incoming CEO stepped in, she prioritized communication, hosting town hall meetings across the company in multiple languages to connect directly with employees. “Town hall meetings were one of her specialties. She implemented and took it and just took it away,” Overholt said. By the third year, he says, the company’s measurement of how well its strategy and execution were linked “soared.”The lesson was that there is no single lever for change. Leaders must work with the tools and strengths they have, whether it’s formal performance management systems or face-to-face communication, says Overholt. HR at the Center of ChangeMuch of this work depends on HR, which both speakers say plays a pivotal, if varied, role. Overholt emphasized the importance of HR leaders who truly know their companies. Strategia’s data consistently show HR as one of the top drivers of change. “With every company we have, the relationship between employees and HR is always there at the center of whatever mischief is going on,” said Lopez. So how can and should HR respond to employees facing existential uncertainty about their jobs? Overholt’s guidance was to resist offering false assurances. “The first thing HR can do is not try to pretend it knows,” he said. “And if you really want to connect with the people, you say, and that’s where we are, too. We’re all in this together. How can we make this better?”Lopez echoed the importance of honesty. “Focus on acknowledging the emotional impact on the employee,” he said. “Don’t try to explain it away.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Strategia Analytics, for sponsoring this webinar.Chris O’Keeffe is a freelance writer with experience across industries. As the founder and creative director of OK Creative: The Language Agency, he has led strategy and storytelling for organizations like MIT, Amazon, and Cirque du Soleil, bringing their stories to life through established and emerging media.

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Managing Teams From Gen Z to Baby Boomers: Tools for Success

BY Ade Akin October 09, 2025

Heather Tinsley-Fix, a senior advisor at AARP, was worried that an intern had been in a biking accident when he missed work for an entire week and didn’t call. When he returned to work and she asked him to explain the absence, she quickly found a difference in generational norms. In college, the intern wasn’t obligated to notify professors if he was missing a class, and he thought that’s how things worked in his new workplace. “Once I understood that, I said, ‘Okay, I get that. That makes sense,’” Tinsley-Fix recalled during a  From Day One webinar. “It’s about trying to get underneath what the behavior is that's bothering you as a manager,” she said. Such misunderstandings are increasingly common in today’s workplace, where as many as five generations work side by side. During the session, Tinsley-Fix and Megan Gerhardt, Ph.D., founder of Gentelligence, both acknowledged that while age diversity can be a source of friction in the workplace, it can also be a significant competitive advantage. The key is moving beyond stereotypes and learning to harness each person’s unique strengths.The Case for Generational IntelligenceMulti-generational teams are the new normal, and there’s a strong business case for fostering what Gerhardt calls “generational intelligence.” “There’s research that shows that mixed-age teams perform better on complex and creative tasks than teams which are more homogenous in age,” Tinsley-Fix said. “As you add generational diversity to teams, the quality of the decisions goes up.”Kim Quillen of the Chicago Tribune moderated the webinar (photo by From Day One)This “cognitive diversity” introduces a breadth of professional experience and healthy tension that can spark innovation. The challenge in managing multi-generational teams isn’t the differences between team members, but how they’re handled. Left unchecked, these differences can lead to stereotypes and judgment. When managed with intention, they become a catalyst for growth. A Four-Step Framework for More Productive ConversationsGerhardt outlined a four-step framework in her book, Gentelligence: The Revolutionary Approach to Leading an Intergenerational Workforce, to improve collaboration within multi-generational teams. These are: Identify assumptions. The first step required to build an age-diverse team that collaborates well is recognizing our own age-based biases. “We can’t tell you who you are if you tell us what generation you’re in,” Gerhardt said. She recommends pushing back on prejudiced assumptions and identifying areas where colleagues of different ages might have mismatched expectations, such as flexibility, communication, or professionalism. Adjust your lens. Gerhardt encourages people to view generational differences as a form of culture. “We know when we interact with other cultures that they have different languages, they have different approaches, different experiences. Generations have those same wonderful differences.” It’s about being more curious and less judgmental. Build trust. Managers should create psychological safety nets so the ages of team members are never seen as a hindrance. Each team member’s unique lived experiences should be seen as “fascinating and important and complementary.”Expand the pie. The final step is to get team members to embrace mutual learning. “How do we replace ‘us versus them’ with ‘us plus them’?” Gerhardt asked. She says encouraging team members to see different views as alternative approaches that help push the team in the same direction, instead of seeing them as threats.Navigating Workplace Friction: Mental Health and ProfessionalismYounger generations, particularly Gen Z, often have different expectations regarding mental health and professionalism due to coming of age during the pandemic, says Gerhardt. They are more likely to expect mental health support from employees and are more open to conversations about the subject. This can create contention with older workers who were raised in a different era when employers expected them to “leave their problems at the door.” “Neither is right nor wrong,” Gerhardt said. “But those people are working together and trying to navigate a workplace with very different norms.”Similarly, the very definition of the term “professionalism” varies from generation to generation. For example, an older manager might find a team member leaving their phone on the table during a business lunch as rude, while a younger employee thinks it helps them stay connected and responsive. “If you don’t realize the person sitting across the table from you that is going to potentially offer you a job will find this very rude, then you do have a problem, regardless of whether or not it is something you feel is rude,” Gerhardt added. The solution isn’t to dictate one right way, but to have explicit conversations about shared standards and the “why” behind them.Seek the AdvantageGerhardt’s advice for managers looking to improve their ability to manage age-diverse teams is to gain as much experience working with people of all ages. “Once you are able to learn something from someone significantly older or younger that you weren’t able to figure out on your own, you get hungry for more,” Gerhardt said. “That’s how you change your own mindset. That’s how you change the workplace culture that you’re in.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, AARP, for sponsoring this webinar. We’re looking for organizations to partner with AARP’s Generations at Work program to gain early access to the product, insights on bridging generational differences, input on the final design, and custom guidance to strengthen your workforce strategy. Fill out this brief survey if your company would like to be a part of this opportunity or you just want to learn more about the pilot program: https://surveys.fromdayone.co/aarp2025Ade Akin covers workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by Marco VDM/iStock)

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Beyond Automation: How “Superworker” Organizations Are Redefining Productivity With AI

BY Stephanie Reed October 01, 2025

“When you look at it, every single industry is changing, right? It doesn’t matter what industry it is. AI has affected every single one,” said Rebecca Warren, director of talent center transformation at Eightfold AI.The prominence of AI in boosting human productivity is stark. But the gap between companies using AI and those mastering it is widening daily. During a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s September virtual conference, Warren spoke with Kathi Enderes, SVP of research and global industry at The Josh Bersin Company on AI’s impact on organizations and the workplace transformation following it.The Rise of the SuperworkerOne shift is the rise of the “Superworker,” a term coined by industry analyst and thought leader Josh Bersin. A Superworker is an employee who uses AI to improve their productivity, performance, and creativity. “When I think about using AI in a lot of the things I do, it actually forces me to be more creative,” Warren said.Similarly, Superworker companies create a culture of adaptability where workers learn new skills and reinvent themselves. It involves using AI to make tasks easier, automating tasks to increase scale, integrating processes to enhance productivity, and leveraging autonomy to do more people-oriented work. Enderes says this shift emerged out of understanding that AI and humans can use their unique skills to broaden their reach and get more done. It becomes “all about powering every employee in the organization, from the frontline to mid-level managers all the way to executives, to do 10 times more and to get 10 times more value for the organization,” she said. Rebecca Warren of Eightfold AI spoke with Kathi Enderes of the Josh Bersin Company (photo by From Day One)The Superworker embodies growth, replacing the slashing and burning concept associated with the first wave of AI workplace integration. Enderes advises viewing AI as more than just a cost-cutting solution. Ask yourself, “How can I use these tools that I already have, to do more of the stuff that I like to do, and less of the stuff that I don’t like to do?” she said. Pacesetters in Dynamic OrganizationsWarren and Enderes also spoke about the rise of dynamic organizations that have become pacesetters. These organizations have become high-performing leaders in the market by being “dynamic in design.”Pacesetter organizations focus on skills velocity: honing in on how quickly workers can learn different skills and adapt to newer demands and roles. Essentially, employees adapt to rotating roles, responsibilities, and cross-functional teams. This enhances the organization’s productivity.Previously, organizations were more static in structure and rewards. While dynamic organizations, on the other hand, adopt a “dynamic operating system” featuring a new management and rewards system. This newer system encourages, empowers, and trains employees to create new ideas, learn skills everywhere, and reward employees with strong skills. According to data from the Josh Bersin Company, pacesetters have 31 times higher employee retention and engagement scores and score 20 times higher in workplace productivity.Obstacles to Refining Productivity Organizations that aren’t keeping up with Pacesetters must confront obstacles to change agility. They must shift from a fearful perspective to a curious one, says Enderes. According to their research, 45% of change management programs fail, and 72% are because of people's resistance. Organizations that aren’t keeping up with pacesetters must confront obstacles to change agility. They must shift from a fearful perspective to a curious one, says Enderes. “There’s all these multi-functional, cross-functional, autonomous agents already out there. So it’s not about the technology availability. It’s really a problem of people, culture, organization, and change adoption,” she said. AI training in steps rather than in one giant shift can minimize impact. HR leaders can lead by example with an effective change adoption curve and cultivate an environment where trial-and-error is encouraged. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Eightfold AI, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Stephanie Reed is a freelance news, marketing, and content writer. Much of her work features small business owners throughout diverse industries. She is passionate about promoting small, ethical, and eco-conscious businesses.(Photo by da-kuk/iStock)

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Creating a Competitive Edge in the Race for Talent

BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza September 30, 2025

Job seekers are exhausted. More than two-thirds (66%) say they’re burned out by the search, according to Employ’s 2025 Job Seeker Nation Report. The process is repetitive, opaque, and often ends with a rejection that explains nothing. “A lot of people are wondering, ‘is my resume seen at all, or am I just getting screened out?’” said Katie Ballantyne, VP of customer success operations at Employ. Ballantyne and her colleagues spoke at a From Day One webinar on how employers can gain a competitive edge in the race for talent.Most hiring managers don’t intend for it to be this bad. They’re often recruiting for brand-new, complex roles while juggling outdated processes. “But you wouldn’t build a house without a plan,” Ballantyne said. “You wouldn’t rock up every day and pop a pipe in over here, and a switch over here. No. You’re going to have a layout, you’re going to have an idea of what you’re doing. But people don’t approach hiring in the same way.” This is where AI can be a hugely valuable tool.The poor experience is costing companies. Many job seekers—including great candidates—drop out of an application process that’s “too cumbersome, too repetitive, and doesn’t usually elicit information that’s not already on a resume,” said Shea Shatto, Employ’s senior director of referral partners. Companies relying on endless forms or clunky portals are turning people away before they even make it to an interview.Traditional resume screening tools are a problem. Most automatically eliminate the majority of applications before they even reach a recruiter. But the reject folder could comprise tremendously rich candidates, says Katy Jenkins, Employ’s VP of product. An application submitted toward the end of the hiring window or one not perfectly tailored to the job shouldn’t disqualify someone with valuable skills. AI tools can help employers spot overlooked candidates deep in their pipelines, without spending more money.Journalist and From Day One contributing editor, Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the discussion (photo by From Day One)More employers are turning to more productive tools, like knockout questions and video assessments, that draw out meaningful information with minimal effort from candidates. Others are taking a more open-minded approach, using AI to steer strong applicants toward roles that are a better fit rather than ejecting them from the funnel altogether. “When you go through the whole process and you have your top five candidates, they’re all really qualified,” Shatto said. “Just because the other four don’t make it to that exact role, it doesn’t mean there’s not a good fit for them somewhere.”Some are leaning heavily into their employee value proposition. If an employer claims to value growth and development, candidates should see evidence—whether that’s details about internal mobility programs or stats about how many roles are filled from within. Recruiters need to be able to talk about these opportunities, not just point to a careers page. Without proof, employer branding can sound like empty promises.The weakest link in the hiring process is often evaluation. Many managers have little or no training in how to assess candidates consistently. That’s where AI-powered structured guides and interview intelligence tools come in. “We find that when people use some interview intelligence tooling, first year retention is, on average, 30% higher,” said Jenkins. “Because they’ve actually really evaluated that person against the job. Everyone has very clear expectations.”For candidates, consistency means clarity about what’s expected, how they’re measured, and even how they can improve. That kind of respect keeps people engaged, even if they don’t land the role this time.Jenkins asked her team to do an exercise in empathy: write the rejection letter they would want to receive. The exercise is simple, but it reframes the process around something hiring leaders often forget: every candidate deserves respect. Fixing hiring isn’t just about speed or efficiency, but trust. The companies that get it right won’t just win more talent, they’ll keep it.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Employ, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by FG Trade Latin/iStock)

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Culture by Design: Making Connection and Recognition Real for Frontline Teams

BY Carrie Snider September 29, 2025

When was the last time someone genuinely recognized your work—where you felt seen, valued, and reminded that your contributions matter? That question, posed by Dave Nixon, co-founder and CEO of Enablo, set the stage during the From Day One webinar on recognition and connection. Nixon spoke with Heather Halliday, customer success manager at Flip, to explore how leaders can make recognition more real, especially for frontline teams. These deskless workers make up roughly 80% of the global workforce: retail associates, healthcare professionals, hotel staff, bank tellers, and many others who keep businesses running. Yet too often, they feel isolated from leadership and disconnected from the company culture. Recognition isn’t just a nice-to-have for them, it’s essential.While recognizing people is simply the right thing to do, it also has a measurable return on investment, says Nixon. “When people are disengaged, a lot more incidents happen,” he said. “They’re 18% less productive, 50% more safety incidents occur, and turnover costs climb.” Meanwhile, when employees feel valued and heard, the results are dramatic: up to 50% fewer safety incidents, 37% higher productivity, and voluntary turnover rates that improve significantly. As Nixon put it, recognition drives a “20x return on investment.”Focus on Daily RecognitionLeaders have many opportunities to recognize their people, but daily recognition is the foundation, says Nixon. Unlike formal awards or quarterly celebrations, daily recognition builds habits, strengthens trust, and reinforces culture in real time.Dave Nixon, the co-founder and CEO of Enablo, led the webinar (company photo)“It’s less formal. Sometimes there’s no monetary value,” Nixon said. “It’s just the simple things done consistently.” While quarterly or annual awards have their place, it’s the frequent, everyday acknowledgments that make the biggest impact.So how can organizations design recognition programs that actually work—especially for frontline employees? Nixon shared three key design principles:First, make it accessible. Recognition should be available where employees already are. “It needs to be in the flow of work, in the tools they already use,” Nixon said. For frontline workers, that often means mobile access during breaks, when checking shifts, or reviewing pay stubs. Recognition can’t sit in a silo—it needs to live in the everyday workflow.Second, make it visible. From the first day on the job, employees should see recognition in action, linked to company values. “When someone accesses the platform, they should immediately get a sense for the culture and what’s important to the company,” Nixon said.And lastly, make it timely. Recognition loses power if it’s delayed. “The magic happens when you celebrate the moment in real time,” Nixon noted. Frequent, immediate acknowledgment keeps the momentum going.Too often, companies roll out recognition platforms that end up unused, stuck on separate apps or hidden behind clunky systems. “Only a fraction of people log in,” Nixon said. “It just sits out there in a silo.” The key is integration: recognition should be intuitive, seamless, and part of the same space where employees already collaborate.Recognition in Action: Lessons from the FrontlineEffective recognition reinforces culture, builds connection between employees and leadership, and directly impacts retention and safety, says Halliday. In her role, Halliday helps companies bring recognition to life for frontline employees, emphasizing that successful programs should follow the design principles Nixon outlined: accessibility, visibility, and timeliness. Flip’s platform integrates these principles into daily workflows, giving employees space to collaborate, connect, and celebrate one another, whether in chats, channels, or automated “Flip Flows.”Halliday shared two reminders for building recognition programs: don’t overwhelm employees; and don’t overwhelm yourself. Tailor streams so recognition feels relevant, and starts small. To illustrate, Halliday offered a few customer examples.First, a European retail chain with 50,000 employees launched a campaign called Together. Staff wrote recognition notes for colleagues on branded cards, posted them on a breakroom board, then snapped photos to share in Flip’s digital channel. Each shout-out doubled as an entry into a raffle, making recognition both visible and fun, she says. Another example was a company looking to reimagine their ‘Employee of the Month’ initiative. Shout-outs were submitted in a dedicated digital channel, and leadership selected winners based on content and variety of nominations. The result was an inclusive program that celebrated many employees, not just the usual few.Bringing Recognition to LifeNixon demonstrated Flip’s platform, showing how it could be white-labeled for a fictitious “Big Box Co” retailer. Frontline employees could access recognition with just one tap, select a colleague, tie the recognition to a company value, and write a personal message. Branding could be customized with logos, GIFs, or even photos, creating a personalized and engaging experience.Once submitted, recognition appears in a dedicated Shout Outs channel. The recognized employee receives a notification, and coworkers can react with likes, comments, and encouragement. “That’s the dopamine hit we talk about,” Nixon said. “That feel-good moment.”Posts don’t clutter the main news feed, which remains reserved for essential company updates. Instead, they live in their own space, allowing employees to engage without distraction. Leaders can tailor visibility based on team, department, or location, Nixon says. Celebrating MilestonesMilestones are key opportunities to celebrate employees in ways that feel personal and meaningful. Years of service can be spotlighted in dedicated channels, paired with thoughtful gifts like flowers or wine, often presented by a senior leader. “It’s such a simple, straightforward thing,” Halliday noted, “but it makes all the difference in whether someone goes home feeling unseen or celebrated.”Retirement provides another meaningful opportunity. One memorable example: a retiree’s high-visibility work jacket was signed by teammates and shared in a farewell post, turning an everyday item into a cherished keepsake.Recognition can also celebrate personal milestones, including weddings, new homes, or births. Halliday highlighted a unique use case: self-recognition via a Winning Channel. Examples included a colleague securing a visa, someone hosting an art show, and Halliday herself sharing that her dog won a local drag competition.Community celebrations can also be recognized. Halliday described campaigns around Thanksgiving, Pride Month, or International Women’s Day, noting one example where employees were given orchids to mark International Women’s Day. “That’s the kind of recognition that stays with you even after you leave the job,” she said.Embedding Recognition Into CultureRecognition should be embedded into the culture by design. “We’ve got to make it so easy, take away the friction, remove the barriers,” Nixon said. Templates and ready-to-use cards allow leaders to recognize quickly and often, building positive habits that last.Equipping managers and champions to lead by example is equally important. Recognition from the top cascades across teams, and digital tools allow those acknowledgments to happen in the moment, reinforcing the values that matter most.Finally, the real power comes from the data. Every recognition post contributes to a stream of real-time cultural insights that surveys cannot capture. Leaders can see which values resonate, where recognition is thriving, or lagging, and uncover hidden influencers. When combined with operational metrics like turnover, safety, or sales, this cultural data proves what many already know instinctively: recognition drives results.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Enablo, for sponsoring this webinar. Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.(Photo by Jacob Wackerhausen/iStock)

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The Keys to Building Future-Ready Leadership, From Potential to Power

BY Ade Akin September 26, 2025

Sonic Automotive, a major U.S. retailer with over 150 car dealerships, recognized it had a tremendous problem a decade ago. The traditional car-buying experience was fraught with pain points for consumers, negatively impacting sales. The organization decided to tackle the problem head-on and ran a customer focus group to understand what part of the sales process needed to be changed. Their findings were clear: the company couldn’t keep hiring the same type of sales reps they’d always targeted.“We knew we couldn’t hire the same type of people we'd been hiring,” Douglas Bryant, the vice president of talent management, training, and recruiting at Sonic Automotive, said.Bryant went on to describe how Sonic Automotive revolutionized its hiring practices during a From Day One webinar titled “The Keys to Building Future-Ready Leadership: From Potential to Power,” moderated by Rebecca Knight, a contributing columnist at Harvard Business Review. He was joined by Dan Miller, a solutions architect at talent intelligence firm SHL, which Sonic partnered with to transform its sales staff. The findings of Sonic Automotive’s focus group led to the launch of Echo Park, a used-vehicle retail chain built on a new customer-centric model. It also revolutionized how the organization recruited talent, moving away from gut feelings to a science-based approach that yielded highly profitable results. The Counterintuitive Path to SuccessSonic Automotive’s initial assumptions about what characteristics defined a successful salesperson were upended. Standard practice in the industry at the time was to hire based on demographic factors and previous experience, with the hiring manager’s intuition guiding the process. The company collaborated with SHL to conduct studies that defined what a “good” salesperson really looked like. They analyzed various factors like military experience, previous sales history, and college degrees. The result was startling. “Our hiring managers liked hiring through gut instinct. They think they know what good talent looks like,” Bryant said. “The silver bullet was the SHL assessment. That was the only thing that loaded and correlated to success.”Journalist Rebecca Knight moderated the session with Dan Miller of SHL and Douglas Bryant of Sonic Automotive (photo by From Day One)The surprises kept coming. When Sonic Automotive opened a call center to handle customer appointments, the assumption was that new hires should come from sales backgrounds. However, the data showed reps with sales backgrounds performed worse. “We found out there was an inverse correlation between those sales abilities and the number of appointments set,” Bryant added. “We were totally hiring the wrong folks.” Instead, multitasking and customer service skills were the true predictors of success.The Tangible Results of a Skills-Based ApproachThe impact of Sonic Automotive's move to a psychometric assessment-based hiring system was tremendous. By setting the cutoff score at the 30th percentile, Sonic’s small recruiting team was able to manage over 100,000 applications a year and present hiring managers with only the top two or three candidates. The benefits of embracing a data-driven approach were undeniable. One initial study revealed that salespeople who were in the top 70% on the assessment sold an average of five cars per month. “That may not sound like a lot, but if you extrapolate that out across 150 stores, it was $100 million net to the bottom line,” Bryant said.The benefits of the new hiring system also extended to employee engagement and retention, giving Sonic a significant advantage in an industry where turnover rates are usually around 60%. Sonic’s turnover rate plunged to as low as 20%, while employee engagement and customer service metrics are now at all-time highs across its divisions. Identifying the Skills That Actually MatterThe key to Sonic Automotive identifying the type of salespeople its customers actually wanted was focusing on enduring behavioral skills, rather than gut feelings. SHL measures 96 different behavioral skills in its assessments, which are grouped into 20 core competencies and 8 major categories.“When we think about the skills that we want to focus on in predicting long-term success, it tends to be best to focus on those skills that are more durable, such as things like collaboration or adaptability or critical thinking,” Miller said. These are more predictive than resume-based factors or self-reported skill levels.For example, a broad personality trait like extroversion is broken down into more specific categories like networking or presentation skills. “When we’re thinking about fit to a particular role, we tend to focus on those skills,” Miller added. “When we’re thinking about something like broad future potential, that’s when we focus more on those broad personality traits.”One of the most sought-after skills hiring managers look for today is learning agility, the capacity to learn from experience and apply those lessons to new situations. SHL developed a “re-skilling potential assessment” to measure this trait. “It’s designed to capture how quickly someone can learn and grow and improve in those areas,” Miller said. It helps identify individuals who can rapidly adapt and close skill gaps.Overhauling Culture and Overcoming ResistanceSonic Automotive’s transition to a new hiring system came with its share of challenges. The company had to overhaul its entire sales culture to reinforce the collaborative skills its assessments identified. “In a traditional car dealership, the salespeople are really pitted against each other,” Bryant said. The company changed pay plans, reporting structures, and incentives to reward teamwork over individual cut-throat competition.Convincing skeptical managers that it was time to change the hiring process required a data-driven approach. Sonic Automotive allowed for exceptions but tracked them meticulously. “I kept track of these exceptions, and then I’d watch our term list,” Bryant said. He would follow up with managers whenever they had to fire one of their “exception” hires, and the results spoke for themselves over time. Bryant says these managers will not hire anyone without an assessment score. The data-driven approach also helped eliminate personal bias from the hiring process, leading to a more diverse workforce. Bryant notes that recent engagement surveys show that female employees now score higher than their male counterparts, a reversal from past years. The Future: AI, Mobility, and Enduring SkillsMiller and Bryant both addressed the impact of artificial intelligence on the hiring process and skills sought. SHL is incorporating AI into its platforms and conducting research to identify who can use it best, says Miller. The study includes assessing both the technical and behavioral skills needed to leverage AI effectively. “The leaders of tomorrow are not going to be managing a solely human workforce,” Knight said. Miller agreed, emphasizing the need for skills that complement AI.The next step for Sonic Automotive is using these assessments for internal talent development and mobility. “We're starting to view the assessments and the data, using [them] more and more for development after you join Sonic,” Bryant said. SHL’s talent mobility platform allows employees to explore roles within the organization that might be a good fit, providing them with autonomy over their career paths and boosting retention.Bryant’s advice for organizations hesitant to embrace a skill-based approach to hiring is to lean on the data. Sonic Automotive’s decade-long transformation shows us that challenging long-held assumptions with concrete data creates a more efficient workforce that’s more engaged, more diverse, and more prepared for the future. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SHL, for sponsoring this webinar.Ade Akin covers workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by RealPeopleGroup/iStock)

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How Companies Are Tackling Employee Financial Instability With Emergency Savings

BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza September 25, 2025

As of 2024, 37% of American adults say they would struggle to cover an unexpected $400 expense. Financial precariousness shows up in the workplace as stress, disengagement, and turnover. Increasingly, companies are realizing that 401(k)s aren’t enough to ensure financial stability. Workers need short-term safety nets, too. That’s why a growing number of employers are experimenting with emergency savings programs.At specialty grocer The Fresh Market, a routine employee survey revealed that financial wellness—not physical or emotional health—was workers’ top concern. What followed was a pilot program that helped employees build lasting savings habits and avoid relying on costly paycheck advances.‘We See Emergency Savings as a Foundational First Step’Every year, Paula Stop, the director of total rewards at The Fresh Market, surveys employees about what benefits they would like to see in the coming year. In 2022, she asked which of the following forms of wellness was most important: physical, financial, social, or emotional. “We were surprised,” she said during a From Day One webinar about emergency savings at work. “The top selection overall was financial wellness.”Stop investigated and found that use of the company’s earned wage access platform was high—higher than she was comfortable with. Clearly, employees were struggling with cash, and they needed a better option than regular advances on their paycheck.That’s when The Fresh Market tapped their long-time partner Commonwealth, a national nonprofit whose mission is to make access to financial security and wealth-building common and accessible. Having an emergency savings account is the first step to financial security, said Charvi Gandotra, the organization’s senior director. Without that cushion, people overly rely on paycheck advances, 401(k) loans and hardship withdrawals, and predatory loans. For some, it shows up in tax levies and wage garnishments. “Because life happens, people tap into some of those longer-term retirement solutions, and that’s what we are trying to prevent,” said Gandotra, “We’re trying to help strengthen. We see [emergency savings] as a foundational first step.”Leaders spoke about "Emergency Savings at Work: How Employers Are Tackling America's Financial Safety" in the session moderated by Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza (photo by From Day One)Stop and Gandotra decided to add SoFi to the partnership. The Fresh Market had already been working with the digital bank for its student loan refinancing program, and Sarah McLemore, the senior director and business lead at SoFi, was ready to jump in and help. Emergency savings is often a great compliment to wage access, she says. “Earned wage access can be great in terms of avoiding going into deep debt. But on the flip side, you’re not teaching people how to save and prepare for big bills. They’re just going to get money when you need it. This is a nice one-two punch.” Rolling Out Emergency SavingsThey began with a pilot in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and the Florida Panhandle, areas where earned wage access was highest. The program let employees split their direct deposit at the time of payroll, and over the course of a campaign to encourage savings, the share of paycheck contributed to the program grew from 6% to 8%. Three months later, employees had retained their gains. The habit was sticking.When The Fresh Market rolled out the program to all employees, it matched a $75 direct deposit with a $75 company contribution. The incentive structure was a huge success for the grocer. Engagement is best when communication is clear and consistent and incentives are attainable, though McLemore noted that plenty of employers launch successful programs without a company match.The type of savings program that worked for employees at The Fresh Market may not work for employees at the next company, Gandotra says. “The starting point for employers is doing  research, understanding what an employee’s needs and priorities are. Let’s identify some gaps in the financial benefits program, and then let’s figure out how to fill those gaps.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SoFi at Work, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by designer491/iStock)

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Coaching as a Catalyst: Learning for Lasting Skill Development

BY Christopher O'Keeffe September 19, 2025

As technology accelerates and workplace skills face rapid disruption, “there are still a significant number of current skills that are going to continue to become irrelevant or to be radically transformed by 2035. It’s not speculative hype,” said Jen Paterno, senior behavioral scientist at CoachHub, during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s August virtual conference. That shift isn’t just a matter of outdated knowledge. It’s a sign that new skills are rising faster than most organizations can absorb them. “It’s not that old skills die, it’s that new skills rise faster than most organizations can integrate them,” Paterno said.The stakes are high. According to the World Economic Forum, nearly 40% of workers’ core skills are expected to change by 2030. Employers are investing heavily in upskilling and reskilling programs, yet many find that learning still falls short of driving lasting change on the job.From Learning Events to Lasting ChangeToo often, organizations mistake training for transformation. “The most common mistake we see is we go from seeing learning as a process to seeing it as an event,” Paterno said. That means workers attend workshops or complete online modules, but the knowledge doesn’t stick.Jen Paterno of CoachHub led the thought leadership spotlight (photo by From Day One)Science backs that up. The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve reminds us that seventy percent of learning is forgotten within a day if not applied, and only 12% of employees say they regularly use what they learn on the job, according to research from Harvard Business Review. The result is a familiar pattern: companies spend billions on training that fails to produce sustained behavior change.What’s missing, Paterno says, is a bridge. “We aren’t facing a learning problem. We’re facing an integration problem,” she said. That’s where coaching enters the picture.Coaching, Paterno says, doesn’t simply teach skills—it helps employees embed them by unlocking the emotional drivers behind behavior change. Drawing on research from Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, she noted that humans make decisions emotionally first, even when they appear rational.Among the most powerful drivers of change are:Identity alignment: Change sticks when it reinforces a person’s self-image.Emotional relevance and urgency: What matters in the moment?Belonging: Employees shift when new behaviors have the potential to increase social standing or team cohesion.Hope and self-efficacy: Confidence from within.Emotional distress/friction: Sometimes discomfort or failure creates the urgency to change.Agency: People want to be in control of their own advancement. “Behavior change doesn’t happen in workshops,” Paterno said. “It happens in the messy, real-world moments of on-the-job application.” Coaching provides the psychological safety, accountability, and reinforcement that make those shifts sustainable.Advances in AI are making it possible to scale coaching across the workforce. CoachHub, for example, uses AI to match coaches with employees, expand coaching across time zones and languages, and provide measurable dashboards to track outcomes.AI tools, Paterno emphasized, are not a replacement for human coaches but a complement. “AI is going to allow you to touch larger populations,” she said. “It’s going to unlock coaching for your individual contributors as well.”From Theory to PracticeThe impact can be significant. Paterno cited a global manufacturing company that paired technical training with personalized coaching during a digital transformation. While the training explained the ‘what and the why,’ coaching focused on the ‘how,’ helping employees apply new skills, build confidence, and adapt to cross-functional roles.Within six months, the company reported a 25% increase in internal mobility within re-skilled roles, along with higher employee confidence and collaboration, says Paterno. Employees who initially resisted the transformation began mentoring peers and proactively contributing to agile projects.“The training gave them the ‘what and why,’” Paterno said. “The coaching gave them the ‘how’ to apply it."For organizations grappling with AI disruption and evolving skill needs, the message is clear: learning alone is not enough. Sustained change requires integration, reflection, and accountability—and that’s the role of coaching. "When coaching follows training," Paterno said, “It transforms insight into behavior and scales culture change from the inside out.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, CoachHub, for sponsoring this webinar. Chris O’Keeffe is a freelance writer with experience across industries. As the founder and creative director of OK Creative: The Language Agency, he has led strategy and storytelling for organizations like MIT, Amazon, and Cirque du Soleil, bringing their stories to life through established and emerging media.(Photo by JLco - Julia Amaral/iStock)

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From Budget to Breakthrough: How Logitech Is Personalizing Benefits at Scale

BY Ade Akin September 16, 2025

Julia McCarrel inherited a benefits system that included more than 30 different vendors when she stepped into her role as the head of benefits for the Americas and global programs at Logitech. New hires, herself included, were inundated with a confusing array of nearly a dozen benefit cards.  The solution her team settled on was relatively simple: consolidate, standardize, and give people money they can spend on the things that matter to them. McCarrel shared how she transformed Logitech’s benefits landscape alongside Kathleen Harris, a solutions consultant at Forma during a From Day One webinar. The conversation titled “From Budget to Breakthrough: How Logitech is Personalizing Benefits at Scale” unpacked why lifestyle spending accounts (LSAs) are gaining popularity across industries and offered a blueprint for other HR leaders looking to personalize benefits programs for their organizations in impactful ways. Building the Business Case for PersonalizationLogitech initially launched its wellness LSA in 2021 to support over 5,000 employees across 43 countries during the pandemic. The company also sought to address inconsistencies in its offerings, such as gym subsidies that were only available in certain countries. “LSAs are an employer-funded spending account, so you’ll hear [them called] spending account, customizable account, personal benefit. [There are] all types of ways in which people describe LSAs,” said Harris. “There are a number of words that we use interchangeably, but in the end, they’re really spending accounts that are funded by the employer and used by the employee.” LSAs allow employers to define eligibility and policy, while employees choose how to spend their stipend via a store, a card, or claims. McCarrel says the main challenge she faced was that the program was designed to be manually managed through a Human Resources Information System (HRIS) system. “In six months, [our team] had received 761 tickets from employees,” she said. This administrative drag was the key to building a business case for change. McCarrel calls the move to a dedicated LSA platform a strategic investment in talent retention, productivity, and operational efficiency. The Power of Starting NarrowJulia McCarrel, the Head of Benefits for Americas & Global Programs at Logitech spoke about partnering with Forma (company photo)Logitech started transforming its benefits program with a tight focus on physical health because that’s where the data pointed. The initial goal was equality, since employees in some countries had gym subsidies, while others had limited options, says McCarrel. “We were really trying to just provide equity across the company for that access to physical health and well-being,” she said.That commitment paid off. Logitech reported a 12% increase in benefits utilization and a 7% increase in spend after moving the program to Forma, as employees used their stipend for athletic shoes, gym memberships, smart watches, and more.  McCarrel advises companies looking to personalize benefits packages to avoid eliminating all existing programs at once. “I would definitely recommend starting narrow and then building out,” she said. “The last thing you want to do is build out too much, and then you have to start taking things away.”Logitech’s global wellness LSA started with a focus on physical health, which was a direct evolution of the gym subsidies its previous benefits package offered. This clear focus made the program manageable and aligned it with specific business objectives regarding preventative care and employee health, says McCarrel.  Measurable Impact on Culture and OperationsThe quantitative results were crystal clear: its well-being LSA saw 88% utilization, tuition reimbursement utilization rose 150% after moving to the Forma platform, and the adoption/surrogacy program went from zero claims to its first active users.Qualitatively speaking, Logitech’s move to personalize its benefits program was a resounding success that helped boost employee engagement and satisfaction. Its positive impact was also clear in direct employee feedback. McCarrel quotes one employee who stated, “The wellness reimbursement is super simple to use,” and that it provided them “the freedom to find the health resources that work best for me.” This feedback is a core part of the return on investment for McCarrel.  “If you look at that utilization at 88%, you can’t take that away,” she said. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Forma, for sponsoring this webinar. Ade Akin covers workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by RealPeopleGroup/iStock)

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The HR Metrics That Matter: Defining ROI in a People-First Culture

BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza September 08, 2025

In the rush to adopt the latest AI tools and maximize efficiency and output, employers may be overlooking the one factor that gives them a competitive edge: people.“It’s the unpredictable, varied creativity of humans that actually allows one business to leapfrog over another,” said Ken Matos, director of market insights at HR analytics platform HiBob, during a From Day One webinar. “When you’re people-first, you’re really looking for ways to get the right people to advance your business strategy most effectively.”Kenneth Matos of HiBob spoke during the webinar (company photo)A “people-first” culture, as Matos describes it, is one grounded in the belief that it’s people, not processes, not technology, that makes a business successful. That means designing the right roles for the organization, then ensuring the right people are in those roles. When employees feel well-matched, supported, and recognized, Matos says, “you get increases in creativity, novel ideas, and their ability to adapt and learn. That’s really valuable when you’re in a growth phase.”Flashpoint, a cyber threat intelligence platform, learned this firsthand. Several years ago, the company enjoyed a hiring surge. Headcount was growing at a steady clip and business was booming. But Lane McFarland, Flashpoint’s senior director of talent management, eventually hit pause. He began to question whether the pace of hiring was tracking closely enough with the company’s long-term goals.“We have a very complex and unique organization,” McFarland said. Flashpoint employs threat intelligence analysts from “three-letter” agencies like the CIA and FBI, vulnerability analysts who adopt criminal personas to draw out hackers, as well as accountants, HR partners, and other corporate staff. Each group brings its own professional culture and expectations about the working environment. “We want to make sure that we are matching both what we need and what they need,” said McFarland. “We don’t want to get to a point where it’s not a fit because it’s our fault.”So, McFarland redefined how Flashpoint approaches hiring, beginning with clear expectations. Job descriptions now outline outcome milestones for the first 30, 60, and 90 days, and checkpoints take place accordingly. Those check-ins aren’t just about evaluating employees, they’re also about ensuring the company is delivering on its side of the relationship.The company’s needs change, just as employees’ needs do–McFarland knows that. And rarely is someone so mismatched to a role that it can’t work. If a new hire lacks a requisite skill, McFarland can help them get it. If the role isn’t the right fit, he encourages pivots. Sometimes even outside the company.For some leaders, “people-first” suggests benefits packages and sentiment surveys, but Matos and McFarland encourage HR leaders to think deeper. “I always recommend HR leaders expand the scope of what they think of as well-being,” McFarland said. For him, it’s about whether employees feel fulfilled, valued, and recognized.Matos puts it this way: “What is a reasonable amount of work to give people before things break down? In an ideal world, we would say, ‘let’s measure their well-being. If their well-being goes down, that’s too much work. That’s not an ROI conversation. That’s an ethical conversation.”“Engagement is a symptom,” McFarland said. “We need to understand what’s the underlying problem, how we can impact that from an HR perspective, and whether we can expand our view of what HR leaders actually have the power to shape across the business.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, HiBob, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by courtneyk/iStock)

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Skills That Stick: From Good Managers to Great Teams

BY Stephanie Reed September 05, 2025

When managers check out, so do their teams. A recent Gallup’s survey found employee engagement fell to 21% in 2025, down from 23%, as manager engagement slipped from 30% to 27%.Meanwhile, effective managers create engaged teams that build skills, boost productivity, and show up more consistently. Comprehensive training programs can raise manager well-being, cutting disengagement down and driving stronger performance.During a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s August virtual conference, Priscila Bala, CEO of LifeLabs Learning shared research and tools behind turning good managers into great teams through skills-based, people-centered learning. Fostering a skill-resilient workplace means encouraging continuous skill development, focusing on practical behaviors rather than abstract theories to make learning stick, and using a skills taxonomy to provide visibility, a common language, and consistent assessment across the organization, says Bala.“First, we know that now there’s a big market shift towards prioritizing skills over degrees or tenure,” said Bala. “Whether it is to the latest software and technology or to ensuring that you can then apply all of these people skills to a next level of execution is going to be ever more critical.”This process involves identifying high-leverage skills and turning them into lasting behaviors. LifeLabs Learning, known for its leadership training, supports managers through monthly workshops where ideas and behaviors are shared, then reinforced as teams practice them together in a collaborative setting.Priscila Bala, CEO of LifeLabs Learning, led the thought leadership spotlight (company photo)Workplace learning becomes a shared experience, where managers apply their skills while teams build on that knowledge and uncover their own strengths. Bala emphasizes Tipping Point Skills, such as time management, adaptability, and conflict resolution, that drive productivity and profitability. Training programs blend theory with practice, ensuring these behaviors become second nature.“It’s one thing for me to simulate, in the peace, quiet, and safety of my private space, and it is another to actually be able to perform and support in a space that is communal and social,” Bala said. Lastly, a well-defined skills taxonomy helps managers give effective, constructive feedback by linking the skill being developed to a concrete business outcome, such as launching a new campaign or shortening sales cycles. Improving communication by avoiding vague words, and instead, using observable examples further reinforces pragmatic learning.What aids in making these in-demand skills stick is connecting to behavior and habits that prevent workers from slipping back into old practices. LifeLabs has over 100 behavioral and support tools, says Bala. It offers custom workshops, one-on-one program consulting, and a user-friendly platform that applies cognitive psychology, organizational design, and behavioral economics to practical program management.What Skills Matter, and Why?  In 2024, 50% of the workforce completed training, reskilling, or upskilling as part of L&D initiatives compared to 41% in 2023. Continuous learning is in increasing demand, reports the World Economic Forum.Technical skills in AI and other newer technologies continue to rise in demand in the modern workforce. “The reality is that, while I wholeheartedly believe that it’s not necessary that AI is going to take people's jobs away, people with AI [skills and knowledge] will take people’s jobs away,” Bala said. “And I think that the ability to really use all of these tools effectively is really going to differentiate.”Soft skills like communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence are transferable between jobs and industries, and will also continue to be in demand. Without a doubt, managers have their work cut out for them. Many feel under-resourced and uncertain about how to give constructive feedback during training, reskilling, or upskilling. Yet as Bala observes, managers are multipliers—role models who guide their teams through inevitable workplace changes. Supporting them with a communal learning environment ensures both managers and their teams are equipped to achieve business objectives.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, LifeLabs Learning, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Stephanie Reed is a freelance news, marketing, and content writer. Much of her work features small business owners throughout diverse industries. She is passionate about promoting small, ethical, and eco-conscious businesses.(Photo by Vadym Pastukh/iStock)

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Supporting Financial Wellness Beyond the 401(k): Why Financial Stress Is a Workplace Matter

BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza September 02, 2025

A common misconception among employers is that high earners are financially stable. But as Mamie Wheaton, director of financial planning at LearnLux, points out, that isn’t always the case. “High income doesn’t necessarily equal peace of mind. Financial stress at any income level can lead to burnout, disengagement, and even turnover,” she said.Another common misconception: thinking that offering a 401(k) checks the box on financial wellness. In reality, employees are juggling far more immediate concerns, like credit card debt, student loans, or childcare costs. “If someone can’t manage today’s financial stressors, retirement planning is often the last thing on their mind,” Wheaton said.She and her colleague Jane Lund, who leads regional sales at LearnLux, a financial well-being platform tailored to individual needs, presented a From Day One webinar on how employers can support financial wellness beyond just retirement plans. In it they discussed the very real implications of financial stress on employee retention, engagement, and productivity.Uncovering the Source of Financial StressEmployees don’t always know what kind of help they need, or how to ask for it. “People often feel shame about their financial stress, especially if it’s tied to family building, life changes, or illness,” Lund said. Those needs often show up in hardship withdrawals from retirement accounts, upticks in personal loans, or rising absenteeism. “Sometimes all three,” she said.For HR leaders, this presents a challenge. Financial struggles are seldom obvious, but the downstream effects–like absenteeism, disengagement, and attrition–are very real. As Lund put it, “You don’t really see people raising their hands saying, ‘I need help,’ so how are leaders supposed to know what to prioritize?”Even when employees do schedule a call with a financial planner, like those at LearnLux, they might open with a question about retirement planning, but the real issue could lie elsewhere. That’s when licensed, certified planners like Wheaton dig deeper, looking for the root problem, so they can help employees feel empowered to make better decisions for themselves. Sometimes a single conversation can make a difference, while others will need regular touchpoints over weeks or months to find their footing. And for everyone, these needs may change over time.Why Financial Wellness Is a Workplace MatterThe implications of financial wellbeing are closely tied to safety, productivity, and retention. One LearnLux client, a construction company, launched a zero-injury initiative and discovered through surveys and conversations that employees’ financial stress was a key factor. “We see that a lot in frontline workforces,” Lund said. And not just in blue collar workplaces, the same is true in higher-earning industries, like healthcare.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the discussion among leaders at LearnLux (photo by From Day One)By introducing financial wellness support, the company helped employees stabilize their personal finances, which in turn supported their safety goals. Retention improved, too. Based on their annual survey, “about 79% of employees who have used LearnLux for three months or more say they’re more likely to stay at their current job,” Lund said.“If we can be there to help new employees start off on the right foot, it’s going to help with retention,” Wheaton added. “It’s also going to help reduce 401(k) loans, credit card debt, and overall stress at work.” Small changes that add up to a healthier, safer, and more resilient workforce. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, LearnLux, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Puttachat Kumkrong/iStock)

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Constant Change in the Workplace: Getting It Right While Maintaining Employee Trust

BY Jessica Swenson August 27, 2025

“CEOs in the U.S. are saying that they’ll likely have to reinvent how their company delivers value in the next three years,” said Kathya Acuña, head of strategy for LOCAL. The rapid advent of AI and ongoing reimagination of roles and skill sets prompts the question: “How does constant change impact us as humans?”The human brain craves stability Acuña shared during a From Day One webinar on navigating change. So, a constant sense of change decreases mental bandwidth, impacts emotions, and can make it hard to sustain focus on moving targets. Poorly sequenced change or unclear communication can cause employee overload, decision fatigue, and distrust. “If this is what’s happening at an individual level,” she said, “then the question becomes: what if we amplify it?” The potential for decision fatigue to scale company-wide gives organizations an opportunity to embrace employee-centered change practices to avoid the disruption of company culture.“The founding philosophy of LOCAL, and the thing that we preach more than anything else, is that employees are not resources. They’re customers. Really, they are the first customers for everything that you’re doing,” said Neil Bedwell, co-founder and president of LOCAL. “You have to win them over in order to succeed,” he said. LOCAL has reframed the concept of marketing into a change management tool that they call change marketing, which is used to drive employee engagement and help sustain internal change. With an innovative three-step process—insight, story, craft—the company created a culture of change readiness and accelerated action. During the insight phase, Acuña says, put your target audience at the center by gathering insights to understand their problem and associated perceptions. Next, she says, look at the story of how people will experience the change. Rather than just letting the change happen to them, offer opportunities for them to co-create with you and have a sense of agency. The final phase, craft, “is really about how do you [take the change] to people the same way you would [take a product] to market?” Create attention-getting experience content that drives engagement and adoption. Leaders from LOCAL spoke on the topic "Constant Change in the Workplace: Getting It Right While Maintaining Employee Trust" during the webinar (photo by From Day One)To demonstrate the impact of this process, Bedwell shared the story of a client that rolled a new training program out to its large employee population. Employees were already overloaded and the organization’s culture did not value the practice of learning new capabilities. So by repositioning the program from mandated learning to a career development opportunity, and breaking the content into manageable app-based modules with personal pacing and custom pathways, he said that the completed initiative was mentioned in the company’s annual report and “called out by the CEO as a standout initiative for the year, as something the company should do more of.”Another learning and development client found that only 44% of people managers have actually received any management training and opted to reflect on their company’s investment in leadership training. In partnership with LOCAL, they reviewed employee engagement surveys to understand the performance and support level of their management team. Through a series of focus groups and interviews with people leaders, Acuña says, the team learned that a lot of these leaders had been promoted due to their success as individual contributors, but not necessarily their leadership skills. Working with LOCAL, the company reviewed the team structure and established clear behaviors to define leadership within the organization and used immersive training techniques to distribute the information to people leaders. After one year, she said, the next employee engagement survey showed a 12% increase in leadership support, exceeding the enterprise-wide benchmark of 3%.To support companies seeking their own cultures of change readiness, Bedwell and Acuña offered ideas to incorporate change marketing concepts into established processes. In addition to the key elements of the insight, story, and craft phases, listen to employees to understand what they need and identify points of friction to ensure they are addressed. Keep change marketing communications simple and memorable, meeting your audience where they are and with respect.“Find your promoters.” Bedwell said. “Inside your business, there will be people who are already advocating for what you do. Find them and empower them. They’re a change network for you.” Once people are engaged, says Acuña, guide them through their next steps with clear calls to action.Acknowledging that consensus decision-making can overcomplicate change messaging, she suggested that cross-functional teams align early on the program’s objective and shared criteria. This helps reduce confusion across employee populations and improves the likelihood of success.Bedwell agreed, stating “Everyone should get the red pen out on the brief for the work, and then someone who understands the audience should write the communications. A brief allows all of the input to be gathered into a format that someone with objectivity can turn into communication that meets the audience’s need.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, LOCAL, for sponsoring this webinar. Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photo by Umnat Seebuaphan/iStock)

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The Culture Comeback: How A Telecom Giant Transformed Employee Connection

BY Jessica Swenson August 18, 2025

With employees—and information—more widely distributed than they’ve ever been, it’s crucial for companies to support their shared identity and culture while facilitating positive engagement. Purpose-built systems may not maintain relevance across growing teams and diverse functions, and fragmented communication channels add complexity that can cause low participation rates and communication fatigue.This was the situation that prompted Canadian telecommunications firm TELUS to seek a new corporate communication ecosystem. During a From Day One webinar, leaders shared how the major telecom company Telus, facing low engagement and communication fatigue, partnered with LineZero to use Workvivo and bring its culture back to life. With rapid employee growth and numerous disparate systems, internal communication had become “much more complex than it ought to be, or than anyone thought it was. Trying to maintain that suite of services, trying to ensure that everyone had access, was really proving a big challenge,” said Jennifer Shah, VP of communications at TELUS. Once the organization identified its communication challenges and the problems it needed to solve, Shah says, TELUS developed a vision and criteria for its target experience and sought a platform partner that could meet both its current and future demands. She and her team wanted a dynamic, social-first design that could securely integrate with existing systems, deliver personalized, relevant content, and enable employee-driven connections while offering built-in flexibility to grow with the company’s evolving needs.Caroline Mikhail, a Prosci® certified change practitioner and director of advisory services at Linezero, moderated the discussion with Jennifer Shah of TELUS (photo by From Day One)“We wanted to partner with a platform that we knew was invested in continuing to be ahead of the curve,” said Shah. As TELUS continued to evaluate options and refine its criteria, Workvivo emerged as the clear solution—it met all their functional requirements and had a long-term commitment to ongoing feature development. That’s when the real work started.For a change of this magnitude, socialization is critical. “There was a big stakeholder exercise to ensure that our needs assessments were encapsulating everything and then understanding what is absolutely necessary, what is nice to have, what might be okay in the future,” she said. To ensure engagement and adoption of the new platform, her group facilitated countless pre-launch roadshow presentations tailored to demonstrate its economic value and show how the new system would address the needs and pain points for each team.Early adopters and change champions were key partners in the success of the launch. Through early access, extensive use, and continuous feedback loops, this team helped TELUS prove and refine the platform’s capabilities. By choosing people who were experts in some of the company’s most widely used existing platforms, Shah says, TELUS was able to make vital changes within the new system. “I think that really helped us, because people became much more familiar with it, and we were really open to their feedback, while also really pushing them to try it out and build things and learn how to do it for themselves.”To build anticipation for the platform’s launch and ensure day-one engagement, Shah mentioned that communications and business teams were asked to submit content plans for their individual team spaces. “We really worked rigorously to ensure that there was a ton of great content there on day one.” Their partner, LineZero, helped them prepare for the launch by providing examples, learnings, and case studies from similarly sized companies.Early post-launch events helped demonstrate that this platform offered a whole new way for TELUS to interact as a team. Immediately after its April launch, TELUS gave employees an immediate sense of ownership by hosting an on-platform naming contest. The interest and involvement generated by this contest helped “showcase the platform in a really engaging way.” During the company’s annual Days of Giving volunteer event in May, global teams were able to share their local community engagement in real-time. “To very easily show the breadth and depth of the commitment to campaigns like that, I think really showed people that this platform was a place for them,” Shah said.The homepage of TELUS’s internal platform was designed to be the starting point of an employee’s day by including links to the most commonly used systems and resources, she says. To complement this design and ensure its use as the main corporate communication hub, the company issued a clear mandate that it would no longer support or communicate via legacy channels.New hires are automatically enrolled into corporate-mandated channels and their business group-specific spaces. Beyond that, employees are given a loose framework and rule set with the flexibility and freedom to join, post, follow, and engage as they see fit. Engagement “looks different to everybody, but we give you a lot of options to structure it in a way that feels relevant and engaging for what you're looking for.”In the three months since the platform’s launch, TELUS has already achieved 52% adoption and 70% monthly active engagement rates, and over 80 employee-driven interest groups have been created, says Shah. The company needs to continue offering new and value-added content and use concentrated campaigns to attract slower adopters, she says. They are already focused on their next goal, increasing mobile adoption, and are developing new features to better tailor content to specific audience segments.For companies contemplating a communication overhaul of this size, Shah offered a few suggestions. First, identify the problem you are trying to solve and what is most important to your organization. Then get input and feedback from affected teams and do the internal work to know what is needed and what you can deliver. Be very clear about your goals and meticulously plan your roll-out, but keep it flexible. And don’t be afraid to delay a roll-out to conduct additional stakeholder engagement and ensure broader team readiness. You might be ready and know that everything is going to work, says Shah, “but it only works if everybody believes it's going to be a success and feels good about it.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, LineZero, for sponsoring this webinar. Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photo by mesh cube/iStock)

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Embracing Inclusive Care With Menopause and Midlife Health Benefits

BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza August 14, 2025

When menopause became a regular topic among benefits leaders it “validated the experiences of millions of women who previously suffered in silence,” said Dr. Toni Morrissey, an OB-GYN practicing at Maven Clinic.“We’re seeing more open dialogue, improved resources, and inclusive policies that recognize menopause as a workplace health issue and not just a personal one,” she said during a From Day One webinar on embracing inclusive care. It’s made a difference for so many women, but there’s still distance to travel.Dr. Morrissey laid out the ways employers can design a menopause care plan that supports women, and the business, holistically. “Menopause symptoms can significantly impact productivity, retention and morale, and supporting this phase of life shows respect for longevity and loyalty in the workforce–especially when women are at the height of their careers.”The Barriers to Menopause CareOne significant challenge is that there’s no shortage of information about menopause available online, “but the quality is a different story. We see everything from outdated advice and one-size-fits-all solutions,” Morrissey said. Not to mention miracle cures and snake oil. “I’m so glad the conversation is being held in public,” she said. “It’s time for that. But our research shows that over a third of women see menopause related ads at least a few times a week, and more than half of them say it makes them feel so overwhelmed.”Employees need evidence-based guidance delivered by board-certified providers trained specifically in menopause care, and this is where employers have a huge opportunity. A 2023 AARP survey found that 54% of women said employers need to do more to support workers experiencing menopause. In fact, 73% of employers agreed. If companies can offer clinical, board-certified care with peer-reviewed education, “that kind of support really cuts through the noise and helps employees make confident and informed decisions about their health.”The internet is full of myths and misinformation, like the notion that menopause lasts only a year, when in reality symptoms can last up to 10 years, Morrissey says. The biggest and most damaging myth, she said, is that “menopause marks the end of productivity. And in reality, many people hit their career peak during this stage of life, and this phase really deserves support and not stigma.”Where Employers Can Get Started with Menopause Care Dr. Morrissey encouraged employers to start by listening. What are your employees struggling with and where do your current benefits fall short? Build upon the needs and gaps. For instance, menopause-specific care isn’t available in some areas, and employees may need remote access to providers. Additionally, “transgender, non-binary, and intersex people experience menopause too, and they often face even greater gaps in care,” she said. Another group who often gets overlooked are those experiencing medically induced early menopause.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza intervirwed Dr. Toni Morrissey of Maven Clinic (photo by From Day One)This is just another reason menopause care should never be siloed. It can be a meaningful component of an overall health strategy that comprises mental healthcare, reproductive care, and other midlife considerations, like caregiving benefits and career development. And because it supports high-value workers like those at the peak of their careers—consider it a retention strategy that protects institutional knowledge and leadership.To make it work, a clear, well-communicated rollout plan is essential. “It doesn’t just offer support, it sends a powerful message, which is that your health is a business priority.” Seeking Help for Menopause SymptomsBy the time Dr. Morrissey sees a patient, they may have been experiencing symptoms for years, symptoms that have gotten in the way of daily functioning in life and at work. “What’s heartbreaking is how many of them say they’re no longer able to do the very work that once brought them success and confidence,” she said. Proper care can make the difference. “The moment that always sticks with me is when people will say, ‘I feel like I got my life back.’ That’s what good care can do. It doesn’t just manage symptoms. It restores identity, energy and self-belief.”Of course, stigma around menopause stands in the way of many seeking care. ERGs can be a powerful tool for forming connections, but they should be optional, and they can’t be the only avenue for support, she said, especially where cultural norms discourage open conversation about healthcare. Employers can help normalize talk about menopause by making it a part of company-wide health education and communication. Appoint leaders as menopause champions talk about their own experience and help break down stigma. “Employees should never feel pressured to speak about their menopause experience broadly, but they should have a place that they can easily go for support, and building a supportive culture starts at the top.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Maven Clinic, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by SDI Productions/iStock)