Q&A Call-Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) & Analytics
Posted on Monday, May 17th, 2021 at 7:58 PM
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Stacia Garr:
Wonderful. So thank you all so much for joining us today. For those of you whom I don't know, I'm Stacia Garr. I am co-founder of RedThread Research. And I'll tell you a little bit about us before we get started, but in the meantime, I want to give my co-host today, Priyanka Mehrotra chance to introduce herself Priyanka.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Thank you, Stacia. Hi everybody. I'm research lead at RedThread and along with Stacia, we've been working on DEIB and people analytics for over the last two years. And we're very excited to talk about this kind of study that we have going on right now. Welcome.
Stacia Garr:
And so for those of you who haven't been to a Q&A call or haven't been in a while, here's roughly how we do it. This is very conversational. Yes, obviously we have slides, but the point is to answer your questions, you know, find out what you're most interested in with the research and the like. We'll be communicating primarily through chat or through Q&A, both of those are enabled and we can see both of those. If you want to do Q&A, so everybody doesn't know your question, that's fine. If you want to share in chat, that's great as well. Like I said, we are recording this call. And so we will be posting this to the RedThread site after today. So that folks who are RedThread members will also be able to view it.
Stacia Garr:
So in speaking of RedThread and members, we are a human capital research membership focused on a range of topics, including people, analytics, learning, and skills, performance, DEIB and employee experience in HR technology. As Priyanka mentioned, this study that we're working on, and we're going to talk about today is a really nice culmination of a number of different areas that we've been doing research on. So we've been extremely excited to get to it. It feels like the study we've been trying to get to for at least three quarters. So we're excited to do that.
Defining DEIB
Stacia Garr:
So I'm going to begin with just a little bit of level setting. So for those of you who maybe haven't been following our work. We talk about this space collectively as DEIB. So I know a lot of organizations use just DEI. Some use just DIB.
Stacia Garr:
We decided to put them all together to be inclusive. Because we think that all of these concepts are important, but you can see here on this slide, our definitions for each of these areas, and how would we see them as being a little bit distinct from each other.
Why DEIB & Analytics
Stacia Garr:
Now, I mentioned that this study is kind of the culmination of a lot of energy and enthusiasm, and I should say and clarify that this is an active study under process. That's one of the things that we do with the Q&A calls is that we get started on some research and then we will conduct a number of ways to interact with folks. Sometimes it's a roundtable, as you may have seen. We've actually got one on this topic coming up on, correct me if I'm wrong, Priyanka, May 27th, I think is the date for that, but the Q&A calls are a chance to kind of engage on a different level to understand what people are thinking about and getting initial reactions to the work that we've been doing.
Stacia Garr:
But, so why are we doing this study? One is when we launched RedThread, we started off with a focus on DNI technology. This is what we called it. Now we're calling it to DEIB technology. And then very shortly after that, we did a study on people analytics technology, which many of you who are here may be familiar with. And within DEIB tech, there was an analytics component. And we were seeing on the people analytics tech focus on DEIB, but we hadn't really kind of brought these concepts together. And then when we went out and we looked at the literature, which Priyanka is going to talk about, we found that there weren't a lot of folks who are talking about how do DEIB and analytics work together. What's that partnership look like? What are the metrics we should be looking at and how should we be making those decisions?
Stacia Garr:
So we started to think about all of these things. So, you know, those were kind of the underlying concepts of why we started this journey.
Why are we studying it now?
Stacia Garr:
But then there is I think a question about like, why now, like, why didn't we do it three quarters ago if we've been studying this topic for a few years. And I think there are a few things. First is we've seen a greater expectation from consumers to take action. And so if we look at things like Edelman's Trust Barometer particularly after the social justice movements of last summer, consumers are expecting organizations to make steps, yes, on social justice, but on DNI more broadly. They also are expecting organizations not just to do that externally, but to do that internally, to get their own DNI house in order.
Stacia Garr:
So that's one, one reason. The second is obviously the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on diverse employees combined with the social justice movements that I just mentioned. So we've done quite a lot of work particularly focused on the impact of the pandemic on women. We have also written about the impact of the pandemic on people of color. And so we know that those populations have been some of those that have borne the brunt of this the most. And so there's some of the ones that if we look to come out of the pandemic, we need to be focusing on the most as well. And then the third reason, again, back to this, why now is we're seeing these new SEC human capital reporting guidelines that went into place last November really starting to come into to be a factor for organization.
Stacia Garr:
So analytics teams are being asked to provide more detail on human capital metrics and often that is including diversity data. And we expect that right now. And I was very intentional in that language. Right now it's a lot of representation data usually a bit beyond what they have to report for the EEOC, not necessarily a lot beyond that, but we expect that to change, particularly as investors start to increasingly understand the impact that we've seen in research of strong diversity and inclusion on organizations, on their financial outcomes. We think that there's going to be more investor pressure to provide more data and insights as it relates to the DEIB.
People Analytics for DEIB has arrived
Stacia Garr:
So those all get to kind of this, this why now all of this is reinforced by the study that we did on the DEIB tech that came out just at the beginning of this year, January of 2021.
Stacia Garr:
And the big finding from this study was that when we asked vendors, what problems our customers were trying to solve, that issue of DNI analytics and insights went to the top. It was number four in 2019. The last time we published that study and in 2021, it was number one, it was 19% increase in the importance of addressing this lack of DNI insights and analytics. So we know that this is been something that we've seen reflected in the data. We're seeing it in the popular press, and we as analysts have seen it as being incredibly important. So that's why we're doing this now. Priyanka.
Why it's so hard
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Interesting. So let's take a moment to understand why it's so hard to do this, and we're going to talk about what were studying in through this research, but just want you to take a moment to understand why it's been so hard and what have been some of the challenges that DEIB leaders, people analytics leaders, and organizations have been facing. And I mean, this often has to do with three things as they come to our mind, the first being that there's a Gulf between the DEIB leaders and people analytics leaders that tends to exist within organizations. And what we mean by that is that there are few things that go under this, one is that DEIB leaders and people, analytics leaders often not always, but often report to different departments or heads or senior leaders. So for example, DEIB might be reporting into CEOS a lot of the times.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
And in fact, I recently came across a research that was conducted on about 500 senior diversity leaders out of which 40% have said that they were reporting into CEOs. And what we typically tend to see with people, analytics leaders on the other hand is that they're often either reporting to the CHRO or talent acquisition leaders, or talent management leaders, or even a centralized analytics team. So one of these, the gulf I was talking about is that the reporting structure might be different for them. The other has to do a little bit about the backgrounds that these two tend to come from. So again, not all, but years of DEIB teams often came from backgrounds such as social justice or diversity focus backgrounds. Whereas people analytics leaders often tend to come from data science, computer science, math, statistics background.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Additionally we often see the DEIB leaders, might find themselves focused on activities that may not have a lot to do with data. So for example, setting up employee resource groups or managing DEIB events or collaborating with local communities. Whereas we see analytics leaders really deeply ingrained in the data side of the organizational things that they're doing but only coming in as participants when it comes to DEIB and having little knowledge about all the curies and the approaches that go behind those initiatives as when it comes to DEIB. The second reason why we think this is so hard is that there tends to be a lack of clarity around data and how to use it. And this goes back to the point that Stacia was making, but, you know, up to now, we've been seeing a lot of use of DEIB data has been for reporting purposes.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
And while we are starting to see a shift in how leaders are starting to think about this data, these are still early stages. And there are a lot of questions about, you know, what data they should be collecting, how they should be using it. What are the types of analysis that they should be running? And I think a related reason, which is our third reason under this, why it's so hard is that there's a lack of clarity around how DEIB leaders, DEIB tech venders fit into all this. So Stacia, mentioned our DEIB tech study that we ran, that we published earlier this year, and we saw an immense growth in the number of DEIB tech vendors that are coming up in the space. But along with it, we have questions and concerns from leaders. When they're asking me questions, such as when should we bring in these tech vendors, how should they fit into the broader strategies?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
So all of these reasons kind of convoluted to making this practice of bringing DEIB and analytics together, something that's challenging for organizations in they're struggling to understand how would they get started on it and actually be successful on it. And these are the factors that actually fed into our thinking on what we should study when it comes to this topic.
What we are researching
Priyanka Mehrotra:
So if you go into the next slide, we'll just quickly talk about some of the overarching questions or teams that we're looking at through the study. So the first one that we're looking at is how should the DEIB and people analytics partner. So rethink this is sort of foundational to what organizations should be doing when it comes to this, because without a successful partnership, this work can not be done. The second area that we're looking to understand is what are the important data and metrics for DEIB?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
So, like I said, there's a lack of clarity around what is it that they should be doing? What is foundational, what is table stakes? And then as organizations mature, what are some of the more novel and non-traditional things that organizations should be looking at. And then third is about the role of vendors and techs. So looking at, you know, one of the different types of technologies that organizations are using. What are the people analytics technologies? What are the DEIB technologies? When should they come in and work as a partner and in general, what is the role that vendors should play in all this? So those are some of the overarching teams or questions, if you will, that we are looking at to understand from this study.
What the literature says
Priyanka Mehrotra:
And what we did when we launched this study was we began with a literature review and which we published last month on our website.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
And we did a very exhaustive, neutral journey, where we analyzed over 50 articles, business journals, academic papers, and we found a few key findings that kind of reaffirmed our thinking around this topic as well. And kind of solidified our questions that we thought we should be asking. So I just cover some of our key findings from our literature review. The first of course that we were expecting to find was, and we did find was the, the need for analytics and analytics for DEIB is more important than ever. And, you know, given all that we've experienced in 2020, COVID19, the social justice movements, it's no surprise that really starting to look at how we can use data and metrics and analysis to support this push for the DEIB that we're starting to see from organizations. And, you know, just for an example, if you look at some of the commitments and goals that all the big organizations have put out over the last year, whether it's Facebook or Target or Starbucks, they all have these lofty goals of reaching 20% to 30% increasing their representation by X percent in the next few years are tying diversity to performance reviews.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
And then you look at those goals. It's very clear that none of this can be done without data and analytics without measuring where you are and where you're going and what needs to be done. So clearly people analytics is going to play an extremely critical part of doing anything related to DEIB moving forward. The second finding that we came across was the DEIB analytics is more than diversity metrics. So we found several articles that truly try to push the thinking beyond just looking at representation data, and thinking about inclusion, thinking about the different experiences that different groups of employees are having in the organization, thinking about belonging and what that means in the organizational context, thinking about the existing processes and how they can be made more equitable and working with people analytics leaders to really understand how can they use the existing data to think about some of these processes and kind of push forward their DEIB agenda on these things.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
The third finding that we came across was around using predictive analytics for DEIB to help plan for the future. And the articles that talked about this mainly spoke about using this and harnessing this power of predictive analytics to really avoid issues from becoming into potential problems in the future and planning for planning well ahead and avoiding certain challenges that may come up in the future. So for instance two examples come to my mind that we came across during this literature review. One was of Walmart using modeling and forecasting techniques to really answer questions around like, what could happen if we keep doing this, or how can we arrive at our desired goal much faster and using those insights from that data to really review the DEIB goals and connect regularly, to understand how, what is the progress that they're making towards them.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
The other example that we found was from International Paper, which uses predictive analytics to understand their expansion rate compatibility. And what that means is using data on past behavior, family dynamics cultural agility, global accuracy, to understand and forecast which employees would fare better in a global move if they were to be placed in international settings. So these were some of our top three findings. And I just want to touch on some really interesting ones as well. And this one was my favorite, which was around using quantitative data individual stories and experiences are an important piece of the puzzle and no work on when it comes to DEIB can be compete without taking those into account? No amount of statistics can capture what it feels like to be the only ruling on a team or to be the only black member on the team.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
And so we think that qualitative data and quantitative data forms an extremely important part of doing analytics for DEIB. And finally, another key finding that we found of course, was around, you know, making sure that you're addressing issues of privacy and ethics. So aggregating data, sharing data with employees, being transparent about what is being collected and what is the purpose that that data is being used for. So, like I said, all of these findings kind of reaffirmed our thinking around what is it that we need to study in this area. And like Stacia mentioned, and our lit review confirmed it, that there's a lot written on how and why this needs to be done and very little on how organizations are actually doing it or what they should be thinking about. And that's what's was what our aim was when it came to launching the study. And that's what we've been trying to find out through our interviews. And I'll pass it on to Stacia to talk about some of our initial findings now.
Initial findings: Building a strong DEIB & People Analytics partnership
Stacia Garr:
Great, thank you, Priyanka. And I know we've had some really good questions come in through chat, keep those coming. We will try and addresses questions once we get here into the question section. So some of the initial findings and I should clarify, we've done, what is it Priyanka about 15 interviews at this point on our way to roughly 30? So we're about halfway through our interviews. So these are very initial, so we're just going to share some of the things we have been hearing. So we've been grouping the research into two areas, the first being that DEIB and people analytics partnership, and then the second one being metrics. So focused on the partnership aspect first. The first point is around the importance of the data oriented diversity leader. So we've heard a real, and this isn't surprising, but I think it's just worth underscoring. We've heard a real difference in the interviews when people said I've got a diversity leader who really gets it, who gets the importance of this work, who supports what we do, who actively helps us think through the metrics and analytics that we should be focused on, et cetera, et cetera. That's kind of been one, one story.
Stacia Garr:
The other story has been well, I'm the people analytics leader, and I know this is important. And I've, you know, done my best so far and figured out what I think is important, but I'm kind of worried, waiting on a diversity leader to get here, to help, or in some instances, this is what I've done. And we've just hired a diversity leader because as I'm sure many of you have seen, there's just been this incredible slew of hiring of DEIB leaders since last summer. And so it's actually notable how many folks are like, well, our DEIB leader just started in September or they just started in January and now we're finally starting to get traction. But the importance of that partnership in the diversity leader being data oriented was remarkable. Second, and I kind of just alluded to this a little bit, but people analytics leaders taking the lead on data. We are actually, so I think many of you may know we're doing this study, but we're also doing a study on DEIB and skills and the skills kind of side of that is the learning team.
Stacia Garr:
And what has been remarkably similar about these two studies is how the DEIB teams in the past have either been responsible for this work or they have or the work hasn't been done quite frankly. And now as DEIB has become increasingly main stream, these corporate functions. So in this instance, people analytics, but in the other study, learning these corporate functions are kind of taking back or taking over the aspects of this work that they have expertise in. So for for people analytics, it's, you know, we know how to do the data analysis. We know how to get common definitions for the data. We know how to do, you know, basic representation analysis. Like we know how to do all this stuff and because we're already doing it in all these other ways. And we have the, the source of truth dataset, ideally you know, we, we are the ones who should be doing it and then putting it into the dashboards that we're already providing to leaders.
Stacia Garr:
So this just makes sense for it to be part of this, this group. Of course though, there is a side of this, which is around selection of metrics around problem identification, hypothesis identification, and I'll get to that more on the next slide. But the big thing is just this idea that people analytics, this is firmly now in our remit, and we need to go with it. The third point, and this seems maybe obvious, but is the importance of the alignment between the two. So we've heard a lot of instances where there are either, you know, Priyanka set up the, the challenge that we see with reporting relationships. And so we're seeing when it's really effective, DEIB and people analytics reporting into the same leader is one instance if that doesn't happen, we're seeing kind of pretty formalized, dotted line relationships between people on each of the teams.
Stacia Garr:
So a DEIB team member who is, you know, sort of informally connected to the people analytics team or vice versa. The point being that there has to be a strong level of communication between the two, because DEIB is basically the, the subject matter expert when it comes to the sorts of data and analysis that let me rephrase come to the questions that should be answered. And then the people analytics team is the expert when it comes to the data and analysis that can be done. So there has to be that clear alignment. Moving, I'm sorry. Priyanka, did you have something to add there?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
I think I would just underscore the point on the alignment. I think what you said was exactly right, like having that either direct line or reporting into the same head or having that dotted line, what it does is it makes sure that both the leaders are aligned on priorities through those communications and constant check-ins, and they're aligned on priorities and goals that are connected to the overall business strategy. And I think that also gets to the point about there being trust between the two of them. And I remember you spoke about that, that the DEIB leader, as well as the people analytics leaders have to trust each other, that they know what they're doing and that this is the right data, or this is the right approach that they're going to be taking and work together as a partner on those priorities and goals.
Metrics that matter
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, great point. So if we move on to the, the metrics aspect, and I know that there, there are plenty of questions in here. And so we'll, we'll start to work our way through them now in terms of metrics, what we saw is that, and this is just consistent across pretty much every interview that we did. You need the foundation and that foundation is basic diversity representation metrics. And I say basic, but it's a little bit less than just basic because it also includes intersectionality. So meaning that you, aren't just looking at, what is the experience of black employees, or what is the experience of Hispanic employees, but you're looking at what's the experience of black women, for instance and, and that sort of basic representation data is something that everyone said you need to just get your hands on from the very beginning there was a question in here in the chat, and I'm going to go ahead and grab it now around approaches and measurement at a global scale, especially regarding ethnicity. And we actually have a really fascinating conversation yesterday with the global fortune 100 organization. And what they were saying to us is one, and this is something we've heard consistently. One that ethnicity is something that tends to primarily be measured here in the United States. There is some measurement of it in places like South Africa, in some Asia, but almost more of a country approach within Asia. And then some in Brazil, because she made the point that a lot of people in Brazil don't necessarily identify as Hispanic, though they do identify as Latino or Latinas. And so when then, but then obviously within Europe, there is no ethnicity data that's being collected. So we think, you know, the point is, is that they are, what she said was that they worked with kind of local representatives to make sure that they were getting the right information so that they could be culturally appropriate in all these different locations.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. the other component of this is we heard a lot in discussions about doing self ID campaigns. And so, you know, that because there's obviously sensitivity in terms of what information you can collect on ethnicity particularly in the EU, it wasn't as much focused on ethnicity there, but it could be focused on things like disability or on LGBTQ status or some of these other types of information that you might want to be collecting on folks in using as part of your kind of foundational diversity representation analysis. So we've heard that quite a bit. The government collection data often is, you know, initially collected by the companies, but, you know, not necessarily in all instances but yeah, looking at what's what's externally available and then also using that potentially to help inform your benchmarking strategy so that you can be comparing apples to apples. If you're looking at what external data is out there is an important thing to consider too.
Stacia Garr:
So diversity representation, metrics being foundational. Second looking at inclusion and equity. And so the way that I have been framing, this is almost like a model. Well, you know, that's part of what we do. So in an initial model is like diversity of representation is, is kind of step one. Step two is what we're calling kind of inclusion and equity one Datto, which is basically looking at things like engagement data by representation, information. So engagement and inclusion, potentially inclusion, indices and other belonging metrics that may be being captured and looking at those by by diversity representation numbers, and also including intersectionality, like I just mentioned. That's kind of inclusion one Datto, inclusion two Datto, which is what we're seeing some of the more sophisticated companies look at is saying, okay, we've identified for instance, that we have a problem with, or we we have, you know, variances with black women in this area.
Stacia Garr:
Why might that be happening, maybe black women in finance, just to pick something, why might that be happening? And then actually, and this is where it's really important to have that strong relationship with the DEI team and pulling in hypothesis on what may be happening. So sure it could be compensation, but maybe instead it's, you know time to promotion rates, which obviously also impacts compensation, but this is a slightly different issue. It might be the, that these people are being brought in from outside, maybe because there's been a diversity effort for the last few years and these people aren't getting they're from outside and they're not getting effectively connected into the network. So it's kind of an opportunity for the people analytics leader to work with the DEI leaders and increasingly the HR business partners to understand what could be happening here and how can we actually design a study to truly understand using some more sophisticated analytical approaches.
Stacia Garr:
So that's kind of the inclusion and equity two Datto approach that we're seeing. And then the third is the importance of understanding employee voice. And so this is, I would say it's kind of related to both inclusion, one Datto and two Datto, but it's a little bit different because it's not just employee engagement and experience, but it's, you know, what other things are employees feeling? So we've seen a rise in for instance, in harassment technology this come available particularly after me too. So are we looking at that and are we taking that seriously? And are we looking at other ways that employees might be not being heard in the organization? So this is kind of in the inclusion two Datto type of capability, but if we're looking at, for instance metadata that on who's going to what meetings are certain populations being included at the same, you know rate as others in terms of important meetings or are they being connected with others via Slack or Teams or whatever. So there's kind of all this more sophisticated analysis we can see are these people's voices literally being heard to the same extent as other groups, voices. Priyanka, did you have anything to add there?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Yeah, I think one interesting example that comes to my mind. I think we heard this from a couple of interviewees was using wellbeing data, and I think that might fall under inclusion 2.0, as well as we're starting to understand it is looking at wellbeing data for underrepresented groups and seeing how is that different and getting to that feeling of belonging and inclusion for those groups as well. And I think also what, another thing that we heard from a couple of interviewees, what guests to employ voice is quantitative data. So we heard about focus groups and collecting stories. I believe from one of the vendors that they're doing that, and that I think was a very interesting add to the data that organizations already have and, you know, like creating environments where underrepresented groups and people are comfortable enough to speak up and collecting that data. In addition to all the surveys and pulses and metadata that they might be already collecting.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Great point. Great point. Okay. So that's the kind of presentation sections such as it was today. We're going to go to your questions and there've been a number of questions that have come in through chat. So I'm going to go to the chat questions first and then come back to the questions that were submitted in advance.
How do you get HR to use analytics to drive change?
Stacia Garr:
So one person asked about how other organizations are getting HR to use analytics, to drive change with DEIB strategies. And this question, I love it because it kind of hits on, on all the challenges, right? You have at least three different groups. So you mentioned we've got HR, we've got people analytics, and we've got DEIB strategies. And the magic fourth group that didn't get mentioned is legal because legal is in all of these conversations. So how are organizations actually, you know, making this happen?
Stacia Garr:
So I think we've heard a few things. One is it depends on the maturity of the organization and the maturity across all of those different groups. So does your organization, for instance, have a strong HRBP organization, which has strong connections to business leaders and does the organization have a strong DEI leader and what is their influence in the organization? How sophisticated and mature is the people analytics function in their ability to kind of imbibe and respond to requests when it comes to this. And then also, what is the risk profile of the general counsel? Are they, you know, we talked to one organization kind of more of a tech enabled organization. I would say tech enabled retail organization, where they said, we got to fix this, do what you need to do all the way to an organization where it's like, we don't want to share anything.
Stacia Garr:
No, data's going to anybody except for a very small few. And so all of that makes an impact on to your, this question, how do you get HR to use analytics to drive change? And so I think the key is figure out where your strengths are, where the maturity is. So if the maturity is for instance, with HR business partners and they have a strong, strong relationship with the business, you know, use your, hopefully you have at least a initially small people analytics team, if not kind of a more sophisticated one to start with providing that initial foundational data, you know, here's, here's where we have differences here's in the experiences of different groups. So start with that, that education and then working with HR business partners to understand what are the levers that we could pull in these different businesses to start to drive change, where is their appetite for this to do something different? Priyanka, do you have something to add?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Yeah, I think I would just add to that education piece that you mentioned, because I remember one of the interviews that we recently spoke to a very large company. They mentioned that they're working with their vendor as a partner to broadly educate senior leadership and HR teams to not just use the data, but also understand and interpret that data. So, one, I think the role of vendor can be crucial if the vendor is willing to work with you as a partner in education and educating them. I think the other one, which might contradict my point actually, was that one of the leaders that we spoke to mentioned that they had set in place a learning requirement for people, for senior leaders before they could get access to the data. And it kind of backfired because nobody wanted to take that learning, but what it help them understand was that they needed to approach it in a different way that this was not going to work. It was clear to them that they could not force this learning course on them before giving them access to the data or getting them to use analytics, but they needed to figure out a different approach. So that, that was kind of a failing when approach that they kind of worked through. So I think those two are some of the interesting examples that come to my mind.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. And I think that the point is experimentation, you know, to what you just said, you know, that, that organization figured out that, you know, kind of a one hour long learning on how to use DEIB data didn't work. But so they said, okay, well, how can we actually use the dashboards and the data to teach? And how do we do it in a way that maybe we don't give everybody everything at once, but we roll it out in a way that kind of through the rollout process, we're actually educating people on what it is certainly that they need to know, but also how they might use it. And this is, I think also where either vendors or people analytics teams can really come in with potential suggestions that are embedded within the dashboards and in the offerings to help people say, okay, well, given this, what, what might I do? And those suggestions obviously should be based on the data.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Exactly.
Stacia Garr:
Okay. We're getting some more questions in here. That's great.
Which groups or identities to prioritize as they're all important
Stacia Garr:
So there was a question about, and we've kind of addressed this, but I want to come back to it, but there's its about understanding which groups or identities to prioritize as they're all important. I think that's, that's absolutely true. What we have seen organizations do though, is just kind of just similar to what we do with all people, analytics data, or really ideally, you know, our HR efforts is to say, okay, where's the business need here? Where's the need the greatest. And you know, that you can do once you have that representation data and you can kind of overlay what's important to the business in terms of business goals and strategy. And then where are the biggest gaps in that data? But using those two as initial ways to make a decision about what to prioritize, and then the overlay on that is who is going to be open to trying something new.
Stacia Garr:
So we've, you know, we heard, for instance in one of these organizations, they were talking about how most of their metrics are, you know, externally facing, and that's what leaders care about and any of the internal stuff that can actually maybe help you make decisions about actions to take, they were less interested. And so we asked that leader, we said, well, how do you find the interested leader? Like you've got great insights. How do you find the interested leader? And you know, some of it had to do with finding people who felt personally connected to DEIB and felt, you know, whether that was through their own experience or through someone that they loved. We can't tell you how many people, how many to be Frank, how many white men have said, I care about this because of the experience my wife has had, or I care about this because I'm a dad of two girls. Like, it's almost, it's remarkable how many times we've heard that. So find those people who have that connection. And then secondly hopefully people who have that connection to DEIB, but then also have influence over their peers. They're respected by their peers and using them giving them an opportunity to kind of shine and be the exemplar of the changes that are possible. Then that's the other way that I think about prioritizing.
Impact and accelerating the integration of DEIB & People Analytics
Stacia Garr:
Okay. another question here, does architect, the alignment of career planning, pathing and skills, capabilities, and experience have a role in this arena and impact on accelerating the integration of the DEIB and people analytics more broadly. So yes, yes. So I mentioned that we're doing a study on DEIB and skills. These two studies are running in parallel. That study is really trying to understand what are the skills that contribute to a culture of DEIB. So that's one component, but the other angle on skills and DEIB is using skills to potentially address any biases that may be happening. So under understanding of people's skill sets and what they want to achieve and using that to help us with people, better understanding career path opportunities, better understanding things like availability of opportunities to internal talent marketplace and that kind of thing. So I think that there is very clearly an overlap between particularly understanding skills, data, and leveling the playing field for diverse populations. So I think this a really important thing. We're seeing people just beginning to talk about this. But it's not I think its something that's going to have to be driven from the learning side of the house, because we're not, we're not really hearing anything on the people analytics side of the house on this, but we think it's an area of opportunity.
What are some of the challenges to building a partnership between DEIB & People Analytics?
Stacia Garr:
Okay. I'm going to turn to some of these questions that we received. We're going to go with this one first Priyanka about the challenges to building a partnership between DEIB and people analytics. Do you want to talk about that one?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Yeah, sure. So I think we already touched upon some of these things when we spoke about our initial findings. So I think one of the biggest challenges that we've heard, especially as it pertains to people, analytics leaders is when DEIB leaders don't believe in data or don't come from that data background and are not open to receiving that data or looking beyond data for reporting purposes. So I think that's one of the main challenges that we heard coming in from people analytics leaders. The other one has been about lack of our missing a data culture in your organization and resistance to changing that mindset of really going with the data and being open to experimenting on middle and trying to find out what is, what is it that they can do and what is it that can be done with this data?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
And just a general lack of data literacy and awareness. And there are ways that we can, that organizations can work work on this. As we've talked about, the people analytic leaders tech can take a lead, the vendors can come into play as a partner in spreading that education broadly across the organization. But in general, I think so CDO is not believing in data and a lack of data culture in the organizations would be, I think the top two ones that we've heard. And I think connected one to that is lack of support from the leadership in general. And you know exactly to your point, what you said earlier, we've seen a lot of push come from people who are personally impacted by it, or see it around them have experienced it. But if that is missing at the top then there's a general lack of support for this kind of work that, that, that can be challenging in building this kind of partnership between DEIB and people analytics. What else would you add to this?
Stacia Garr:
We mentioned it a little bit earlier, but the issue of trust, I think in general is comes through. So maybe a little bit less with the relationship between DEIB and people analytics, but certainly with HR in the broader organization. Somebody we interviewed recently talked about how the HR organization didn't want DEIB and people analytics to release data broadly because they were afraid of getting called out or others knowing something that HR didn't and this idea of we have kind of an adversarial relationship. We own the data, we should know everything, and then we can control and communicate it. That is problematic. And you know, the mindset needs to shift to more of a more eyes on the data are better than fewer we're in this together. We're gonna figure out solutions together. We're going to distribute decision-making to make things better at scale, et cetera. And that mindset shift is very hard. And so that's not necessarily something just between DEIB and people analytics, but it requires a strong perspective between those leaders to then go, wow, and kind of push this broader agenda of, we need to share data so we can make change so we can measure what's happening. And people will know if we're making progress and if we're not, then we can make changes that will drive that progress.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that also speaks to something that we heard about fear of data being released without the context. And we heard a lot of people analytics leaders talk about how the other ones who take the lead when it comes to framing the data in the right context and putting that communication in that right frame before it's published externally or internally. And it's been interesting to see that it's the people analytics leaders who are taking the lead on this when it comes to communicating the data and putting that right context of DEIB to work.
What is the role of legal?
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, definitely. Cool. Let's move on to the next question. What is the role of legal? All of our folks, whether they're people analytics leaders or DEIB leaders sort of chuckle when we get to this question, because they're like, Oh, legal. So, you know, obviously the role of legal is to keep all of us out of trouble. You know, this is sensitive data, it's important to treat it with the due respect, et cetera. So I don't want to underscore that or, or undermine that, excuse me. That said what we also have heard is that there is great variance in what you can do based on the risk profile of your general counsel. And a lot of times what happens is the general counsel needs just education. You know, their job is to find the problems and there are always going to be concerns when it comes to DEIB data.
Stacia Garr:
And so the question is how can we work with general counsel to reduce the risk to a level that makes it acceptable and, or to make it clear that this level of risk is acceptable versus the risk of us not doing anything? So, and I think part of that is also helping them understand how others might get to this data. If the organization isn't controlling the message to some extent. So for instance, we had one interviewee who's general counsel said, I don't want you to publish anything, not nothing out there. And the people analytics leader went back and said, look with this set of data, we are, that we provide to the government. Employees can legally request the right to this data to have access to this data. So all it's going to take is a smart employee asking this question to get this information out, by contrast, we could share it and we could put some context around it. We could put clarity around what we're trying to do, and we could head that off. So there's this risk that already exists out there. And actually by releasing the data in this way, we are reducing that risk. The general council eventually agreed, right? So it's about thinking through sometimes very creatively. How do we work with legal to help them understand the appropriate level of risk Priyanka? What else did we hear?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
I think one of the best advice that we heard come out of our interviewees was don't look at legal as compliance. You get them as a partner. So like the way you partner with the DEIB, or if you're a DEIP leader the way you partner with people analytic. Work with legal as a partner, because they are the ones who are going to help you put the data, the right context, made sure that you're being able to continue sharing that data. And just in general, they're going to be helpful along the way. So I don't see them as putting barriers to the work that you do, but actually supporting you just by pushing you to be more clear about it, by being more intentional about it. And by thinking about it from all perspectives.
What is the role of vendors?
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. That was a good, that was a great point. Yeah. Cool. I'm gonna keep us moving so we can get through a few more of these. So what's the role of vendors? So there were, I think there are a few, one is vendors can broadly educate folks about data. We've already talked about that. Second, depending on the vendor they can certainly enable self-service for the access to the data, which is, which is a powerful one. Third vendors can help get up to speed quickly for small teams. So particularly if it's a vendor that the people analytics team is already using and they have a DEIB offering. So think like what Visier offers or what Workday offers in the context or cruncher in the context of their overall offering. Those are, those are ways that they can that they can, they can support.
Stacia Garr:
That said, we have heard from a number of people, analytics leaders, deep frustration with some of these vendors, because they're like the DEIB leader just went to the vendor. Like they didn't even talk to us about what data we could offer or the capabilities we have. Like we were just completely cut out of the loop. And then when the data that they had was different than the data that we have, senior executives came and were frustrated and said, get it right, et cetera, et cetera, you can kind of see where that whole train goes. And so, you know, there's an opportunity that vendors can offer some really good things, but it's really important to make sure that you have that alignment and clarity on first the data set itself and what's going to be used. But then two, how it's going to be leveraged back in the organization is, are the insights, the vendors producing, going to be integrated into existing dashboards or reports that leaders are already getting, what's going to happen. You can't have the vendor out here as an island is the point. They can really help you, but they can't be an island over here when all your other data stuff is over here.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
I think the only thing I would add too, is that they can also help share data broadly where it's appropriate. So one of the questions that we had asked our venders in our people analytics tech survey last year was, do you share insights collected on employees for themselves to help them take actions on them. And majority of the vendors said that they do. So I think that's another place, another area where vendors can enable organizations to help employees gain value out of the data that is being collected on them. And I think more and more organizations are starting to do that, especially when it comes to things like their sense of belonging and inclusion to better understand, okay, where is it that they are lacking in what is it that they, maybe the kind of behaviors that they should be working on to enable that culture of belonging and help people feel like they're included part of the teams. So I think that is another rule that vendors can play in helping just sharing that data and providing that access to those insights that that organizations are collecting on employees.
What analytics are being used for DEIB?
Stacia Garr:
Yep. Great. Okay. Next question. We received, what are some of the types of analytics being used for DEIB? So we've, we talked about some of these particularly kind of the, the basic representation data the representation data applied to engagement or inclusion and belonging, indices, that's some of the more kind of common analysis that we're seeing we're increasingly seeing in terms of more novel approaches, we're increasingly seeing the use of ONA. So particularly to understand the strength of networks of diverse groups and how those might differ. So for instance, looking at maybe looking at the networks of women and how these differ from men, particularly by seniority and organizations, we actually wrote a study on that a couple of years ago on women networks and technology. We also see them using ONA to understand if there are kind of hidden stars in the organization.
Stacia Garr:
So people who senior leaders may not know could be high potentials or be making an outsize impact on the organization, but who are highly connected within their network kind of indicating that, that outsize impact and then using that to help with potential hypo identification practices and in putting people into leadership development programs and the like so there's, those are a couple of ways we've seen ONA. We're also seeing more use of natural language processing and used in this kind of gets at that qualitative data aspect that Priyanka mentioned at the very beginning from the lit review. So using that to identify themes within certainly within engagement or belonging in our inclusion indices but also using that when we are looking at performance reviews looking at to what extent are certain groups may be having certain types of themes or texts being written about them that others are not. So for an example of this might be again, kind of going back to some of the research we've seen in women versus men. Women's feedback often tends to be more about their behaviors. Whereas men's feedback often tends to be more about their actual outcomes for business impact. So those are the types of differences that you might be able to use NLPM. Priyanka, what else have we seen?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Something that was very interesting was tying wellbeing data DIN data. So seeing that, cutting it across, slicing it to see how different groups underrepresented groups, different cohorts might be fairing when it comes to wellbeing. I think the other thing that stuck with me that was pretty interesting and you've just heard that from one company was, they were, they were doing was counting high-fives on a watch on the watch with internal communications back from that they have to understand allyship and sponsorship amongst employees and managers and senior leaders. That was something interesting. That'd be hard as well.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, so we we've actually seen that also. We saw it with high fives in this research, but also I've seen it with recognition platforms. So like a work human or an achievers Work Human themselves have actually done some analysis to see if there are differences by demographic background in terms of who recognizes whom and at what amount, cause I do like points or, you know, dollar amounts associated with recognition. And the theory there being that those recognitions are much less you put less thought into them than you do a performance review. So they may reveal biases that exist a bit more. And they do show differences by all the demographic groups that you might expect. So anyway, I see we've just got two minutes. So I just wanna see here. I want to go to the question that is in the chat, cause I think this is, this is a really good one.
Evidence of accountability via reward, accelerating progress or being effective in general
Stacia Garr:
And this is about, have we seen evidence of accountability via rewards, accelerating progress or being effective in general? So this is such a hot topic right now because we see all these organizations now coming out and saying, you've got to tie DEIB numbers to some sort of accountability metrics in order to get people's attention. There was when I first started doing research in this space and like 2013, that was like the thing, the thing that everyone was trying to get to and the 2013 version of myself would probably be cheering this hugely. The 2021 version of myself is not so sure. And particularly given some of the things we've heard in these interviews. The the reason for that is well, while tying metrics to accountability can be really powerful and it absolutely can.
Stacia Garr:
What it can also do is get people to focus on the wrong thing. And right now people are really worried as they should be that as they proliferate the DEIB data, that people will see it as a quota or a target, and that is illegal. And so there is a real concern about people misinterpreting what is trying to happen and kind of going after the wrong things. And the accountability makes that even more, more public. I think that if done well, accountability is a good thing. So if, for instance, you're tying to behaviors that we know drive certain types of outcomes. I think that the accountability can be a good thing. The devil is in the details on the measurement, of course. But I guess I would say my perspective is that it can be good, but use it with caution.
Stacia Garr:
I have not seen any holistic research studies that look at this. And even if we did, I would be concerned about like what correlation and causation researchy things. So that's it, if you want to talk more about it, I'd love to talk more about it. I think it's an important topic, but that's kind of my off the cuff.
Conclusion
Stacia Garr:
We're at time. So I'm just gonna real quick flip through to our last thing, which is next Q&A call. Maybe not relevant for folks here, but for anybody who maybe is watching the video, it is on learning content. So we did a study to understand how do we deliver the right content at the right place, right time, right person right modality, et cetera. And we're going to be discussing some of our early findings from that. That study will be coming out itself in mid-June. So that one will be further along than this study. So if you're interested, I'm sure it'll be really great. It'll be with Dani Johnson and Heather Gilmartin Adams. All right. Thank you to everybody so much for the time today. Thank you, Priyanka for your co-host on this session. And we look forward to seeing everybody again soon. Have a good rest of your day.
Downloadable Workbook: Learning Tech Ecosystem Design Tool
Posted on Monday, May 10th, 2021 at 11:49 PM
We've been following the learning tech market for years.
One of the most striking trends we've seen is the shift to ecosystem thinking. Learning leaders no longer see learning tech decisions as a single exercise—an LMS purchase made once every 5-10 years. Instead, they are thinking about learning tech as an ongoing series of decisions to build and maintain a network of learning technologies that collectively enable employees to learn and grow.
We wrote about this trend in a report, The Art and Science of Designing a Learning Tech Ecosystem, which found that learning leaders are asking themselves questions like:
- What tech should be in my org's ecosystem, and what should be eliminated?
- Who should we involve in learning tech decisions?
- What data do we need to make informed decisions?
- What's the best process for engaging vendors?
- How do I select the right vendor(s)?
Building on this report, we've created a tool to guide leaders in building and maintaining their learning tech ecosystems. Use this tool to do a custom analysis of your org's needs, evaluate vendors, and make informed decisions about what to build, buy, borrow—or get rid of.
Download Learning Tech Ecosystem Tool
As always, we'd love your feedback! Shoot us a note at hello@redthreadresearch with questions, comments, and insights.
Insights on DEIB & Skills
Posted on Tuesday, May 4th, 2021 at 2:45 PM
In March 2021, we launched a new study on DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging) and skills. As part of our ongoing research, we recently gathered leaders for a research roundtable focused on this topic.
The focus of the discussion was to understand the skills critical for fostering DEIB and how orgs can effectively develop them.
Some of the specific questions we discussed include:
- What are the skills crucial for DEIB?
- How might we scientifically identify those critical skills?
- How can learning leaders make sure DEIB-critical skills are being developed?
- How can DEIB leaders make sure skills is a focus of their DEIB efforts?
Mindmap of DEIB & Skills Roundtable
The mindmap below outlines the conversations that transpired as part of this roundtable.
Note: This is a live document. Click the window and use your cursor to explore.
Key Takeaways
Our extremely engaging conversation helped us understand how leaders are thinking about and approaching skills identification and development for the purpose of fostering DEIB. While several interesting insights were shared, we identified these 5 key takeaways:
- Certain skills are crucial for DEIB at all levels
- Skills need to be pragmatic and teachable
- Employees can help determine which skills are important for DEIB
- DEIB should be an organizational priority
- Consistency is key to skills development
The following sections offer an overview of the major points for each key takeaway.
Certain skills are crucial for DEIB at all levels
General consensus among our leaders: Certain skills are needed by individuals irrespective of the levels they might be at within their org.
Skills—such as listening, empathy, and self-awareness—are consistently seen as foundational for building inclusive and equitable orgs. Such skills can be instrumental in enabling people to develop other skills as well. As 1 leader pointed out:
“People need comfort with differences. People cannot approach intermediate and advanced concepts if they cannot get past the innate challenge of difference (those who don't look, sound, or act like me). That applies to people of all levels.”
Because these skills are foundational, they should be embedded in all aspects of the talent lifecycle and the org’s culture, instead of creating separate trainings for them. This can help individuals apply those skills in the right context, when they need them.
While all agreed that certain skills are important for all individuals, participants also shared about the role of different levels in enabling these skills.
People leaders must play the role of cultivator for DEIB skills within their teams, while senior leaders need to create the conditions to enable skills development.
Leaders also need to create a vision and shared purpose, and manage their team’s energy and mental health. Managers, for their part, should create a psychologically safe environment for all.
Skills need to be pragmatic & teachable
Leaders agree that DEIB initiatives can’t be tokenistic: DEIB initiatives should focus on skills that are teachable and practical, and can be applied in the workplace. As such, leaders should be able to help managers understand, for instance, how they can:
- Create psychologically safe environments
- Bring in different perspectives
Some of the ways leaders can do this are by:
- Making skills into real actions, behaviors, and rituals by thinking about the everyday practices of inclusion that can be incorporated in meetings, for example, always reading the room during meetings (to gage attendees’ actions and reactions), and asking questions such as who’s in the room, who should be there, and who’s at the decision table; as 1 leader noted:
“That’s where inclusion is first experienced and where those practices can be embedded.”
- Developing exercises that can help create awareness, such as writing down any time someone says a questionable word and noting how often they use it
Employees can help determine which skills are important for DEIB
When it comes to identifying skills that are important for fostering DEIB, leaders were clear: Ask the employees.
In order to determine DEIB skills, orgs should have employees identify instances in which they felt included and what actions enabled them to experience it.
Some of the ways orgs can do that include:
- Surveys to ask employees about their perceptions
- 360 assessments for employee feedback
- Talking to employees (i.e., interviews, focus groups)
- Leveraging employee resource groups (ERGs)
Beside engaging the employees, another helpful way to identify DEIB skills is to leverage external perspective by, for example, having leaders talk with clients and customers. External thought leadership can also be a great source for clarity and knowledge around such skills.
Tech and data can help in identifying opportunities that drive these skills. For example, organizational network analysis (ONA) can be used to identify:
- People who might have DEIB skills
- Who they’re connected to
- Their areas of influence
Leaders also suggested using platforms like Glassdoor to understand why people leave the org and to look at data from exit interviews.
DEIB should be an organizational priority
When asked about how orgs can make sure that DEIB skills are included in employee development efforts, leaders believed that DEIB should be an organizational priority. Everybody needs to be responsible for driving it and be given the means to make it happen. As stated by 1 leader:
“Give individuals and teams the autonomy to DO DEIB, not just learn or talk about it.”
Which is why, as leaders shared, all skills learning should incorporate a DEIB lens. A shared example from the leaders: When orgs create learning to help people managers deliver better feedback, they should ensure that they talk about delivering feedback to different personas, age groups, races, etc.
Some of the ways orgs can ensure that skills learning as part of employee development is impactful include:
- Encouraging interaction and interpersonal dialogue to give feedback on skills learned (as opposed to it being a siloed experience)
- Creating conversations, sharing each other’s stories, and learning from one another across different levels (i.e., national vs local settings, manager to employee, peer to peer) instead of an “instructor” teaching the concepts.
Consistency is key to skills development
An essential part of the successful application of DEIB skills is consistency in practicing and making them an integral part of daily activities, rather than something to learn about once in a while. For example, constant driving of DEIB vocabulary into the org can help develop those skills as it promotes and encourages inclusive practices.
An essential part of the successful application of DEIB skills is consistency in practicing and making them an integral part of daily activities.
One leader shared this: Too often, development programs provide information with little / no follow-up and evaluation—or opportunities to practice and apply the lessons / new ways of thinking, doing, and being. Change in behavior and mindset requires continuous practice.
This consistent approach and practice can also help overcome one of the biggest challenges to the application of DEIB skills: It’s ultimately up to each individual to apply them. As 1 leader put it:
"The individual practice and application is where the change really takes place. Ultimately, this is very individualistic and how we shift culture.”
A SPECIAL THANKS
We're extremely grateful to the attendees who enriched the conversation by sharing their thoughtful ideas and experiences. And, as always, we welcome your suggestions and feedback at [email protected].
DEIB & Analytics: What the Literature Says
Posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2021 at 12:05 PM
Introduction
“Black Lives Matter protests moves corporate D&I initiatives center stage”1
“CIOs double down on D&I to build stronger businesses”2
“Amazon will examine its employee review system after claims of racial bias”3
These are just a few of the headlines published in the last 12 months on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) efforts by companies. Given the growing momentum in the space, especially since the social justice movements of 2020 spread globally, we wanted to better understand how orgs are measuring and monitoring their DEIB efforts via people analytics.
We looked at more than 60 academic and business articles, reports, and books for this literature (lit) review. This article summarizes the themes from the lit:
- Analytics for DEIB is more important than ever
- DEIB analytics is more than diversity metrics
- Predictive analytics for DEIB can help plan for the future
- Don’t forget about qualitative data
- Address issues of privacy and ethics
Much of the literature that we reviewed for this topic focuses on why analytics should be used to support DEIB efforts. However, some shining pieces did go beyond the “why” to discuss how companies can go about collecting and utilizing DEIB data. We take a closer look at these 5 themes in the following sections.
Analytics for DEIB is more important than ever
It's not surprising that we found a large portion of the lit focused on explaining why analytics is important for DEIB. As pointed out by 1 author:
“Research and data must play a role when it comes to implementing D&I strategy that actually moves the needle on equity. If you don’t collect data, it’s hard to diagnose how your company is performing. If you don’t track data, you won’t know how you’re improving.”4
Several recent articles call out the urgent need for it, especially now, as the COVID-19 pandemic and social movements have spurred companies to reexamine how they drive equity. If we look at the recent commitments to DEIB made by some of the biggest companies—such as:
- Facebook tying improving employee diversity to executive performance reviews5
- Target’s aim of increasing representation of Black team members by 20% by 20236
- Starbucks’ goal of BIPOC representation of at least 30% at all corporate levels, and at least 40% at all retail and manufacturing roles by 20257
—then, we see that not one of these goals can be achieved without access to data and analytics.
DEIB analytics is more than just diversity metrics
While diversity and representation metrics remain foundational to DEIB efforts, we’re pleased to see several articles push orgs to collect and use data beyond representation metrics. One of the ways orgs can go deeper on metrics is by looking at experience data for different groups of the employee population. According to 1 author, orgs need to look at hard data:
“Are they invited to social gatherings? Included in meetings? Receiving proper mentorship? Looking at these interactions—where discrimination, microaggressions and lack of support often creep in—will reveal what’s truly derailing efforts to improve diversity.”8
These data can be helpful in measuring inclusion. Existing engagement surveys or specific pulse surveys can ask employees about concerns around inclusion. Question statements can be used by orgs to build an inclusion index and track it over time, including:
- Employees are valued for their differences and their unique contributions
- Employees can voice their opinions without fear of retribution or rejection
- People are rewarded fairly according to their job performance and accomplishments
- I have confidence in my company’s grievance procedures
These questions can be supplemented with check-ins, exit interviews, network data and other data to identify existing gaps.
Predictive analytics for DEIB can help plan for the future
Articles that focus on applying predictive analytics for DEIB talk about spotting the right patterns and identifying a potential issue before it turns into a problem. Predictive analytics can be a powerful tool to empower orgs to make smarter decisions about their DEIB efforts.
The lit contains examples of companies that are already using predictive analytics to support DEIB, including:
- Whirlpool—to help steer the company away from a “…myopic focus on intake, while ignoring potential effects of retention risks and advancement challenges for diverse populations.”9
- Walmart—to model and forecast techniques to understand the future through such questions as:
- What could happen?
- How can we arrive at the destination sooner?
Every quarter, diversity leaders and business leaders meet to review DEIB goals, as well as share insights from the data.10
- International Paper—to analyze expatriate compatibility: Predictive analytics, based on past behavior, family dynamics, global acumen, and cultural agility, can forecast which employees would fare better with a global move. 11
Don’t forget about qualitative data
While not a recurring theme, we think the reminder about qualitative data is an important point made by some articles that deserves a mention. Very often, when we talk about data and analytics, we instantly think of hard numbers, dashboards, and spreadsheets.
DEIB and analytics leaders might find themselves trying to persuade or convince some stakeholders about the merit of qualitative data—and part of that challenge might require redefining what “data” means for the org.
Individual stories and experiences are an important piece of the puzzle. Interviews with employees can help leaders supplement quantitative data to get a holistic picture. As 1 author stated:
“Statistics don’t capture what it feels like to be the only black team member.”12
Some examples of the types of qualitative data that can be used include:
- Interviews
- Focus groups
- Textual analysis of written performance reviews
- Analysis of exit interview notes
- Analysis of hiring memos
However, the lit does offer some limitations to using this data. For example, if companies aren’t consistent or comprehensive in their qualitative analysis, then biases can creep in.
Address issues of privacy and ethics
No discussion about people analytics—especially when it involves sensitive DEIB employee data—can be complete without taking into account issues of privacy and ethics. And we’re glad to see a number of articles point out this issue. As one of the authors said:
“You want to be very careful of how you’re protecting the data and how you’re making sure that your data is being used to make fair and equitable decisions on people.”13
So, how can orgs best deal with this issue?
One way to maintain employee privacy is through data aggregation to ensure no one’s data is singled out. However, this could be challenging for small companies that may only have a few people from a particular demographic group.
Data ethics and privacy becomes even more important when collecting passive data on employees. Companies can be more responsible and ethical about collecting such data by:
- Being transparent with employees about the data collected and who will have access to it
- Sharing that data with employees
- Being clear about the types of analysis being run on the data collected on employees and how those data are used
What caught our attention
Of the lit we reviewed, several pieces stood out to us. Each of the pieces below contains information we found useful and / or intriguing. We learned from their perspectives and encourage you to do the same.
The Next Generation of Diversity Metrics: Predictive and Game-Changing Analytics
Brian Baker and Michael Collins (edited by), Diversity Best Practices, 2013
Explains how predictive analytics, when used correctly, can support areas such as retention, development of a leadership pipeline, analysis of leadership and talent gaps, and creating a general talent pipeline.
"Predictive analytics will soon offer the make-or-break evidence needed to support every business case, every new project proposal. For diversity practitioners, predictive analytics offers more: A powerful tool to be smarter about inclusion efforts—which ones to ditch, which ones to double down on, which ones to invent.”
Highlights:
- Link the hiring algorithm with recruitment of candidates from diverse backgrounds to revisit high-potential resumes and analyze retention data
- Shift conversations from reactive debates to proactive consideration
- Use predictive analytics to gain insight into what is reasonably attainable for companies in the future
Strength in Numbers: Using Data to Track Diversity and Inclusion
Marianne Bertrand, Caroline Grossman, Mekala Krishnan, Promarket, The Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, October 2020
Explains how no simple solution is going to cure all DEIB woes. Change needs to be deliberate and transformational, which takes time.
"People arrived at quotas as a panacea, as the silver bullet. And it’s great that it has led to increased representation on boards, but that’s really not had the kind of spillover effects that people had hoped."
Highlights:
- Quotas for executive boards, while not showing any negative effects, aren’t the transformative policy that many thought it would be
- Culture change takes time—anywhere from 5-7 years for change to really start to trickle through the org
- Change the norms: For example, instead of lengthening the maternity leave policy which separates women from the labor force for longer, create a parental leave policy that encourages both parents to take time off, leveling the playing field
Here’s How to Wield Empathy and Data to Build an Inclusive Team
Interview with Ciara Trinidad, Head of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at Blend, First Round Review, 2018
Explains that the key to building the strongest, most diverse team is understanding and believing in why you’re doing it. Knowing the reason behind it gives momentum to the initiatives and gets people onboard.
"Discussion gives muscles to data—especially around D&I. Without it, a dashboard is a depository. A dialogue becomes a monologue, which eventually becomes silence."
Highlights:
- Partner with the HR operations specialist to learn what data is stored where; use the fields needed to help create a dashboard that provides a meaningful narrative
- Try different analyses to discover which are the most revealing. Some examples might be:
- Analyzing hires by month, by team which can show how recruiters are faring against DEIB strategies
- Analyzing hires by month, by race which can reveal an org’s internal biases
- Analyzing hires by tenure which can reveal when people leave and why
- Present the data to every person who has a stake in the company in the clearest, most digestible way
- Keep the lines of communication open; consider using your existing talent as your DEIB professionals and pay them for that work
Actionable Diversity and Inclusion Analytics with Philips’ Toby Culshaw
Joe Macy, Gartner, 2019
Provides a case study into how companies can leverage partnerships for DEIB analytics, and making sure how data can be made comprehensive and presented in a way that’s easy to digest.
"Because of the partnerships with internally facing HR analytics and reporting teams, the Talent Intelligence team could access information already available at Philips and avoid starting from scratch to find the needed information. The partnerships also ensured the different teams were on the same page and understood how to impact D&I at Philips."
Highlights:
- Break the project down into 3 smaller phases:
- Gather internal data to understand the current state by partnering with the HR analytics team
- Gather external data to understand the feasibility of changing the current state by looking at the markets in which Philips operates
- Synthesize the internal and external data in a segmented way to drive action
- Present data by creating easy-to-consume materials designed to drive action
- Thoroughly understand the competitive landscape worldwide to find the right talent and understand the feasibility of diversity goals
Delivering On Diversity and Inclusion: How Employers Can Achieve Measurable Results
White Paper, Visier
Encourages orgs to move away from the traditional top-down approach to D&I practices and, instead, empower frontline workers to initiate change. This approach must include data that’s readily understood by all and looks to the future instead of criticizing the present.
“When data can be accessed in a way that facilitates exploration (without the need for a data science degree!), it can help organizations understand where to focus their talent efforts to achieve broader goals.”
Highlights:
- Avoid common data pitfalls, such as measuring diversity as a blanket number and prioritizing reports over insights
- D&I taskforces are more effective than top-down approaches to change
- Unify data from multiple sources, so that users can dig deeper into the data
- Utilize D&I analytics to:
- Compare the org to the most recent EEOC benchmarks
- Clearly communicate changes and diversity through dynamic, real-time visual storytelling
- Demonstrate how D&I initiatives have an impact on business performance metrics
- Understand engagement among diverse employees, and monitor the impact engagement has on turnover and exit patterns
Additional Reading Recommendations
- “Better People Analytics: Measure Who They Know, Not Just Who They Are,” Harvard Business Review / Paul Leonardi & Noshir Contractor, November-December 2018, https://empowerment.ee/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Better-People-Analytics-Measure-Who-They-Know-Not-Just-Who-They-Are.pdf
- “15 Ways People Analytics Can Improve Workforce Diversity,” Techfunnel.com / Rosie Harman, August 2020, https://www.techfunnel.com/hr-tech/people-analytics-improve-workforce-diversity/
- “Why you should apply analytics to your people strategy,” McKinsey & Co., The McKinsey Podcast / Simon London, Bryan Hancock & Bill Schaninger, April 2019, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-you-should-apply-analytics-to-your-people-strategy
- “Support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with People Analytics,” Human Capital Institute, Nine to Thrive / Phil Willburn, https://forms.workday.com/en-us/webinars/josh-bersin-belonging-diversity-phil-willburn/form.html/dl/3?step=step1_default
- “4 Things Walmart Learned About Using Data to Drive Diversity,” The APQC Blog / Elissa Tucker, September 2019, https://www.apqc.org/blog/4-things-walmart-learned-about-using-data-drive-diversity
- "How CEOs and CHROs Can Connect People to Business Strategy", Harvard Business Review Analytics Services, 2017, https://hbr.org/resources/pdfs/comm/visier/HowCEOsandCHROsCanConnect.pdf
- “Data And Diversity: How Numbers Could Ensure There’s A Genuine Change For The Better,” Forbes.com / HV MacArthur, August 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/hvmacarthur/?sh=58909861a902
Trends in Learning Content & Content Management
Posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2021 at 6:20 AM
Insights on learning content & content management
As part of our ongoing research on learning content, we recently gathered leaders for a research roundtable focused on the latest trends in learning content and content management. The key question in this research is:
How are orgs enabling employees to have the right learning experiences—including accessing the right content, at the right time, in the right format for their needs?
Some of the specific questions we discussed were:
- What makes a great learning content strategy?
- How are orgs deciding what content to prioritize?
- What’s most important to consider about content when choosing and implementing learning tech?
- What metrics should orgs use to evaluate their learning content?
As we'll see below, the key to these questions lies not in the detailed answers but in the overall mindset and approach that forward-thinking L&D orgs are taking toward learning: a mindset of enabling, not providing, learning.
Mindmap of Learning Content Roundtable
The mindmap below outlines the conversations that transpired as part of this roundtable.
Note: This is a live document. Click the window and use your cursor to explore.
Key Takeaways
We had an engaging, energizing conversation—both verbally and in Zoom chat!—that helped us better understand learning content trends, strategy, delivery, and evaluation. Here are the 5 key takeaways:
- L&D continues to move from providing content to enabling development
- Can learning content drive business outcomes and meet employee needs?
- “Pull” strategies can enable employees to access the content they need
- Orgs are using skills to guide content priorities
- Business outcomes should drive decisions about tech and delivery, but it’s often the other way around
L&D continues to move from providing content to enabling development
Looking back on the conversation, an underlying theme was the mindset shift from L&D providing learning to enabling it. This shift is one we’ve written and talked about extensively—and it came up again in this conversation about learning content.
An underlying theme was the mindset shift from L&D providing learning to enabling it.
Given the amount of content out there, the move toward personalization of development experiences, and the sheer variety of people in most orgs, it’s unlikely that L&D knows exactly what development opportunities each individual employee needs.
In this roundtable discussion on learning content, leaders recognized it’s almost impossible for L&D to push the right content to the right people at the right time, in the right format. Instead, they need to enable employees to access the right content at the right time and modality for them. Much of the discussion focused on the different ways leaders and their orgs are thinking about this shift.
Leaders recognized that in order for employees to access the right content at the right time and modality for them, L&D must enable, not provide, learning.
Can learning content drive business outcomes and meet employee needs?
When we asked, “What makes great learning content strategy,” leaders were very clear: Any learning content strategy worth its salt must help solve business challenges. It must drive the development of the capabilities and skills that’ll get the org where it needs to go.
Learning content strategy must drive the development of the capabilities and skills that’ll get the org where it needs to go.
As one leader noted:
“I regularly ask questions about the challenges we’re facing and the outcomes we’re trying to reach. Then I use coaching questions to help leaders and individuals identify their needs. Content is then 1 option or possible way to get to the outcomes.”
And content success must be measured by the things that matter to the business—key performance indicators (KPIs), objectives and key results (OKRs), or other indicators that business leaders care about. One leader in this roundtable highlighted that tracking learning content against business outcomes can be scary—because L&D can’t fully control the results.
That’s why many learning leaders are starting to look for correlations over time between learning content and business metrics, rather than direct causal relationships.
Learning leaders look for correlations over time between learning content and business metrics, rather than direct causal relationships.
Leaders noted that a great learning content strategy not only supports business outcomes, but also—equally—employee development needs. L&D can’t simply push content on topics that L&D or senior leaders have deemed critical—the content must be relevant and helpful to individual employees.
There was, therefore, a perceived tension between supporting business outcomes and employee needs. How can L&D enable employees to access content that drives business outcomes and that’s relevant to individual employees? One way leaders deal with this perceived tension is by helping employees pull the content they need. We explore this idea next.
Pull strategies can enable employees to access the content they need
Leaders largely agreed that one effective way to enable (rather than provide) employee development is to move from a push strategy for learning content to a pull one. Orgs are making content more widely available to more employees so that they can access whatever they need, when they need it.
Orgs are making content more widely available to more employees so they can access whatever they need, when they need it.
Many leaders said their orgs are broadening access to content by purchasing licenses to online content libraries for all (or many) employees. Others are experimenting with (or thinking about) giving individual employees learning budgets that they can draw on to access any content or other development opportunity, regardless of where it is.
However, moving to a model in which L&D enables learning means the org must provide the cultural supports—time, information, infrastructure—to employees so they can pull the learning and development they need. As one leader put it:
“Even if you give people a budget for learning, you have to give them time to invest in their development as well. It is a cultural issue.”
Leaders also linked the shift to a pull strategy to the democratization of learning—making learning and development opportunities available to more and more employees, not just a select few.
Orgs are using skills to guide content priorities
A number of leaders reported that their orgs are starting to use skills to inform employee development decisions at both the organizational and individual levels.
Skills support org-wide L&D planning
Leaders increasingly see skills as a way to inform L&D decisions. They want to know:
- What are the skills the business needs—at the org, team, or department, and individual levels?
- What skills does our workforce currently have?
The answers to these questions can help drive targeted decisions about where to dedicate development resources.
Indeed, many leaders noted that without information about skills, L&D efforts can often be off-target. As one leader put it:
“Without insight into what skills are in demand and what skills people have, L&D tends to push out what we think people need. That’s rarely an effective approach.”
Skills help democratize learning
As orgs make more development opportunities—including content—available to more employees, we previously mentioned that they must provide the support employees need to find and take advantage of those opportunities.
A key element of this support is information about skills:
- The skills individuals have
- The skills they need
- The skills the org needs
- Skills trends in the market (outside the org)
This information enables employees to make more informed decisions about their own development—thus, setting themselves up to be in-demand in the future. As one leader put it:
“We want to know what are the most in-demand skills by role in the market, then provide that information to employees on what skills are increasing in value and what skills are decreasing in value.”
Business outcomes should drive decisions about tech & delivery—but it’s often the other way around
Leaders agreed that, ideally, learning content development starts with business outcomes and goals, which then inform decisions about content, which inform decisions about tech and modalities. They emphasized that having learning tech doesn’t mean you have a well-targeted learning content strategy.
However, leaders noted this ideal flow is often hampered—even sidelined—for these 4 reasons:
- Buzz. People—in L&D and the business—become focused on buzzwords and the next big tech when, in fact, that tech may not be the best solution for the business challenge at hand
- Vendor marketing. State-of-the-art demos help obtain buy-in and funding for new tech, making it easier and more urgent to focus on tech than on outcomes
- Lack of strategic advice. The literature covering new tech rarely addresses the questions:
- When is this tech useful?
- When should orgs use it?
- And when not?
- Real limitations on modalities. One leader (who works in healthcare) shared that most development opportunities happen during team huddles, during which learning must be delivered only on paper or—perhaps—on a smart phone. Such limitations can shape decisions about delivery through sheer necessity.
Leaders also discussed a related problem: The fact that people often conflate learning content—the information or knowledge itself—with the delivery modality. Some leaders posited that disconnecting the two may help L&D enable development experiences that are more helpful to employees and drive business outcomes. Others, however, see content and delivery modality as intricately and necessarily linked. We plan to explore this conflation question in upcoming interviews.
A Special Thanks
This session helped us more clearly understand what’s really important in learning content—particularly the need for L&D to focus on changing the behaviors that matter to the business and to employees.
Thank you again to those of you who attended and enriched our discussion. And, as always, we welcome your suggestions and feedback at [email protected].
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB) and Skills: What the Literature Says
Posted on Tuesday, April 20th, 2021 at 10:00 AM
DEIB & Skills: We Found What We Expected
Our hope (wish? dream?) that we'd overlooked a treasure trove of articles on DEIB and skills did not come to fruition. Instead, as expected, our literature review turned up numerous articles explaining:
- How leaders can become more inclusive
- The role managers can play in promoting DEIB
- The strategies orgs should put in place
But, missing from our lit review: The specific DEIB skills that individuals should or can develop, as well as what role learning can play in the development.
We looked at more than 50 academic and business articles, reports, and books for this lit review. This article summarizes the 5 key themes that emerged from the literature. But before we dive into them, we first want to touch upon a few things that surprised us.
A few things surprised us
We did still find a few interesting nuggets from our literature review, such as:
- While much is written about DEIB-related courses and trainings, very little exists on the skills that foster DEIB and how they can be developed.
- We found 2 reports with in-depth research on the skills that impact DEIB (we share details on these publications below).
- Increasingly, storytelling is becoming more essential for knowledge-sharing and building a culture of trust and collaboration (areas that impact DEIB)—but no existing literature makes the direct connection to DEIB nor sees it as an important skill for it.
5 THEMES FROM OUR LIT REVIEW
In this article, we summarize the key insights we learned:
- Traditional diversity training doesn’t work
- People look at DEIB competencies, not skills
- Skills for DEIB transcend individual roles and orgs
- DEIB skills should be part of organizational learning
- DEIB skills are in demand, but we don’t know how to teach them
Traditional diversity training doesn’t work
A recurring theme on this topic is the ineffectiveness of traditional diversity and unconscious bias training. In fact, research has shown that this kind of training may result in awareness among underrepresented groups of the bias-driven barriers that exist within an org while having no effect on the behaviors of the majority represented population.1
The positive effects of diversity training rarely last beyond a day or two—and a number of studies suggest that it can activate bias or spark a backlash.
However, there’s considerable research that also focuses on ways orgs can make such training relevant and useful, by making some crucial adjustments to it, such as:
- Being intentional about the outcomes and clearly defining them
- Diversifying the training content
- Removing the assumption that individuals at all hierarchical levels experience DEIB similarly
- Articulating specific and realistic expectations
- Consistently evaluating people to track changes and nudging them to take action
All of these suggestions point toward helping people learn something that they can apply in their work—skills.
People look at DEIB competencies, not skills
We found quite a bit written about competencies that leaders, managers, and employees need to drive meaningful change for DEIB. A common thread among the literature is the need to focus on developing competencies that are both individual- / person-focused, and those that impact the broader team and org. Cultural competency is one of the most frequently referenced areas.
“Cultural competence is the ability to recognize that people have different experiences than you, to understand the social, economic, or political reasons why those experiences are different”2
We found 2 problems with the lit that focused on competencies:
- There’s no consensus or agreement on what this set of competencies needs to be
- Competencies by definition are too broad to enable taking action to foster DEIB
We think the focus should instead be on the skills that foster DEIB. As we mention in our article Skills for DEIB: Building The Muscles We Need, skills are applied and, thus, enable action-taking. However, the current lit lacks structured research around the specific skills (or a set of them) that can enable people to take action.
Skills for DEIB transcend individual roles & orgs
Some of the lit we reviewed discussed the difficulty in identifying key skills for DEIB, as compared with the way we identify skills for a specific role or job via a job analysis. Skills that foster DEIB transcend roles and orgs.
Everyone needs DEIB skills if they want to work successfully and effectively with diverse individuals or groups, whether it be within their current org or a future one. It should be noted, however, that some evidence exists in the lit about how certain skills are more crucial at different hierarchical levels.
Some DEIB skills are more crucial at different hierarchical levels.
For example, a staff-level employee might find more value in leveraging their collaboration and communication skills if most of their interactions are with diverse peers or supervisors. On the other hand, an executive trying to implement strategic decisions that might impact diverse groups differently should leverage their active listening and / or storytelling skills.
DEIB skills should be part of organizational learning
As we mention in the beginning of the article, there’s considerable literature on DEIB training, and the role of L&D in delivering, tracking, and measuring its effectiveness. We did come across a few insightful pieces that see the role of learning extend beyond delivering specific trainings. Because DEIB is foundational to everything that happens at work, it, therefore, needs to be an integral part of org-wide learning initiatives.
Because DEIB is foundational to everything that happens at work, it, therefore, needs to be an integral part of org-wide learning initiatives.
L&D has an important role in doing that, and going beyond delivering trainings and courses on DEIB. From ensuring consistent terminology and definitions to assessing and measuring progress in skills development, the learning function can bring their expertise to ensure a lasting and meaningful impact.
By working with the DEIB leaders, the L&D function can effectively identify skills that have a meaningful impact on driving org-wide inclusion efforts—and make development of those DEIB skills a part of an individual’s overall learning and development.
DEIB skills are in demand, but we don’t know how to teach them
Many articles highlight the rise in demand for “soft” skills. The pandemic, widespread protests for social justice, and climate-related disasters have resulted in people becoming aware of certain skills that can help them survive and thrive during times of rapid change.
Some refer to them as “durable skills”—because they’re not perishable like technical skills that can become obsolete if the tech itself is no longer popular or used widely. For example, collaboration and empathy are increasingly seen as critical skills to function effectively in a new environment. Not surprisingly, these soft / durable / humanizing skills (whatever we call them) are also crucial for building inclusive environments and a culture of belonging.
People are becoming aware of certain skills—soft, durable, or humanizing—that can help them survive and thrive during times of rapid change.
The problem, as some authors allude to, lies in the approach to developing these skills for 2 reasons.
The first reason: It’s difficult to teach these skills individually. As one author put it:
“Historically, if employees don’t arrive “naturally endowed” with these skills, they are often left to develop them on the job. How do you teach or develop skills like mental agility, for example?”3
A suggested approach to this problem is grouping interrelated skills into clusters and investing in a family of skills.
“Rather than targeting mental agility in isolation, you might target its cluster by also addressing skills like navigating ambiguity, working with incomplete information, and developing organizational and self-awareness.”4
The second reason: It’s difficult to ensure whether these skills are being implemented and practiced by people. Some ideas are suggested in the existing lit to address this, such as:
- Incorporating a microlearning approach and integrating it into the workflow
- Combining learning with coaching
- Using nudges and reminders to apply their new skills and practice them
What Caught Our Attention
Of all the literature we reviewed, a few pieces stood out to us. Each of these pieces contain information that we find useful and / or intriguing. We learned from their perspectives—and encourage you to do the same.
Skills for Diversity and Inclusion in Organizations: A Review and Preliminary Investigation
Rosemary Hays-Thomas, Alyinth Bowen, and Megan Boudreaux | The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 2012
This article offers an academic approach to identifying skills for diversity and how they vary, based on the different hierarchical levels within an org.
"Empathy or the ability to take the role of another may be critical to diversity effectiveness at all levels the organizations. Self-awareness and listening skills are likely to be important at all levels as well."
Highlights:
- Reviews the existing lit on identifying the skills needed for diversity
- Applies a critical incident methodology to develop a broad-based set of diversity attributes
- Lays out a model to help understand what values, knowledge, and skills are most important at different org levels (e.g., staff, middle managers, and executives) for effectiveness in diverse environments
- Highlights the importance of empathy at all levels of the org
Building the Link Between Learning and Inclusion
KeyAnna Schmiedl, interviewed by Deborah Milstein | MIT Sloan Management Review, March 2021
This article provides an example of how DEIB leaders and L&D functions can work together to create learning opportunities that foster a culture of belonging and inclusion among employees. This is an extremely timely article: It provides great examples of how Wayfair is leveraging such a partnership to update its training around inclusion in light of the social justice movements of 2020.
"We’ve … codeveloped ‘culture of inclusion’ trainings with L&D. They had the subject-matter expertise to pinpoint the highly engaging points in the instructor-led, in-person training and recreate those experiences in a different e-learning format."
Highlights:
- People are making the connection that diversity, equity, and inclusion are not a set of initiatives that operate in a silo
- DEI needs to be foundational to everything that happens at work, including learning
- By partnering, DEI leaders and L&D can bring better solutions to people within the org
- The connection between learning and DEIB should be seamless
Skills in Demand, Skills in Decline
Matthew J. Daniel, Susan Hackett | Chief Learning Officer Magazine, December 2020
This article offers insights into which skills are growing in demand and why, as orgs look to build those that’ll enable them to thrive in a new environment. It also provides suggestions on how orgs can approach developing these skills.
"The most notable trend, perhaps, is the volume of perishable skills in declining demand… platform- or organization-specific tools or languages that remain important for some but are increasingly volatile. Fluency in these programs takes a back seat to more durable and stable skills."
Highlights:
- Perishable skills—that focus on specific tools or software, and which are org-specific—are in decline
- Durable skills and stable skills—that are transferable, and which enable people to work in volatile environments—are on the rise
- Orgs can approach the development of such skills by grouping them into clusters
- Orgs need to think about broadening and diversifying the durable skills sets of their people
Risky Business: Why Diversity and Inclusion Matter
Celeste Young and Roger Jones | Victoria University and Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, 2019
This article provides a list of skills identified as critical to support D&I practice and the implementation of activities, based on a workshop conducted at Victoria University in December 2018. While the workshop was specifically designed for emergency management orgs (EMO), the applicability and relevance of these skills to all orgs is obvious and clear.
"Communication as a skill is already widely recognized as crucial for D&I practice, but the nomination of listening and reflective skills indicates the need for the development of specific social skills to enhance inclusion."
Highlights:
- D&I shocks can lead to risks serious enough to threaten the ability of EMOs to perform their functions
- Results from the workshop showed that listening and reflection were rated as the most important skills needed for D&I
- Other needed skills for D&I included being collaborative and analytic, and applied skills such as engagement, negotiation, and being able to manage unconscious bias
Storytelling in Organizations: The Power and Traps of Using Stories to Share Knowledge in Organizations
Deborah Sole, Daniel Gray Wilson | Harvard Graduate School of Education Journal, January 2002
This article explains how storytelling can be extremely effective in building or renewing trust and building a collective vision. While an explicit connection between storytelling as a skill and DEIB is not made in the article, we think it’s an important skill as it drives many components of DEIB, such as building trust, resolving conflicts, and generating emotional connections.
"Storytelling has been used in domains to communicate embedded knowledge, resolve conflict, and simulate problem solving."
Highlights:
- Well-designed, well-told stories can convey both information and emotion
- Storytelling can especially be effective in socializing new members and mending relationships
- Storytelling is a means to share norms and values, develop trust, and generate emotional connections
Additional Reading Recommendations
- Creating a Competency Model for Diversity and Inclusion Practitioners, The Conference Board / Indira Lahiri, 2008.
- “What Black Employee Resource Groups Need Right Now,” Harvard Business Review / Aiko Bethea,
- “Inclusive Workplace Competencies,” Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, 2017.
- “'Soft’ Skills Are in Demand. Can They Be Taught?” Fortune / Anne Fisher, May 2019.
- Don’t Give Up on Unconscious Bias Training—Make It Better,” Harvard Business Review / Joelle Emerson, April 2017.
Q&A Call-Purpose-Driven Orgs
Posted on Monday, April 19th, 2021 at 9:53 AM
Q&A Call Video
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Stacia Garr:
Great. Well, we're going to go ahead and get started. So for those of you that I don't know, I am Stacia Garr and I am co-founder of RedThread Research where human capital research and advisory membership. And we're excited to talk to you today about purpose driven organizations. So this is a one of our Q&A calls. So this is pretty informal. And if you have questions, please go ahead and just jump off of mute and ask them as we go along. We do love it if you're able to do camera, just because it's a small group and it makes it a little bit more informal. If you don't feel comfortable with that today, obviously totally understand. You can also use the chat function if that's more your jam today as well.
Who is RedThread
Stacia Garr:
Just quick station identification as it were. As I said, we're RedThread Research. We focus on a range of different topics. We're focused on people, analytics, learning and skills, performance, and employee experience to DEIB and HR technology. This topic of purpose really kind of covers the much broader range of what, you know, it's really kind of a super topic if you will, because it has impacts across all these different areas. If anybody wants to know more about what we do go to redthreadresearch.com.
Our journey to understand purpose
Stacia Garr:
So as I mentioned, this is kind of a super topic for us, and we began this, this journey to purpose. It's actually kind of an interesting origin story in that our team every year comes together and says, you know, what are we going to focus on in the coming year? And a few years ago, I guess about 18 months ago, one of our team members came together, came to this meeting and said, I think we should really focus on organizational purpose. And Dani and I kind of went really like, are you sure?
Stacia Garr:
And you know, just cause we hadn't been here, we'd been hearing some about it, but we weren't, you know, we weren't convinced and this team member made an incredibly compelling case around why purpose was so important in how he was gaining traction and all this other stuff. And this was in September of 2019. So over the course of the next month or so this team member convinced us that this was a great idea. And we decided to start the research in January, 2020. Obviously we had no idea what was going to happen as we moved through 2020 at that point and how, in some ways, prescient this topic of purpose really was. But the reason I share that story is because before we got to the pandemic, there was already a lot of interest in this topic of purpose. There was an I'll talk about this in just a minute, but the focus on the business roundtable on making the purpose of a corporation being much more broad being about stakeholder capitalism, not just about shareholder capitalism and the like, but so we had that already happening, but then the pandemic really kind of accelerated what was happening.
Stacia Garr:
And so we completed a study last fall called the Purpose Driven Organization and it really covered the three bullets that are here on this slide, what is purpose, why it matters, how HR can bring purpose to life and the role of HR tech and enabling purpose. One of the things that happened though, because we were doing this research in the midst of the pandemic is a lot of people were obviously focused on a range of things related to enabling their employees. And we found that we had some really good stories, but not that many great stories of people telling them that story themselves. So we've listened to a lot of podcasts. We did some, we did some interviews, we did a lot of reading of articles, et cetera. And that's what we based a report on, but we wanted to bring it more to life.
Stacia Garr:
And so as a result of that, we did a whole podcast series that kicked off last October and ran until actually just about a month ago where we publish stories of what organizations were doing about organizational purpose. And that podcast is on our website, it's called, is purpose working. And so that was kind of that formed the Genesis of many of the stories that we found with this research. So that was a lot of intro into, into what we did and why we did it.
Stacia Garr:
Let me tell you a little bit more about the study and what we found. So when we talk about organizational purpose, this is our definition of it. So we say it's clear and concise statement that inspires people to deliver value to these multiple stakeholders. And so what I think is interesting here is in our list, as well as in most of the lists that you see, for instance from the business roundtable, shareholders are at the bottom of this list. So they are still an important part, but these other groups are a much more important part than they have been. Historically
Stacia Garr:
I think I saw someone maybe come off of mute. Did someone have a question or a comment on this?
Stacia Garr:
Okay, I'll keep going.
Purpose vs everything else
Stacia Garr:
The other thing that we get asked about is what is purpose compared to everything else? And so the way that we see it is this, that purpose is really about why I, or we do this. Why do we do this thing? This work that we do this focus for the organization, why do we do it? There are a lot of other important concepts, like as we show here, vision, mission, values, and principles but as we see purpose though purposes, the underlying kind of mega trend if you will. And these other factors are components of it. And ways that purpose is actualized, but Purpose is the fundamental key point.
Understanding purpose businesses
Stacia Garr:
Another thing that we learned through the research was about what purpose businesses are. And what I mean by that is there is an easy tendency to think that you know, there's deliberate impact that an organization is making and that's just their primary focus versus kind of market forces. So almost like a profit versus a purpose perspective. And so, but what we find though is, is that purpose actually extends much farther into kind of some of the organizations you might think of as do-good-er organizations then than you might expect. So a charity or pure NGO. Yes, that's, that's very purpose-driven and it is designed for a very deliberate impact, but with even social enterprises, often they can be for profit. And, you know, we've got all these businesses going to the right-hand side that are, that are for-profit.
Stacia Garr:
So one of the big findings that we learned through both the study, as well as through the podcast series was that profit and purpose are not necessarily at odds with each other. In fact, what we heard from, for instance, a venture capitalist, Debra Quazzo, who said, if a business doesn't have a clear purpose, and if its purpose is not big enough to be meaningful and inspiring, then you're probably not going to have a very good business, which I thought was a really powerful thought. So she would talk about how, when she is investing in businesses and startups, that if they didn't have a clear purpose, then, you know, she was probably not going to make the investment because the return just wasn't going to be good enough. And so I feel like that's kind of a different way of thinking about purpose certainly than what I was taught in business school. I was taught, you know, you need to get your return to shareholders and that's all that matters, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that the pendulum has swung back away from that perspective. I'll pause right there. Does anybody have any thoughts or comments on that?
Mission statement vs purpose
Priyanka Mehrotra:
I was just curious how businesses make the distinction between their mission statement and purpose. How has that distinction coming along and what, what did we see in our research on that?
Stacia Garr:
Well, I think practically speaking, I'm going to go back to that slide. Practically speaking, we see them tightly intermingled. So because organizations don't necessarily specifically articulate externally the difference between their purpose and mission, they tend in, people tend to understand what a mission is. I think we see the language being tightly mixed, but if you try to, if you kind of tease it out, you'll see that in many organizations, mission statement they'll have something that is much closer to a purpose statement. Like we do this and like, this is, this is the higher level of what we do. And then kind of the, the double-click down is the mission. Though they may call it all a mission statement. We were trying to pull it apart because the, what we do now in, in the future can change, right? We've seen that happen with lots and lots of organizations. But often the fundamental, underlying purpose of what we do is doesn't change. And so there's of the interesting interplay between the two concepts.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Great question.
Stacia Garr:
Any other questions or thoughts that folks have?
Understand purpose businesses
Stacia Garr:
All right. I'll keep, I'll keep going. And I'll, I'll say usually our Q&A calls. I don't put as much content in them. They're usually much more discussion-based but there weren't a ton of questions in advance of this. And I figured that given that folks may just want to know what we learned about this work. So that's why I put a bit more questions in here, or a bit more slides in here than we usually do. Okay. Stacia Garr:
So 73% of, of people believe companies can increase profits and improve communities. So this is kind of a fundamental belief that we're increasingly seeing, particularly in the United States.
Introduction Purpose has gone mainstream
Stacia Garr:
I've mentioned a few times this, this concept of the, what the Business Roundtable wrote in August of 2019. And the reason that this is important is that the business roundtable, you know, is an organization that a good portion of the fortune 500 are a part of it is part of the way that they kind of communicate where at least American businesses are going and for decades, they've said that the shareholder was primary.
Stacia Garr:
And this really ties back to the work that someone like the folks like Milton Friedman did in the 1970s that said, look, you know, the purpose of a business of a corporation is to return value to shareholders and that's it full stop. What's interesting is two things. One is, is that, you know, like I said, by 2019, the Business Roundtable updated this statement on the purpose of corporation focusing on these concepts of customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and then shareholders. But what's perhaps even more interesting is that this focus on shareholders was in some ways an anomaly in time. So if you look at some of the research and you look at what companies were writing about in the 1930s, forties, fifties, et cetera they were much more focused on the broader good if you will, of the good, the good of the community, et cetera.
Stacia Garr:
And it was only with the introduction of folks like Friedman in the seventies that we saw this very strong movement towards the shareholder. And in some ways that made sense, because it was a lot easier to measure. I'm going to talk about measurement in a few minutes, a lot easier to measure the value that the corporation was creating. If you only have a single stakeholder to whom you're trying to benefit in this case, the shareholder, and it is a lot more complex and messy if we have five different share stakeholders to whom we are trying to deliver value. But I think that it's interesting cause it feels like the pendulum is kind of coming back to what, where things were historically and versus, you know, the, you know, whatever 50 years that it's been very much so focused on on shareholders.
Employees expect businesses to act
Speaker 2:
Part of the reason this shift is that really employees and consumers expectations have shifted. This is some data from the Edelman Trust Barometer, where they were talking about the types of broader societal actions that they want businesses to take. And you can see here that, you know, 80% want brands to help solve society's problems is what this is. 64% want companies to help set an example as to what they should be doing when it comes to diversity. And 71% said that they trust employers to do what is right when it comes to social justice. But what is interesting on that last point was that was is especially true for small businesses.
Stacia Garr:
It was actually not true for large corporations. So they want companies to take action. They want them to do things that are in the better interest of society but they don't necessarily trust large corporations to do so. And this I think is, is part of what's driving so much of the CEO action that we're seeing. Like for instance, I don't know if you all saw today a significant number of CEOs signed onto a advertisement that was run in many major newspapers, talking about voting rights here in the United States, that they supported the broad extension of voting rights. And this is all kind of part of this reaction to employees and consumers expecting brands to take action that has really come about in the last five years, if you look at the data. So we're seeing this, my point is we're seeing this manifest in a lot of different ways. That's just one that happened to have happened today.
Introduction Purpose = good business
Stacia Garr:
The reason that we're seeing this is that purpose is generally seen as being pretty good for businesses. So we saw that for the last financial crisis. So the 2009 financial crisis, 64% of B Corp's were more likely to survive the last financial crisis than just pure for-profit companies. So if a company was a B Corp, it was more likely to survive. And, and I should say, if you don't know what a B Corp is, a B Corp basically has multiple, it has built into its legal structure, that it has an obligation to serve multiple stakeholders. And so it's, it's kind of the codification, if you will, in some ways of a triple bottom line concept, but it's actually built into the legal construct of the organization. For the next one data shows that 67% of consumers are more likely to forgive a mistake made by a purpose driven organizations.
Stacia Garr:
So if consumers think that a company is generally trying to do the thing, but they make a mistake, they're more likely to forgive them. 89% of leaders thinks purpose drives employee satisfaction and 84% of execs think purpose impacts an organization's ability to transform. So, you know, in addition to kind of all the good things that are a result of, of purpose, there's also a lot of data that shows that there's some benefits to doing it as well. I'll go ahead and pause again here. Any questions or comments on any of this?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Okay. I had a comment about the previous slide. So we've seen that employees are of course pushing and expecting more from organizations, but I think we're starting to see that from shareholders two increasingly like for example, I remember reading just a couple of days ago, a story in the news about how big shareholders asked Google, oh sorry Alphabet to look into there program and protections for employees and there also increasingly hearing about shareholders pushing companies to do better on D&I, especially. So I think we're starting to see a lot of movement from that front as well.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, I think that's true. And it's in the reason for it, I think is, is this right? Is that if, if you truly believe these numbers that, that, you know, these businesses do better, if they do these things you know, shareholders are what their businesses to succeed and return better investments, no matter what, what the, not, hopefully not, no matter what, but, you know, they, they would encourage them to take these actions as well. Not just some of the traditional ones. Yeah. And I think the, the other component of that is the SEC reporting guidelines. You know, we've talked about that quite a bit. So with those new reporting guidelines on human capital you know, a lot of companies are asking themselves one, what should we report? But two, it just indicates the higher level of interest in human capital data and what people are, what organizations are doing with their people. And so, and that's pushing them to say, you should be doing the right things.
Speaker 4:
Yeah.
Purpose as a self reinforcing system
Stacia Garr:
Okay. So if we go on one of the most interesting things we found from the research was this concept, that purpose is really a self-reinforcing decision. So the point being that you, it is harder to achieve impact if you just have one part of the business focused on purpose. So if, you know, if you just have a corporate social responsibility group over here on the side, focused on purpose but the rest of the business is not it's hard to kind of create the level of impact that you would want to that said organizations that saw and really put purpose front and center to what they did. They basically were able to constantly reinforce that purpose. And it created this nice flywheel effect. So a very practical example of that comes from one of the podcasts that we did, which was with Medtronic.
Stacia Garr:
And so Medtronic is a medical devices company, you know, is in the last year, is the need for ventilators was front and center they increased the ventilators that they produced by something like 200%. I mean, they're just a very purpose driven organization. And just in terms of where the industry is, that they're in. But what was interesting was when we interviewed Jeff Orlando at Medtronic, he talked about how they had a, basically a purpose statement or a purpose charter, if you will that their leader or one of their founders had had written in the 1940s and how that was one, it was like a sacred document that he talked about it like it was almost like a constitution. But second, he talked about how it wasn't a dead document. It was a document that they used to actively help them make decisions about directions that they should go investments they should make with their people, et cetera.
Stacia Garr:
He did make the point that like the constitution, there was a lot of interpretation. So some, there were some strict constitutionalist and some people who are a little bit more flexible, but he said that made the conversation richer and help them make better decisions. And so he said, you know, it was very much so in a situation where that decision, the intentional decisions were a result of the purpose, and then it just continued flowing around. So that's just one example.
What that means for HR
Stacia Garr:
What we did in the study was we looked at this from a perspective of what this means for HR and specifically looked at the different parts of the talent life cycle. So what does this mean from an attraction perspective, enablement, retention, and development.
In summary: Attract, Enable, Develop, Retain
Stacia Garr:
And what we found essentially here is this, first that with attraction attraction in many ways is the most important, because it's all about, do you get people into the organization who aligned with the purpose of the organization?
Stacia Garr:
And so making sure that the elements of purpose and with organization's purpose and how that translates to an individual is present in all aspects of the recruitment phase. The second component of enablement is really about creating the conditions that enabled that focus on purpose. So organizational culture, I just gave that example of what Medtronic does. It's in the culture that anyone can raise their hand and say, well, does this align to our, our purpose or there's no organizational hierarchy around that? There's certainly an element of wellbeing, which is so important right now with regard to, how does our purpose translate to the wellbeing of our employees and then the wellbeing of all those other stakeholders as well. This is specifically focused on employees here, but it's important to note that there's often this broader component and then volunteerism.
Stacia Garr:
So one of the podcast interviews that we did actually, I think it may not have up running, but one of the interviews we did was with Microsoft on their volunteerism program, this idea of enabling people to bring their own purpose to life through the company through volunteer activities. The third component here with development was really interesting in that we saw purpose being woven into the development opportunities that were being given. So, you know, making sure that people understood how they could connect their own purpose to the organization and doing that through, through learning opportunities. We had a great interview with folks from EY who talked about kind of the learning that they did to help people identify their individual purpose and make that connection. Similarly with leadership development, the folks that EY talked about, how they also teach their leaders how to bring out purpose in the, in the folks who work with them and how to kind of bring that element of purpose to their own leadership style.
Stacia Garr:
And then with career planning we saw that at Johnson and Johnson actually, organizations talk an organization that talked about how they set up a specific career planning effort to help people identify their purpose, and then to map it to career opportunities. And so when they were thinking about career opportunities and the language they use to describe them, the element of purpose and what J and J was trying to achieve was a critical component of that. And then finally retention. So we're seeing organizations looking to track the impact of their talent practices that aligned to purpose right now in all transparency, the primary space, we're seeing this as with diversity and inclusion or diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging that's where we're seeing the primary focus on tracking. Yes, we're seeing it within employee engagement, but in terms of the connection back to purpose DEIB is where we we're tending to see it. So, okay. This is the last of, kind of my prepared slides. So are there any questions on this or any comments or thoughts or anything anyone wants to contribute.
Connecting organizational purpose vs employee purpose
Speaker 1:
I will say something. So I work with organizations to improve human performance of the employees on the teams. So when I heard about this webinar from my friend, who is also here and thank you for letting me know I said, because I'm talking about how to find your purpose to and make the right behavior changes through behavior change, how you can improve your performance. And I'm just talking this with the organization. So this was interesting to see how the organizations purpose and the employee purpose. Those two dots are, how those two dots are connected to improve the employee performance. So when you said, yeah, it increases the employee satisfaction in one of the slides. Yeah. I can see that how it impacts the motivation of the employee and belonging to that organization feeling a part of that organization because they're aligning. So it makes it now wait clear in my head, the organizational purpose and the employee purpose, how they must be aligning and close attached to each other.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah.
Stacia Garr:
And this slide explains it very well, too. So.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Well, it's, it's a wonderful question. I did include it down here. Let me just skip down. Here we go. So it did make it in.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. Thank you for putting it up last night when I was registering, I said, I think this is the area I really want to talk a little bit more about.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Well, so one of the things in, and I encourage you to to subscribe to the podcast.
Speaker 1:
Definitely. I will.
Stacia Garr:
And listen to that episode from EY because they have this concept of nested purpose, which I thought was really powerful. And the idea was that you have the organizational purpose here, then you have a team purpose and you have the individual purpose. And so in the important, and this is part of the reason that they put such an emphasis on enabling managers to understand purpose is that it's really that, that team purpose that connects people up to the organizational purpose. And so because that organizational purpose can be a little bit esoteric or feel a little bit disconnected, particularly, you know, if it's in their instance, a client service organization, but they don't have a a client service role, right.
Stacia Garr:
So it's like, okay, well, how do I connect? And so what they do is, as they talk about the role of managers in creating that nested purpose and helping individuals find their purpose and connecting it to the work they did. And in the podcast, there was a story that he told about, you know, somebody who is basically think 80% of her job, she didn't really want to do, but 20% she did and how they used the purpose framework to help them understand, okay, this is what I really want to do. And then it happened, there were some shifts that were being made in that person's in terms of what that team needed. And so they were able to help that person actually align and do, you know, pretty close to 80% of the things they want to do. They're still the 20% though, who is not glamorous, but so to, for all of us. And so they were able to make that connection, but via the purpose conversation by via this concept of connecting to the team.
Speaker 2:
I find that really interesting, the organizational, the team and the individual and where it happens is at that team level with those leader conversations or the leader. And because that's where we're actually focused is that to make it so my background is around inclusion and inclusion happens as we often talk about at that team level. And if we focus at that team level, we'll get more traction and it's very much aligned because we're also trying to figure out how do we bring it down to the individual level, but at the same time, it connect those two things, organizational individual level. One question I have is we've actually done a like we've gone into the academic literature around the connection between leadership, business, performance inclusion, et cetera, and figured out like the, the strength of relationships between concepts like belonging and also purpose what we found was it wasn't a lot in the academic literature. There's a lot of confusion around purpose. Yeah. Okay. So, cause we, we dug in and, you know, that was the one area that was more limited than any other areas in order to get to those connections between and then create something more evidence-based around inclusion. Right.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. I completely agree. So when we did our work, there was, you know, there's, there's some, some academic work this kind of know high level or whatever, but once you start to try to actually dig in and understand you're right. And so then for us, we then turned to some of the popular, you know, we're business press, or there's also some organizations that are writing about or who are purpose focused, I would say. And so we have some, some things that they've written, but in terms of just really good hard studies, not, not so much. So we this, our study was a qualitative. So based on the research that we reviewed and based on the interviews that we did we would like at some point to do a quantitative study on this we just haven't, haven't gotten there, but but part of the reason is there's, there's a great big hole.
Tight parallels between purpose, IT and D&I
Stacia Garr:
But I think you, you bring out an interesting point and it's one that we've actually talked about a lot not in the research, but kind of in other conversations, which is the incredibly tight parallel between purpose and how organizations are approaching it and D&I. So like what you said like that, you know, D&I happens at the team level purpose happens at the team level level. You look at the broader view of stakeholders. They almost exactly match what we see with, with D&I, you know, thinking about diverse suppliers, thinking about our communities, thinking about our employees, you know, there's just an incredible it's almost like the two are living in these parallel universes and doing the same thing. And so I think that there and we do see some organizations who are, forward-thinking on purpose, also being forward-thinking on D&I, but not all D&I organizations are forward-thinking on D&I are also forward-thinking on purpose and I think that's an opportunity that they're missing. So yeah, so there's, we see those connections too. We haven't explicitly pulled it out in that research.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, absolutely.
Stacia Garr:
Any other questions or thoughts? We've got some more questions in here. Okay.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Why purpose now
Stacia Garr:
So one of them am an actually I did throw in some slides here to answer this question. So let me go back. Okay. So the question was, what do you see is driving the interest and organizational purpose? So I kind of gave some high, some preface around the data and the like, but as we kind of stepped back and looked at this and our research, we always ask the question why X now? So in this instance, why purpose now? And we had about, I think, five different reasons that we think that purpose is really a thing at the moment. The first one is the rise of new technology. So if you think about all the language around automation and AI, potentially taking people's jobs, et cetera, et cetera I think there's been an underlying discussion of what is it that makes us human, what makes us uniquely people?
Stacia Garr:
And part of that is purpose. You know, this idea that we are trying to achieve something greater than ourselves. And, and that's not something that technology does. So I think that that conversation is heightening or strengthening the discussion around purpose that's one. The second is the rise of the gig economy. So in particularly during the pandemic, there has been a significant focus on what is it that why should I join an organization? Like what, what is happening with my contributions of my work? Because I could just, you know, drive for Uber and get, make some money and call it good. Or I could just be an independent contractor on Upwork and, you know, get the money I need and that's it. But the thing, one of the unique things that an organization offers is the power to achieve something greater together.
Stacia Garr:
And that ties us very directly back to purpose. And one of the questions that are in here is about purpose post pandemic. I think purpose will be more important. Post a pandemic as people have now kind of are slowly bewilderingly coming out of their social isolation and saying, what do I want to do? And what impact do I want to make in this new world? And I think organizations that are clear on that purpose will do much better in terms of attracting the talent that they need. So it gig economy a second one. The third one here is this concept of work as a source of trusted information fulfillment. And so what this comes back to is that, you know, there's a lot of data that shows that unfortunately a lot of our social institutions have been declining. So whether that's our churches, which is why there's a church on here, or there that's our community organizations, whether it's Kowanas or, you know, whatever other organization you might be, a part of people are participating in those less.
Stacia Garr:
And along with that, they also are attending to trust. What have historically been seen as trusted information sources? So, you know, this whole thing about mainstream media versus other, you know, places that people get their news there's highest levels of distrust in the government that there has been in a very long time, but companies people's employers are where people are trusting information from they're trusting that's a high quality source of data and information. And so if you think about, you know, an organization's purpose and being able to say, you know, we do these things and people trust us that I think is part of the reason that connection between the need for a place to trust. And a clear purpose, I think is emphasizing the importance of purpose for a lot of folks. The last two are probably a little bit more obvious.
Stacia Garr:
So the pandemic, obviously, you know, there was a huge focus on doing there has been and continues to be, we are not out of it yet. A huge focus on being giving more, not just looking to, to prosper financially, but do you have any more to humanity and to other people and being more generous and being more human? So we think that ties in very nicely with purpose and then similarly the social justice movements of the last summer this idea that we are not just, you know, corporate entities existing to make money, but that we are there to to have a broader purpose. So those would all be reasons that I think that purpose is a thing right now, in addition to some of the other facts I mentioned.
Health orgs only?
Stacia Garr:
So this was kind of an interesting one. So was purpose something only healthcare and other orgs focus on? I think it's easier for organizations that clearly have kind of a purpose that relates to humankind and making people's lives better. But it is by far not the only type of industry that we see purpose driven organizations in. So in our study we have a long list of organizations. And so like EY right, when we started talking to EY about being on the podcast, I was kind of like really like a consulting firm. Okay. Like, let's see where you all are. And then they have this amazing effort around purpose. You know, we, one of the most well-known organizations, purpose driven organizations is is Patagonia. We didn't talk to them for this piece of research, but we've talked to them for other pieces of research and, you know, they are incredibly purpose-driven to the point where, you know, you can, because their purpose is about, you know, I think improving the home, our home planet as the way that they describe it.
Stacia Garr:
And so it's about, you know, not, not buying things that you don't need, making things that last for a long time giving back to local communities and advocating strongly for the for the environment, et cetera. So they're there, you know, an example of a clothing company that, that has a purpose and, and the list goes on and on there's food companies and Ben and Jerry's is kind of one of the biggest ones. Unilever, you know, consumer packaged goods company. So lots of different industries. I think it just is important to understand what that purpose is, and to clearly articulate in a way that's true to the organization.
Will purpose remain a thing after the pandemic
Stacia Garr:
So I touched on this one a moment ago, so will purpose remain a thing after the pandemic? And I think that it will, through the pandemic has added steam to the focus on purpose. And maybe I'm overly optimistic here, but I don't think we're going to forget the lessons of the last year quickly. And so as people come out of this, as I said, are looking for what's, what do I need next? I think that that topic of purpose, what I'm trying to achieve life is maybe a little bit more fragile than I thought it was. And I should be focused on my contributions. I think that's going to hold true. The other part of this is that I generally really, really try to avoid generational statements. You know, this generation does this, or this generation does that, but in general, when you look at the data, it appears that the younger generations are more purpose-driven than, than older generations. And as we have those more, that those younger generations come into the workforce, I think it will feed this continued interest in purpose. I say that very delicately, knowing that those types of assumptions are a hard thing for a researcher, but by and large, it's what we tend to see. Any, any thoughts or comments on that one from others?
Speaker 2:
I'm curious around the, the industries. Did you, what about financial industries, banks, and stuff? Did you see any of the banks with strong purpose statements and purpose in their organizations?
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, one of the strongest ones is Bank of America. Actually, and they talk a lot about a focus on the financial wellness of underrepresented communities and that aspect. So that's one, the other one is in this, in this, this, I think is actually a good example of how purpose is its specific purpose. Isn't broad goodness, let me say. And, and that is for JP Morgan. So JP Morgan is very focused on environmental issues and that's kind of part of their purpose statement. The reason I put a little bit of hesitation on that is that they were actually one of the few who did not sign the advertisements that went out today in the newspaper. And it was very, very prominently called out that they didn't sign it. So you know, so I just want to say purpose is not general. Like we support everything that seems kind of good. It's, it is very specific, but for them it's environmental. Like that's one of the things that they're very focused on.
Speaker 2:
Well, it's interesting. I actually just did a speaking engagement and talked about like pledges yesterday talks about pledges and the CEO's commitments around diversity and how we've been doing it for such a long time and what we say and what we do is, and so there may be some of that as well as like, you know, I don't really need to do this pledge because we're already doing the internal work, which is much more important than the other way around. I'm going to sign something, but I'm not really going to do the internal work around it. So there could be a lot of reasons for, for them not doing it. Unfortunately we go to judgment really quickly, too. Right.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, yeah. We don't know. And that's the thing, is this like, particularly with some of these external reports, you know, you have to, are, they are marketing, unfortunately. I will say though, one of the people that I follow and get kind of the, his daily newsletter is Alan Murray, who is the CEO of fortune magazine and he is very, very strong on the purpose train. And so if you want to kind of stay up-to-date on what people are thinking about with regard to purpose he's a really good one to follow.
Speaker 2:
Awesome. Thank you.
How can I help my organization focus on purpose
Stacia Garr:
Okay. I see we only have two minutes left, so let me keep going here. What's my role as an HR leader in helping my org focus on purpose. So, you know, what I would advise folks is, is to kind of look at those four areas that we talked about with regard to purpose and to step back and say, you know, what, which of these things can I control and which of these things can I influence in the research?
Stacia Garr:
Actually, that's the way that we structured it in, in that long paper is for each of those talent areas. We identified the things that probably is within HR's control and which ones they influence, and then think about how can I infuse purpose in a meaningful way. You know, assuming that we have some understanding of what the organization's purpose is, how can I make sure that there's a connection to the team's purpose and that the leaders know how to think about that and how can, what kind of practices and approaches and daily behaviors, could we encourage that would enable a reflection on purpose? I think that's actually, is it so so before I get to that, are there any other questions in our last couple moments here about purpose that we didn't cover?
Stacia Garr:
Alrighty.
Conclusion
Speaker 2:
Well, cool. We'll then I'll just say that our next Q&A Call is in two weeks. We do these every two weeks, every Thursday at the same time, eight o'clock Pacific. And our next one is on a study that we published a few months ago on career mobility. We held off on this Q&A Call because my business partner, Dani Johnson was out on leave maternity leave for a while. So we were waiting for her to get back. And now she's back. So we're going to talk about a new study, where we identified five different models of career mobility and organizations and how organizations should think about using those different models. So that will be our conversation in a few weeks. And with that, I think I'll go ahead and say, thank you all for your, for your engagement and discussion and questions. And if you want to learn more about this, I strongly recommend going and looking at the podcast. That's on our website. You can get it in all the places that you like podcasts. And then we are hoping to do some more work on purpose here in the latter, half of the year, some more, at least another podcast season. So, all right, with that, thank you very much to everybody. Have a great rest of your day.
Speaker 1:
Thank you. Bye bye.
Managing Better in 2021: Enabling Responsive Managers
Posted on Monday, April 12th, 2021 at 3:13 PM
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Holly Foster:
Okay. Hi there everybody. We'll give everyone a few seconds to dial in and then we'll get started with the webinar. Okay. The numbers increasing, Let's say we'll get to 80 and then get started. Okay. Hi there. And welcome to today's webinar. Managing Better in 2021, Enabling Responsive Managers. My name is Holly Foster. I'm a Senior Customer Success Strategist here at Culture Amp. And I'll be your emcee for today's event. I'm joining you today from the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians and pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging. I'd also like to extend respect to all first nations people from everywhere you're joining from today.
House Keeping
Holly Foster:
So we're really excited for our speakers to be sharing some great data and insights today, as well as some real life stories. But before we get into the session, here's a few housekeeping things just to be mindful of. This session will be recorded and the video and slides will be shared afterwards, ask questions using the Q and A function. You can also upvote your favorites. So please be sure to do that. And we'll be stopping at a number of points throughout to answer questions too. So be sure to add them throughout the session, based on the topic at hand, and don't feel like you need to wait until the end. When using the chat function, make sure to update your settings to panelists and attendees so that you can share your learnings and best practice with others, as well as asking questions. Also, we're all about feedback at Culture Amp. So we'll be sharing a link in the chat and in the follow-up email afterwards after the session. And we'd love to hear your thoughts on the session. Now to help get the conversation started, please share your name, company, and one thing that you're really hoping to get from this webinar in the chat now.
Holly Foster:
Next slide, please.
Who is Culture Amp
Holly Foster:
Thank you. So whilst everybody is intro-ing in the chat and before I hand over to today's speakers, we know that many of you on the line, may be customers with us already, and we're so excited to have you join us. And for those who are unfamiliar with Culture Amp, welcome, we're the world's leading employee experience platform, working with culture first organizations to measure and improve their company's employee experience. As you can see on the slide Culture Amp is really built on two core ideas. Firstly, we help you drive the performance and development of your organization, but helping you collect, understand, and most importantly, act on employee feedback in areas like engagement, wellbeing, and DNI. And secondly, for organizations to thrive, we know that it's really important that the employees within it are thriving. So we have culture and performance to drive the development and performance of your people. And most importantly, regardless of if you're focusing on individuals or the entire organization, our platform has really optimized for action. So our intention is to help organizations and the individuals within them to become better versions of themselves and to put that people and culture first when creating a successful business.
Holly Foster:
So onto today's event, next slide, please, we're really excited to be partnering with RedThread Research to bring you today's session. We're also very pleased to have one of our fantastic customers, BDO New Zealand share that point of view. So I'm going to be handing now to Stacia and Phil to introduce themselves, and I'll be back with you throughout the session and at the end for Q and A throughout.
Stacia Garr:
Thanks so much, Holly. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining today. I'm Stacia Garr I am Co-founder and Principal Analyst with RedThread Research. And I want to start by first saying thank you for attending. We know that you all are very busy and have many things on your plate, but you took some time out today to learn something new and to develop the folks in your organization. And that's just a commendable and wonderful thing. So thanks so much for being with us. I'm joined by Phil Boyd-Clark. Phil, would you like to introduce yourself?
Phil Boyd-Clark:
Thanks, Stacia. Hi and welcome today. I am genuinely excited to be here and I was really pleased when Holly and Stacia asked me to join, just to talk about some of the journey and some of the things that we've had over the last year in particular. So I'm excited about hopefully sharing some of those.
RedThread Research
Stacia Garr:
So Phil and I wanted to give you both give you all a moment to learn a little bit about where we're from, just to share a bit of our perspective. So, as I said, I'm the Co-founder of RedThread Research. We're a human capital research membership, and we focus on a variety of topics, including employee experience relevant for today, but also performance learning and career people, analytics, DEIB an HR technology. And so what I'm going to be bringing to today's conversation is much of the quantitative insights that we have from a study that we did on how managers have been managing through the pandemic and how the most effective managers have done. And then Phil's going to add a lot of the color and the excitement of what he's seen from his experience over the last few but really over the last year. So Phil, do you want to introduce BDO New Zealand?
BDO New Zealand
Phil Boyd-Clark:
Sure. So a BDO is an accounting firm for those of you don't know, and we've got a global presence, I'll talk more about New Zealand. So my role is the head of people and capability for BDO in New Zealand, we've got about 800 employees across 15 offices from the top of the country to foreign country and everywhere in between. And we like to think that people are genuinely the heart of our business and that we genuinely just went after to them. So either more around employees or more about people and the experiences within their life as opposed to their job itself. So that's part of what I'm trying to bring to the role. And to BDO New Zealand is actually looking at people for more than more than the numbers that they they deliberate each day and more than a relationship they have with their client. So I'm generally excited about talking about some of the learnings we had in the pandemic and beyond and possibly also address some of the learnings we had in a different crisis that we managed about 10 years ago.
Agenda
Stacia Garr:
Okay, great. Thank you, Phil. So for those of you on the line today, this is our agenda. We're going to begin with some of the key findings from the research that my firm did on, around managing better. That was actually the title of the research that we did. And we're going to share some of the behavior shifts that we saw during the pandemic and the challenges that we saw that managers were faced. And interestingly how those differed by the most effective managers and those managers that were judged by their direct reports as being less effective. We're then going to dive into how managers have been enabled, how these responsive managers have been enabled. And we're going to look at four lenses. And the way that this part is going to work is I'll give a little bit of a touch of the research, and then Phil will bring that to life with his experience.
Stacia Garr:
We'll then pause after each one of those lenses to take your questions. And so I mentioned that because we'd love for your questions to come in on a continuous basis as we go through today's session so that we can address them to the extent that we can right there in the moment, when are fresh in your mind, and then we'll move on to the next lens. So that's going to be our flow we'll then end with a few minutes at the very end for question and answer, all right, with that, let's get started properly.
Overview of research
Stacia Garr:
So I'd like to share just a little bit about the research that we're doing, because it's actually one of the most robust pieces of research that we've ever done. So the study, as I mentioned is called Managing Better. And we built this based off of three different pieces of research.
Stacia Garr:
The first is a piece called the responsive organization study. And what was interesting about that was we actually ran that study in December, 2019. So we didn't know that it was a pre pandemic snapshot, but that's exactly what it ended up being. We then built on that study through the early parts of the pandemic with an understanding of people analytics in particular, and really kind of what was shifting around this topic of how people are managing. We then moved on to this responsive manager study, which ultimately ended up being Managing Better. And we did that where we collected the data in September and October of last year. And so you can see here a little bit of detail, and if I believe folks we'll get the slides afterwards. So you can, if you really want to get into the gory details. But we did a whole bunch of analysis, a large number of interviews over the course of this research.
Stacia Garr:
And so hopefully what we're sharing with you is based on the best sound practice, it's certainly based on the most sound practice that I know how to do. So that's just a little bit of background.
Key findings
Stacia Garr:
So what did we learn in this research? There are a number of things that were pretty interesting. So the first thing, and this is really the good news of the research is that there was a lot more openness to new information among managers during the pandemic. And that would make sense, you know, we were, we were really faced with this reality that none of us had known how to respond to and we needed to be more open to new ideas and approaches. And I think that came through in our data. One thing that's interesting, I think though about Phil's story is he'll share how previous crises have actually informed their ability to respond to the pandemic and how we can kind of learn on a continuous basis from some of these things.
Stacia Garr:
But, but that's one of the things we found in our research. Second point here is that despite that shift in general, we found that there was not nearly enough support provided for managers and employees. And I'll give some data points here in just a moment to illustrate that point. The third point is that the most effective managers have a much greater impact overall, and I'll share some of that information. And then finally the highly effective managers excelled at specific practices within these four lenses that I mentioned.
Positive shift in behavior during pandemic
Stacia Garr:
So if we dig into this in a little bit more detail. I mentioned the positive shifts in the behavior during the pandemic, there are really two that we saw. One around level of openness to receiving new information and level of autonomy. So if we compare kind of what we saw in that 20, 19 to 2020 data we saw in 2019 the numbers that you see here in red, but in 2020, we saw a meaningful shift in these were statistically significant improvements in terms of manager's level of openness to new information and their level of autonomy the employees work. So that was the good news. The not so great news was some of the challenges that managers were facing and really kind of how they, they were facing them. So let me build this for you all.
Top challenges for managers
Stacia Garr:
So what we looked at was we asked managers, what are some of the biggest problems or biggest challenges that you're facing when it comes to managing folks? And what was interesting was the first one increased stress level among employees. And then the bottom two, the reduced connection to employees due to physical isolation and lack of clarity around the future from leadership were actually factors that managers themselves couldn't control. That doesn't mean that they weren't a problem. They absolutely were a problem, but it was interesting that they were things that managers couldn't necessarily control, but the things that they could control a bit more where the, the second and third items, so less time ability to give coaching and guidance or difficulties guiding in employees on top priorities. So the reason I mentioned this is because we saw a difference between how managers perceive these problems based on their effectiveness.
Stacia Garr:
So the most effective managers focused on one side of things, whereas the least effective managers focused on something else. So what were those? Well, if we looked at the really effective managers, you can see it wasn't that they weren't bothered by increased stress levels among employees. But the second two items that I mentioned were the next, most important in terms of things they were facing, but for the least effective managers, they were also worried about the stress levels, but they had a much higher percentage focus on things like reduced connection to employees or lack of clarity around the future, which are things that the managers themselves couldn't control. Whereas the, really the best managers were focused on things like not being able to give coaching and guidance and guiding employees. So what this tells us is that these managers, those most effective managers knew that there were things that they needed to do and that they wanted more organizational support from, but they weren't necessarily getting it by and large across our dataset.
Stacia Garr:
But the managers who were performing the best did say that their organizations were actually also supporting them the best, which was interesting. And you would expect so why does this make a difference? Well, we found that the managers who were most highly effective so that they were their employees were four times more likely to recommend their company to others. They were three times more likely to be highly engaged and they were 10% more likely to intend to stay with their company. Now, the last point, I think is maybe up a little bit for debate. And actually before this, Phil and I had a little had a conversation about this because you know, a lot of folks have stayed within their company if they had a job during the pandemic, you know, I think somebody was calling it sheltering in place at work.
Impact of highly effective managers
Stacia Garr:
You know, you're just not going to go anywhere because you've got a decent job and you're going to just stay and do it. And so just this 10% intend to stay numbers, is that really meaningful? I think that the way that we interpreted it was that, you know, it's a positive sign, but people still have to work to keep these in place, particularly as, you know, organizations are coming out of the pandemic. And as we start to think about a potential, pretty significant talent, a reshake a shakeup with people moving on to new places. So I think that's an important point. I guess I'll, I'll maybe take just a moment there because I've been talking for a little bit. Phil, did you have anything else that you wanted to add here, particularly around that last point?
Phil Boyd-Clark:
Yeah. Just something that I'll draw upon as I go through later on as there's a saying that like many of us have heard before, which is people will join organizations, but they'll leave the manager. And so kind of what I looked at this around is that the research reinforces that point. And as we come out of this pandemic, as we talked about earlier, a lot of people may feel that they're trapped in their job and that they may have gone to the seas or gone to get some different experiences and other places, which is aligned to their, or was aligned to their career aspiration. But because of the pandemic, they've held off doing that. So one of them that we're preparing for and the kind of, one of the things that New Zealand has is, this concept of, overseas experience, a lot of people want to go overseas to gain some experience relatively early in their career before they settle down and have kids and buy houses and all those kind of things. So we're acutely aware a lot of people who ordinarily would have had those experiences, haven't had the the possibility. So as soon as the border starts opening up, we're expecting a great abstained of people to go and grab and gain those experiences. So we're trying to plan for what that looks like and in a year's time or six months time, given we just waiting to see what happens with the border.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it'll be interesting cause you know, I think part of this though, is we knew that people you know, if they go and have those overseas experiences and they do come back and what they'll remember is kind of what this experience was like with BDO. And so you might be looking at, you know, boomerang talent that may be coming back in the future. And, and so, you know, it may feel like a little bit of a impossible struggle at the moment, but it's not, if you think about it kind of the long curve of things.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
Yeah. I look at it in two ways. There's good, good attrition, and there's bad attrition. And I define it very differently. One of the business leaders were too and good attrition is when people leave a company with a high degree of respect and admiration for their company, bad attrition has when people leave annoyed, frustrated and resentful towards it. And so it's about giving people great experiences so that when they leave, they are advocates for the firm and advocates for the company. And that's what the highly effective managers are able to achieve. And that's a very powerful part of employment brand.
4 lenses of responsibility
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. I love that. I've never heard somebody talk about it that way, but I think that's a great way to think about it. Okay, cool. Well, let's, let's keep this moving. So what did we see in the data when it comes to enabling responsive managers? As I mentioned, we saw what we call four lenses and the first one of those is respect, and we're going to dive into each of these in more detail. But the first one is that foundation of respect in terms of, you know, getting information, soliciting feedback from folks and then providing that psychologically safe environment to work. The second concept, and this is probably my favorite one is this concept of distributed authority. And this means not, you know, kind of holding all the tasks to center and holding all the control to center, but instead enabling and kind of pushing power out to the edges of the organization, if you will. And I think part of the reason this is my favorite one is because it's been the one that I've seen the biggest division. It's been the thing that has made really companies during the pandemic who have been really successful. They've been really good at handling distributed authority and those who have been not successful and have really struggled. They have been really poor at this. So that's one of the reasons it's my favorite. Again, we'll go into these in detail.
Stacia Garr:
The third one is around transparency and growth. And as we thought about this in the study, and as we tested it, we were talking about performance transparency, expectation, transparency, and supporting managers as well as employees through their continued growth. What I love actually about our conversation before this is Phil has a slightly different interpretation or a broader interpretation which I think is really nicely additive. And so we'll get into that in a little bit more.
Stacia Garr:
And then finally trust. And so a lot of times we get asked, well, how is respect different than, than trust? Because it feels like they go very hand in hand. But I think the difference is that respect is just the bare bones of what you need when it comes to the relationship with the employees. But trust is that additional level. There's a a sense of truly valuing employees fostering openness, and the trust to have that open dialogue which is started with psychological safety, but kind of built upon in greater amounts and then connection to community. So this idea that we're in this together, and I think Phil, you've got a really nice example of that.
Respect
Stacia Garr:
So let's dive into these a little bit more detail, and we're going to start here with respect. And as we thought about this from the manager perspective, this is really that the manager truly shows up as the primary enabler of respect for employees. So what does that mean?
Stacia Garr:
When we looked at the areas of effectiveness, the best managers did these things. So some of them, they were using technology to provide suggestions and ideas to the organization. So they were using that for their employees to provide those suggestions and ideas. The employees themselves said that they were encouraged to share their perspectives at work. And again, that, that concept of psychological safety and what we saw was that this was very common amongst the most effective managers. But that in general, these numbers declined from before the pandemic. So you can see the numbers decline. The one that concerned me the most is that last one, that psychological safety reduced so dramatically 17% is just a huge shift for kind of any of these numbers. All of these numbers are significant changes. But 17% is just absolutely massive. And so, you know, as Phil and I were talking about this in preparation, you know, this question of how do you create psychological safety? How do you, you know, gather insights and enable people to really have this foundational conversation was important one. So, Phil, do you want to share your story of what you saw across BDO New Zealand?
BDO New Zealand insights
Phil Boyd-Clark:
Yes. Sure. so we, we kind of mentioned earlier BDO genuine believe our people are extremely important to our business and our the heart of our business. And we know we have to support them when the pandemic pandemic hit. We were acutely aware of the need to continue that theme and to show support. So we established that like most organizations did, I covered response team, which included four members of our board, our chief technology officer, our marketing manager, and myself and early on, we made the decision that our primary focus was support our people. And plus behind our people, this is what I'll clients. We met daily and we would agree kind of what initiatives we roll out that day. And then we'd review how we made progress the subsequent day. And I met the people in capability community on a daily basis as well, to ensure that we all are aligned and that we're rolling out initiatives across our different offices.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
One of the initiatives that we rolled out was probably one of the most valuable initiatives was a pulse survey, the COVID response survey, which we administered through Culture Amp. And we rolled that survey out twice during our kind of lockdown one to find out how people are doing. And secondly, to find out how we could support them, better support them. And that was all about and showing that our intention of supporting our people was delivered on. And we wanted to hear from our people around whether we were delivering on our intention. The comments in the survey that people, people wrote on the verbatim comments, but probably the most valuable part of that feedback. Cause we could look in a lot of detail on what they were thinking, what they were feeling and respond to that. And we knew we had to show it, not just that we asked them the point of view that we were then listening to the point of view, but we need to explain what we were doing and how we were doing it, why we're doing it that directly related to the feedback.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
So one very small example, which is on the slide in front of you, is we, when we moved. So New Zealand had at four alert level. So level four, which is extremely strict, we then dropped down to level three and then we've got to live with two. We were able to return to the office and we're able to return to schools that schools needed time to get ready to accept the students. It's one of the concerns that was raised by about 40% of people who have made comments to the survey was about the not being able to return to the office until the kids could go to school. Fair enough. So what we decided to do was to actually only reopen our officers, when schools were open as opposed to when alert levels were. And that was just a very small example of this type of feedback we have in this point report and allowing how people to feel that they had. And we had my understanding what they're going through and we responded accordingly to demonstrate that respect and to show that we were all in this together.
Stacia Garr:
Great. And I think that one of the, the points that you made was around just kind of equipping these leaders with, with the ability to kind of have these conversations. Could you a little bit about that and I've just seen on the chat that there's a few questions about psychological safety. And so could you maybe just give a few more examples there?
Phil Boyd-Clark:
It was really important for us to break down the feedback to a more manageable level. So the overall level we had a huge number of comments and a whole lot of responses, but we could break the information down to, to a team level. And that allowed each partner and the managers within the partners teams to really understand what those individual teams are looking for. In a way that, you know, they wouldn't, the team members wouldn't see the side of their partner directly or to the manager directly, that would kind of be the quieter on. And we could actually really work out what pockets of our wellbeing initiative really needed to to pick, to be in half. So we could work out which officers or which teams needed a bit more support from us going forward. If that allows us to get quite granular and allowed us to actually be in looking at an overall wellbeing kind of initiative response to more tactical responses based on the needs of the teams.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
And that again, allowed us to show that we were listening to people at quite a granular level and responding to the abuse at a very low level. So the example I got there as a high level kind of decision, but there were a lot more initiative to be rolled out, which was spoke to a specific team, the specific partners. So it was very much a useful comment. So the twelve thousand and forty two comments, I and a number of partners read every single one of those comments to really understand what was going on. And we then broke those comments down by teams, to really understand where the main support areas were and that's how we did it basically.
Stacia Garr:
Great. Great. Thank you. Holly, I know we've gotten a lot of questions in chat. Would you mind giving a couple Phil and me so that we can answer?
Holly Foster:
Yeah, for sure. So there are a couple that have got some upvotes, one that I think would be a great next step based on the conversation. So regarding the decline in psychological safety, is this due to the pandemic itself or due to remote working. So if people were working remotely, but not under the circumstances of the pandemic would we still see that same shift?
Stacia Garr:
We didn't test this specifically, but I'll offer an opinion and Phil would love yours as well. You know, I think that the situation of the pandemic resulted in a lot of people having, you know, questions from their leadership. And I think the difference in psychological safety was a subset of leaders at the core organizations were able to be clear, you know, we don't know exactly what's going to happen, but here's what we do know. Here are the types of things that we do know about where the business is going, et cetera. And I think that those organizations that really stepped up in their communications at the beginning were able to create more of that psychological safety, because you know, the implication of a lot of this is we're going to go into financial downturn in my job might be gone, you know?
Stacia Garr:
And, and so that creates a lot of that sense of a lack of safety. And so those organizations that were able to kind of address that as directly as they could, as they literally knew how given the information that they had, I think that they, they did better. You add onto that the remote working environment. And then, you know, that's hard, particularly because so many people were new to it. They hadn't, you know, I've worked remotely for 10 years. I think this is like the thing, right. But if you're brand new and you don't have that trust in this massive thing is happening yeah, I think it's going to create, you know, remote working hasn't a potential implication or a negative impact. It doesn't mean it does overall, but in that particular mix of, of crazy things happening, I think it did.Phil, what do you think?
Phil Boyd-Clark:
Yeah, when I finally answer as a true consultant, it depends, but it depends on, on a number of factors. So uncertainty definitely results on that and a lack of safety from a psychological perspective. So with the pandemic, there was a huge degree of uncertainty and naturally people are gonna feel anxious and cautious, and we've seen that continue to die. So I know Australia, New Zealand have this phenomenon of net lockdowns where we put the gun to lock down and come out of it. And we've found from our perspective that has actually resulted in a greater degree of anxiety for our people then going into a longer lockdown to loss of certainty around the going and from the state refreshing on this date. So I think it's not the pandemic that's it's really caused the anxiety. It's the uncertainty around the pandemic that's caused anxiety and that, and so that the role of what leaders have to do is provide as much certainty as possible.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
From New Zealand perspective, we were very fortunate to have an amazing leader as a prime minister Jacinda. Who had a communication style, that was very clear and that helped a lot of people just focus on what they could control and focus on what they needed to do and how they needed to do it. And I think we had a huge degree of compliance to our our rules and our social distancing guidelines and the lockdown criteria which I think can be attributed to that very clear guidance we had from our government's response. And I think that helped manage that or create a bit of a psychological safety for people in that context. So is it remote working? I don't think so. I think that we get used to remote working because the pandemic itself different provided a bit of context. I thought someone's trying to come into the room.
Stacia Garr:
Okay. Well, let's go ahead and move on
Distributed Authority
Stacia Garr:
So, then if we move to the second lens around distributed authority and what, does this mean? You know, I give a quick overview at the beginning. But really, I think it comes to this idea of one. We trust our people to make decisions and we empower them to do so. So we talked here on this side about guiding principles, providing folks with quality data and insights and helping employees understand and make sure they have the capabilities to make quick decisions in the organization. The way that we actually saw that show up was a few things that were really interesting when we did our interviews. So I'm going to go with the bottom bubble there, which is around clarifying decision-making authority. So we heard stories of people just writing decision logs, having senior leaders, right decision logs, explaining like this is why this decision was made so that people could read it and understand what the thought process was behind it.
Stacia Garr:
We heard a lot of discussions about putting in place frameworks so that people would understand, okay, who's the decision maker who needs to be informed. Who's actually you know, is just a stakeholder that needs to be brought in at certain points in the process. And just some very simple things around just making sure that people understand what is expected of them at different points in order to distribute authority much better. The second point though, I think is also really interesting, which is around enhancing manager, access to engagement, as well as other people data. So this point around giving folks the information they need to understanding what is actually happening with their teams, and then being able to make decisions and make changes based on that information was a critical factor that showed up for us. If we look at what this actually looked like from a data perspective this is what we see.
Stacia Garr:
So some of the top things that the most effective managers did was managing their time to focus on value, added tasks, not administrative burden. So their employees were able to do this. And their manager was able to, to support that. The manager being able to understand the team's engagement with the work and that the employee had a clear, as well as the manager actually had a clear understanding of the decisions I have the authority to make. So we see that, that top one, that ability basically to say, no, I know what the value added tasks are, and I'm going to get rid of this administrative burden was one of the biggest factors here on distributed authority. And we saw again like I said, pretty much all of our numbers went down. But the, the biggest one that, that I think had some obscurity was around that clear understanding of the decisions I have the authority to make. So that's kind of why I spent a little bit of time talking about some of those different decision frameworks that we saw folks do, because those seem to make some of the biggest differences.
BDO New Zealand- our response
Stacia Garr:
Phil, do you want to talk a little bit about what you saw with distributing authority at BDO?
Phil Boyd-Clark:
Probably important to provide a bit of context behind, this so I think many of you may be aware in 2010, 2011 Christchurch when one of our main cities in New Zealand suffered a series of earthquakes. I'm talking thousands of effects. There's two major ones in particular, which completely changed the landscape of the city. And it put the city and the country into an unexpected crisis, this was about 10 years ago. 10 years on, we found ourselves in the fortunate position where we're to leverage the learnings from the Christchurch earthquake and to how we responded to this pandemic. And our Christchurch partners in particular were instrumental. And Warren who was part of our response team as the managing partner of Christchurch was amazing and how he kind of guided the thinking around how best we responded to the pandemic and when. And at the time, and I remember a lot of people were catastrophizing and focusing on uncertainty and focusing aspects they couldn't control.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
And our Christchurch partners and Warren in particular we're able to draw upon their resilience and their learning and guided their pears by providing structure support and a methodical way of responding to the pandemic. And the next slide, I can kind of explain this as company based like as well, good diagram, but we used the four as of of crisis management to kind of respond. So initially we're trying to do everything at once, which was in the responding to the impact, trying to reduce the impact the pandemic was going to have on us and our clients. And, and looking to ensure that we we're ready for whatever else we're thrown at us. When we kind of sat back and thought about it, we actually just started to break it down a bit further and focused on today's problem today, and focus on tomorrow's problem tomorrow, and make haste slowly.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
And that really gave us a pathway and allowed us to be a little bit more tactical, how we responded. A lot of learnings came out of the crisis. And one of the organizations that was born out of the chaos of the earthquakes was the student volunteer army. And basically what that company did was to provide the students who are based a university students based in that city is a huge part of that study is that as the university provided them with permission to help. And so we took that learning and we knew we needed to provide our people with permission to help. So what we did is we there's a lot of information coming out from the government about their responsibility, economic kind of response to the pandemic and all our clients, what that all meant and what it meant for them or what they should do.
Stacia Garr:
So every day we were developing and distributing information to all our people around how we recommended our clients best respond to the support our government was providing. And that gave our people a lot of information and permission to help their clients when they needed, when their clients needed them the most. And we were acutely aware. We are in a very fortunate position where we, our services were undermined and our clients really need us. So we were able to help them. We just find a very cool native approach. But our approach was to develop all the stuff centrally, but all those collateral centrally and then distribute it to our people so that they could be in support our clients. And that gave our people a focus and an inability to function when they could control on what supported the clients.
Stacia Garr:
And Phil, could you talk a little bit about how did that happen? Right. So you mentioned that you're giving your, your partners information every day on what, on the types of conversations they may be having and how they can support their clients. But that seems like you know, you have to first kind of know what the questions are that they might be asking and, you know, to provide that guidance. So can you share a little bit about basically what was kind of the crisis response team that put this together, and then how did you communicate that?
Phil Boyd-Clark:
Yeah, a very good point. So we had so the the crisis response team then formed another team, which is basically looking at kind of how we best support clients. And we, it, as a group of individuals from across the country are here, we're looking at what the government was doing and how the government was responding and what support mechanism the governor was putting around clients basically, or businesses and how we could then support those times. So there's a lot of information from coming from the government and it was coming really fast, really quick. And the government actually said at the beginning we're assuming a high trust model. So the government pumped in billions of dollars into the economy to support businesses, to retain the people and stay afloat. And so our clients need to know how they can best access that information or that funding and the way that made sense for them and was the right thing to do for them and their employees and their clients.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
So it was around trying to make sense of all of that. And there were changes to the scheme, and there was a time when there was additions to the scheme. And then there was when different parts of the country went into different stages of lockdown, there was different changes. So there's a lot of information that we had to very quickly disseminate and then be able to provide information to our clients. And that gave our people a lot of opportunity to engage with the clients, understand their clients and how they can fly through that uncertainty, which has basically gave our people permission to help their clients and something that we've never dealt with before. And our clients never dealt with before. So it was giving them the confidence to have the conversation in a, in a civilized way.
Stacia Garr:
And I'm going to dig on this one just a little bit more, because there's a question kind of closely related to this in the Q and A. And so I'm just going to jump in first, which is, as you thought about the actual communication of this information, you mentioned, there's a lot of information that was coming from the government and you were trying to whittle it down. Were there any particularly effective practices that you use to make it easy for your partners and your teams to quickly understand the key messages and to then communicate them broadly? So, you know, is there any technology that you used or any particular approaches?
Phil Boyd-Clark:
Yeah, everything had to be online for obvious reasons because we're all working from home. And so we had a central hub that was set up specifically for our people to access on certain things and communication from each other's was very clear. So one of the things I was going to talk about that later, and I'll talk about now is our communication strategy initially started with lets start centrally and stem off the communication with everyone. We then realized quite quickly based on feedback receiving from people that actually they wanted to hear from a more local person and more local partners, a not a centralized team. And so we changed our strategy to focus more on each office communicating to be a people in authentic and a meaningful way. And that provided a greater degree of kind of pop up from our people.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
It was showing that we are more adaptable, more responsive, more accessible, and they could see more authentic by that, by the way, in which the messaging was written. So we didn't have a single person in a central office writing and communication with the partners. They had the key themes to write through and the key information disseminate, and they were doing the way that they would normally do it. And so we weren't filtering their message. We were basically enabling them to get out and help their people. And that response was quite powerful to, again, going back to the principle that we learned in 2011, give people permission to help.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Great. Holly, is there a quick question that we could throw in here. T.
Holly Foster:
There is, yes.
Holly Foster:
There is one that's been upvoted quite a lot from a participant. So probably along the same lines or kind of same thread as what we've just been talking about. So perhaps one that you can both address from the research perspective and then also your experience with BDO and it failed, but with manager's openness to the new information that's now available. Have there been any particular types of information that they're most open to
Phil Boyd-Clark:
Initially it was, as they were coming out of the with the information, we were trying to assimilate it, understand it, have a point of view on it and send it out over time. That's changed. So now it's kind of focused more around getting back to what the new normal looks like. And that's where I think our support has changed quite substantially. So if you think about when we first went into lockdown you know, we, in some of our offices, we had a very office bound capture. We hadn't necessarily embraced flexibility. And our people were forced to suddenly do so. And that was a massive adjustment and we need to support our managers in particular, suddenly having to remote manage remotely, which they hadn't sort of done previously. So as time progressed, people's needs changed and based on those needs changing, we had to have our finger on the pulse, and that's why they kept jumping up and down so important for us to have an understanding of what our people are thinking so we can adjust accordingly.
Speaker 4:
And that was the nice learning, the biggest learning for us as we have to consistently understand how best to support our people and the best way of doing that was to communicate with them and have direct feedback from them. So that the surveys we ran with, one part of that we had other mechanisms in, which were utilized to continue to make sure we had a really good health, I think, on the pulse and then responded accordingly. And now our response now is absolutely adjusting and changing and how we're responding to lockdown situations now is fundamentally different to what it was before. Because we've learned a lot and it's just you know, that we need to continue to maintain and provide clarity for our people so that they know what they need to do when they need to do it and how they can do it. So the safety or psychological safety is maintained as best it can be because this pandemic is still creating a lot of uncertainty for people. And that is still having a strain and the stress of a lot of people.
Transparency & Growth
Stacia Garr:
All right, well, let's go ahead and keep moving. The third lens is this one around transparency and growth. And I mentioned what that was at the beginning and in a lot of it was around performance and expectation, transparency, as well as just supporting overall growth. And the specific data that we had here in the, and there's, there's quite a few pieces of data on here was around things like employees receiving database insights on their performance, or getting insights on their current level of contribution. They're also business point about if employees don't know the answer, they know how to find it. And that's part of, kind of this whole growth concept and this idea of of having access as Phil mentioned, certainly online, but also a culture around going in and finding that information online. And what we found here is, you know, the, the best managers particularly focus on that first point around providing employees with database insights on their, their performance.
Stacia Garr:
But they also do a lot around just in making sure not just that they provide the data, but employees actually understand it. So message received, you know, just because I communicate doesn't mean that you actually understood it. So it was kind of both parts of that point. And we saw these numbers drop pretty dramatically from before the pandemic. So you can see those numbers there on the right. I kind of set up that Phil, you had a little bit of a different approach here on, on this one around growth and transparency. So do you want to share what happened with BDo?
Phil Boyd-Clark:
Yeah, I think during the pandemic we had early on, we made the commitment within that federalized team to protect our people. As I mentioned early on that meant protecting jobs with their livelihoods and everything in between. And pleasingly, we got through, you know, the last 365 days today because tomorrow marks the day we went into lock down a year ago and we got all our people through. And there were, we were asking people to make any sacrifices where, you know, we did a lot to support what the people and that was key for us up front, but the communication was key and extremely important that we had that right. And we knew no single communication was going to be perfect, but our process and journey of communication had to be near perfect. And that was our aim and we didn't get everything right.
Speaker 4:
And we adjusted accordingly because we had those different checks and balances, and we kind of knew how to, how best to respond. Or we actually had an official MS teams, like competition going, which is essentially that the person who got the most likes in MS teams for a particular posts, won with an official competition. And our IT manager who came first, second, third, and fourth. And because he was, it was using bribery with us, with this new puppy that he bought just before lock down and that became a mascot for us. So it was actually quite key to say how people were communicating and that communication allowed us to be very clear to people around what we expected of them and what they needed to do going forward to best support themselves, their peers, their colleagues, their clients, their families.
Speaker 4:
So that kind of just reinforced from my point of view, transparency and the need to communicate really clearly so that people again have be a little ambiguity around what's expected of them. And we were very, a lot of our communication is very open and honest around, we don't know what this will mean. We had no idea what impact of the pandemic was going to have on us when it first hit. We had no idea what impact it was going to have on the economy. But what we did know is what we did well, which was supporting people and supporting our clients. That's where we chose to focus. And that I believe made a big difference to our people because we didn't allow ourselves to catastrophize. We focused ourselves on what we could control and refocus themselves on what we knew we could do really well, which wasn't demand. And again, keep going to that point around, we were very fortunate that our services were in demand and our clients there to help. And we've been there. We were there to help them. And that's what was important. And I believe that's what got us through what was quite a challenge, year, last year.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Yeah. No. And I think though, you, yes, you were very fortunate, but clarity of communication is something everyone can benefit from.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
The honesty around. We don't know. I think it meant a lot to people around, like, we don't know where this is going to land, but this is what we do now. Now I go back to that quote that Warren said right at the onset is solve today's problem today and focus on tomorrow's problem tomorrow. And that was kind of a core theme of all our communications it's yesterday's problem. It's not going to solve it tomorrow is problem. We'll come back to you. And that gave people kind of focus around a reassurance that yeah, we're doing what we can doing and when we can do it and not allowing us to get ahead of ourselves
Stacia Garr:
And some nice mental space too, we're just going to focus here. Yeah. Holly, I know we've gotten lots of great questions. What can we do?
Holly Foster:
Yeah, lots of really good ones. SO thank you for sending them all through. And one that I think really ties nicely to the pillar of transparency and more product growth, the question is for Phil, but Stacia as well, we'd love to hear your kind of thoughts or anything that, I mean, research. But Phil, how did your organization facilitate mentoring and learning and the development to aid the growth of managers throughout last year?
Phil Boyd-Clark:
It's a very, very good question. And as I mentioned earlier, when we moved from level zero, essentially to level four, it was awful. It was a very unfamiliar environment, people to be in their homes, but working from home often with kids running around and trying to juggle that responsibility. So that transition was really hard for a lot of people, but they responded really well. And how we realized we needed to provide better support to our people and actually managing remotely and communicating and all those great things. And so we essentially set up a series, all every other organization that does as well as there's nothing unique, nothing innovative or beyond belief and just webinars for people to attend and actually allowed them to join when the one or two topics that people kind of told us they wanted us to focus on.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
So we had the fortune of having an amazing learning and development leader in our organization who went away and she did amazing work politics, collateral together, real time, and getting people to present in partnership with the, and we had really good uptake. To the point we've actually continued that webinar series, over time. So this year although, you know, we've been very fortunate to have basically 80% of our year outsource any form of lockdown last year. And this year we've continued with that. We have continued with that webinar series monthly, and I think it was last Friday, I presented one in providing feedback. So it was something that we think has really helped people, but it's also recognizing that, you know, learning development doesn't happen to happen. Face-To-Face, you can do it very well there remotely. And I think that's one of the capitalists that most organizations experienced last year, as you know, online learning is a really good platform and you can still be engaged and, and teach people to kind of learn in different ways and respond accordingly and develop new skills. So we did want to know and we did, one of the questions we asked in the survey was a question on, have you learnt new skills during the pandemic? And we had some very favorable responses from that, which was pleasing to see.
Stacia Garr:
And I'll just add from, from our perspective, we've seen an incredible growth in organizations investing in, in L and D platforms during this time. And so I think, you know, your, your point Phil around just bringing more learning, bring more relevant learning to folks has been a huge thing. The other thing though, is we can look to the future. And if we kind of think about the snapshot of the last three months as potentially being a prelude to what comes next is we've seen a greater investment in some of the coaching and mentoring technologies or in peer-to-peer coaching within organizations. So this idea of tapping into the expertise of folks who are within the organization both for the sake of, you know, improving skills, but also we know that people have said they felt more isolated, more disconnected.
Stacia Garr:
They're not growing their networks, et cetera. And so also as a way to kind of combat that particular problem. So, focus on mentoring and focus on coaching from a diversity perspective, also focused on sponsorship during this time.
Trust
Stacia Garr:
So, okay. I know we're we have just 10 minutes left, so let's get to our final, our final lens here, and that is trust. And so I set this up a bit around, it's not, it's not just respect. It is kind of, you know it is a different thing in that it is moving beyond that to a greater connection a greater sense of value employees, openness, and that idea that you're connected to the broader community. And so the way we captured that was this, you know, we're all in this together attitude that really helps employees learn from their mistakes and invest in solving problems together.
Stacia Garr:
And so when we look at the, the numbers around this you can see here some of the specific items on, again, on the left and what managers were doing. So things around helping me learn from my mistakes, that if a manager, if an employee says that their manager did that, they thought their manager is much more likely to be highly effective. Encouraged to share insights learned externally outside the organization. So not believing that, you know, all the learning has to take place here, but actually being encouraged to learn outside the organization and to bring that back. So this idea that you're trusted to figure out what's, what's great and important, and to build on that within our own organization. And then we've got, again, that question about is open to, to new information, which I know we, we addressed to some extent earlier. But we know that that has been kind of one of the biggest factors in, and obviously that's the one of the two that, that did increase with the with the research. So again, kind of Phil turning to you and trust, what did, how did you work to foster that.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
A very simple example. So when the pandemic hit kind of, we knew, well, things are going to change, and as often we view it as a catalyst to change. And when we came out of kind of the lockdowns that we had and the transitioning back, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of other people have a taste of working remotely. A lot of people just want to really well to work remotely and not be able to come to the habit of working from home. And actually we're a little bit reluctant to actually come back and and work in the office a hundred percent of the time. And we've seen that, that appetite for a greater degree of flexible working. And so we wanted to work with our people going forward to learn around what's going to work. What's not going to work and how do we actually take this forward together?
Phil Boyd-Clark:
And that's kind of what we're going to do is not just making assumptions and come up with the framework and say, here's a framework. We wanted to introduce a framework that was going to allow us to learn and evolve when adept with new technologies and try different things. And if they work, let's kind of roll it out further, or just teach people about the experiences and what we did, it doesn't work. And we just put it to the side. So we came up with a framework that was a little bit different, but it basically gives each team permission to decide what flexible working ranges are going to work for the individuals within that team based on the individual circumstances. So it wasn't around the framework saying PNC or HR are going to say yes or no to X, Y, and Z is around the team, controlling it.
Phil Boyd-Clark:
And the focus for the team began by the performance of the team and how they deliver it to their clients. And if they can continue to deliver their clients to exceed, deliver to the clients based on the arrangements they have, then that's a win-win that's a win for them, win for the firm and win for the team and win for the client and no losers. And as moving beyond this kind of concept of being in the office for the sake of being in the office to, to working in the place that you're going to be most effective and, had a good performance. So we introduced this new framework, which we're still rolling out. And we're still learning from, and we need to do about a six month review to understand what's worked, what hasn't worked, but we think we found something that worked for everyone. And it also importantly, what it's about is saying to people. The new normal we've got to change the way in which we deliver to our client,. let's do that together and let's see what you want. And if we could, we can accommodate what you want, but at the same time, and really important point is continued to meet or exceed the needs of the clients.
Stacia Garr:
And the other thing I love about this is it, it is distributing authority, right? You're giving clear principles, helping people understand how to make decisions and, you know, trusting them to do so.
Speaker 4:
And I'm giving them permission to say, is it working or not? So is it based on these four principles? If it's not, if it's not adhering to these four principles, then it gives the team ability to kind of call it out and say, Hey, this is not working for me. So one of the things we've got, we've got a lot of graduates. Who've just started a lot of graduates who just started as we went into lockdown last year. And they are that new they're fresh. And they like, they want to see who they're going to work for and they need a bit of coaching and support. So it became a locked down, those were the first people to want to be back in the office. But a lot of their kind of managers were a little bit more hesitant than we have to say it. They, they want you to be in there. And so it was very much around the grads and the more junior staff was saying, we actually need you to be with us to coach us. So it was about demonstrating respect for each other and each other's needs and adjusting accordingly. And it's about learning from each other.
Wrapping up
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, definitely. Well, we're going to go ahead and just do our wrap up here and then we'll do get the final questions in the last couple of moments. So when Phil and I were talking about some of the takeaways we were hoping folks would get the first here is about, you know, somewhat obvious, but the more you can support managers, the better, they're just such a huge point of leverage in the organization. And if you can give them the tools to do these things, I think that's, that's meaningful and powerful for the organization. Secondly, the role of managers is fundamentally changed and will continue to in the future. So I know there was a question about, you know, kind of post pandemic, what do we see as some of those future skillsets? And I think the ones that we saw people excelling at during the pandemic, you know, the distributing authority, building respect, trust, growth, and transparency, those are fundamentally going to be that those 21st century leadership management skills. And then third don't make assumptions and use data to disprove them. So I think Phil you've given some really nice examples of how, you know, people thought one thing, but then using the data and understanding it found actually that wasn't the case. You know, people manager, the younger employees wanted to be back in the office. They wanted the manager support and, you know, the data prove that so Holly, let's just get the last question or two that we had on the Q and A.
Holly Foster:
Yeah, for sure. We'll try and squeeze a couple in. So is around distributed leadership. So it seems to be a top-down approach. People are empowered by their leaders. And would you say that that's a fair statement and how would you encourage the, this distributed leadership by other ways other than that kind of top-down approach?
Speaker 3:
I'll jump in, cause I had a little bit more time to think about this before Phil. So I think that, you know, When we did this research, we have a lot of thoughts about self-directed teams and all these things that are, you know, powerful and, and kind of far less top down. And we we've found that that without some, if you look at their literature and kind of over time, those teams often do break down unless it's a very special organizational culture. And so I think that to some extent you do have to enable, I don't really love that word empower, but you do have to enable, and you have to give some level of permission for these things to happen. And, but I think that the extent to which you can give people great data, good principles, and understanding of how to make those decisions and they don't get in trouble for making those decisions. Then I think that you can really start to make this much more of a network of people doing great things as opposed to a top-down hierarchy.
Speaker 4:
I think it comes down to competence as well. You know, we, every, every role in organization has a purpose and everyone should be able to work towards that purpose without constantly having to ask them for permission to do so. And I do like that, sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And I say a lot of that kind of happening. And so people are confident in their ability to deliver to the expectations of their role. And I don't, don't wait for permission, just do it and back yourself. And like Holly and Stacia said, don't feel they're gonna get in trouble. They don't beat people up for getting it wrong. When they've all they're trying to do is the right thing based on what they thought they had, but yeah, might want to tie it up from my perspective giving people that permission. So to try things and potentially fail is really important for the gym.
Speaker 1:
That's great. We're one minute too, so we'll probably have to wrap there, but thank you for all of the questions. Really great to see all that in the chat. Yeah, you'll see contact details for Stacia and the wonderful Phil on your screen now do feel free to reach out or connect with them on all of the usual channels and also visit redthreadresearch.com and thanks everybody for joining today.
Stacia Garr:
Thank you all and thanks Culture Amp for the opportunity.
Q&A Call-People Analytics Tech: Employee Engagement/Experience
Posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2021 at 9:49 PM
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Stacia Garr:
All right. Priyanka, can you help a little bit with if anybody else comes in, because I'm going to go ahead and get us started. Okay. Perfect. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining today. Priyanka and I are excited to share some it's really, this is a work in progress that we are, that we are doing. Literally, we were working on the paper last night and shifting some things around, shifting some more things around this morning. So you're getting to be a part of the process today but what we wanted to do in general with the people analytics tech study that we did last year was to then do kind of deeper dive some through the three biggest areas of focus. And so focus, meaning by size in terms of the number of vendors were in a given space.
Speaker 1:
So that is the employee engagement experience category. It is ONA and then the last one is what we call multi-source analysis platform. So folks like Visier as well as others. So this is the first of our deep dive studies that we're working on. And what we're trying to do is just give a little bit more understanding of what we are seeing within each of these markets. So today is employee engagement and experience. For those of you who don't know us, I think everybody does, but we're RedThread Research a human capital research membership focused on a range of things most relevant for today, people analytics and HR technology. And you can learn more about [email protected]. Okay. So Priyanka, I think you were going to lead us off with some of the things that we see specific to employee engagement experience from the study.
The importance of employee experience
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Yeah. And just to show, so I'm just going to set up the stage a little bit but not spend too much time because I know we already know a lot of this stuff. So just to begin, we know that employee engagement experience became extremely critical in 2020. And this is just one of the many data points that we have from that year that shows that employee experience became so important as part of HR strategy and it increase from almost 50% to 70%, from 2018 to 2020, and moving forward, HR leaders see it becoming even more important. So we know this became really important. It's going to continue being extremely important. So before we actually get down to talking about the technology, we just want you to spend a little bit of time understanding what these two concepts are, employee engagement and experience, and talking a little bit about the differences between them, how we see them and what is the relationship between them.
Differences between the two terms
Priyanka Mehrotra:
So if you just go onto the next slide, Stacia. Thank you. So just to give an overview of how we see these two terms, so employee experience can be seen as what employees perceive through their journey or their own way, perceptions of their interactions with organization. And so in that sense, it has a broad scope employee engagement by comparison is what employees do or behave. And in that sense, we see it having a much narrower scope than employee experience. We can also see employee experience as the cause that impacts or effects employee engagement and as a way results in employee engagement, among many other things, of course.
Relationship between the two
Priyanka Mehrotra:
But just so that we understand employee experience is something that feeds into employee engagement, and this is what we're seeing in the next slide, which is how that relationship moves between the two. So all the organization interactions that employees go through the life cycle journey feeds into what, what is what we see as employee experience, what we understand as employee experience for these employees and that ultimately results in how engaged they are with their workplace. So having set up these two terms and just expand that a little bit, I just want to open it up to anybody for any thoughts or feedback about these two topics.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
What do others think?
Speaker 1:
I think it's useful to have them broken out because I think a lot of people are still mixing experience and engagement. I see Speaker 2's hand up.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say the same. It's, it's great to put them side by side. I think I'd be interested to know your thoughts on what the, kind of, what the alongside employee engagement, what are the other kind of key outcomes of input experience that we can use to understand employee experience? Does that make sense? Or do you see engagement as the kind of number one result of good employee experience?
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, so I think, you know, and this is part of partly due to you know, a lot the employee experience vendors have come from, and we're going to talk about that in just a second, but you know, the, the other outcomes that we see folks talk about so much as customer experience, you know, the relationship between EX and CX. And so and then, you know, CX driving revenue and other important metrics that we care about.
Stacia Garr:
There was an interesting piece and actually Speaker 1 probably is a little bit closer to it than I am, but the interesting piece that Medallia recently put out talking about how that relationship between EX and CX is not quite as linear as people might think about. There's a bit more nuance when it comes to how those two are connected, but, but to directly answer the question, Speaker 2, I think that CX is the other one that we see people focused on a lot. What are others see or think Speaker 3 I think I see your hand up. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
Hey yeah, I was just going to say, so my title is director of employee experience and I am all HR. And the reason that we titled it as such is because we felt that the holistic all encompassing umbrella is the experience and that every touch point, whether that be an HR policy or recruitment retention, onboarding dealing with alumni from the organization, that that is all kind of part of that experience. And so I definitely look at this and say, yup, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 1:
Well, listening to Speaker 3 talk, I'm also struck by the difference between there's there's things that are measuring people's perceptions of the experience. And then there are things that are actually creating the workflow that provides the experience, and that kind of gets wrapped into the same space. Because if you look at something like a service, now it's positioning itself as the experience platform architects experiences, it doesn't tell you if they're good or bad, it architects experiences, whereas something like a Medallia is going to listen to you like, or that experience sucked. Like they're going to capture that for you. So it gets really easy for me. It gets really easy to get lost in experience as is it a workflow, Is it a measurement of perception? So I think focusing on measurement of perception is helpful.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. And one thing I think we wrote about, and we didn't actually include this graphic in this deck, but we wrote about with the Microsoft Viva announcement was exactly your point Speaker 1 that there has historically there's been a technology that has come under the experience banner that has been designed to capture experience. And then you know, a lot of the engagement folks have kind of blended over into the experience because they're not just measuring your engagement, but they're also capturing the, you know, onboarding experience or that it, how do you feel it, you know, 30, 60, 90 days experience, et cetera. And so they're kind of bleeding over, but, but a lot of the language with the exception really of service now can kind of create a new category if you will, was around capturing experience, not influencing experience.
Stacia Garr:
What I think in, and we wrote about with Microsoft Viva as being, I think pretty, pretty transformational is that you're now going to both be able to understand the broader experience because you're able to look into all these different Microsoft products that we're all using, like right now, literally with PowerPoint and then potentially be able to to change that experience and measure it. And so I think, you know, we at RedThread try to stay away from the, like, this is such a big deal kind of language because most of the time it's not. But I do think that has the potential to, because it opens the aperture of what experience actually is even beyond what service now is doing. Quite a bit. I think that that has the potential, but I think you're well to start to come back to where we started, I think it's appropriate to acknowledge that there is experience measurement and then there's actual experience. And they're not the same thing.
Stacia Garr:
Any other thoughts on that?
Stacia Garr:
I know we have a number of folks who are not on camera. Feel free to go ahead and still kind of raise your hand and we can get you in. Also we promote everybody to panelists, so you can be on camera if you want, because obviously it's a, a dialogue that we have here. Okay. Priyanka I'll let you move on.
Areas of focus for people analytics vendors
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Moving to the next slide. So now we're going to talk a little bit about the technology and what we have seen in specific to terms of people analytics technology. So those of you familiar with our work know that we do this annual people analytics study every year and as Stacia mentioned in both years we have see that employee experience has been the biggest category of vendors and just looking at the numbers on the vendors that focus on these two areas as their primary talent areas of focus. We can see how this has shifted over the past one year as well. So in 2019, for example, we had 43% vendors say that can employee experience was that binary area focus. And that jumped to 60%, sorry, 50, 58%. In 2020 and similarly employee engagement also went up from 60 to 67%. So again, we saw organizations shift their focus in these areas and we saw vendors match those areas as well, and they really stepped up to meet the needs of the customers.
Engagement/Experience customers are mostly happy
Priyanka Mehrotra:
And the following slide will show that customers in general have been mostly happy with the vendors. So we had a customer feedback poll that we ran along with our vendor survey. And this average NPS score that you see here is the score that is only for the category of employee engagement and experienced vendors. And coincidentally, it was also the category that received the most number of customer responses. So we had about 16 employee engagement experience vendors, and 12 of them received over five customer responses, which was great compared to other categories and also the highest and best score. So an average score of 61, which is pretty great and just put it in a little bit of context. Enterprise software in general tends to have an average score of 40. So this is pretty high compared to that. So that is our findings from are people analytics study.
Stacia Garr:
Correct me if I'm wrong, this is slightly lower than the average overall for all of them.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Yes. Yes. The overall people analytics study, we had an average score of 67, so slightly lower, but still, almost there.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Yeah.
Stacia Garr:
And then I think it's, it's probably, we're saying back on, on the last slide. Oops, sorry. Here some of this, some of them we've been in these numbers was due to more vendors being in the study. But I think also a lot of people, I think Speaker 1, you, you mentioned this have just glommed on to the employee experience language. And so some of his jump may have been what was happening in 2020 and everyone said, I'm an employee experience vendor now. So I think that's important to acknowledge, but, but it kind of comes back to the point where Priyanka started, which is this concept has just taken off so much. You know, and Speaker 3 I think you mentioned this idea of in play experience being kind of the culmination of all the different things that we've done in the past. And so, you know, I expect it will continue to get energy, but it's important that part of the reason we put the definitions right in here to actually understand what we're talking about versus some of the other, other processes. But I just wanted to highlight, I think that some of this growth has just focused to being enthusiastic about the term, shall we say?
Backgrounds of employee engagement vendors
Stacia Garr:
Okay. So one of the things we did here for the first time is we wanted to actually talk a little bit more specifically about the vendors that are in the space and where they came from because that influences their bent in terms of the offers that the offerings that they give. And so Priyanka did this really cool thing. She's letting me present it, but she's the brains on this. One of looking at what kinds of backgrounds these different vendors, and she broke it into three groups at the top and the orange in the Venn diagram is employee engagement native. So like they started out as an employee engagement vendor, like that has been their bread and butter. On the lower left, we've got those who have some of a professional services background. And you can see here, we've got a Willis Towers, Watson, and then a vendor called Qlearsite kind of it's it's in between the two.
Stacia Garr:
We'll talk about that in a moment. And then on the lower, right, we have these vendors who are driving employee engagement by other talent areas. And so I think that I'll just kind of give, give a little bit more detail on each of these and then we can discuss any of the individual vendors that you all like. But so what we see here with the employee engagement natives that I think is interesting is so we've got Peakon, we've got Perceptyx and Glint, those are the, just those in the orange what's interesting here though, is two of those three, right. Have been acquired. Right. So now Peakon is with Workday and Glints, obviously part of LinkedIn and you know, Perceptyx, they have PE backing.
Stacia Garr:
So, you know,
Stacia Garr:
That puts you on a path. I'm not saying that they're, I don't have any insight on what they're doing, but that puts you on a path I'm seeing Speaker 1 nodding his head firstly.
Speaker 1:
It's just a matter of time.
Stacia Garr:
I did not say that.
Stacia Garr:
We've got Culture Amp who is, you know, one of our over on the lower, right. And we talk about them kind of being part of this driving engagement just on that same subject. So there, you know, I don't even know what series they are on, but they're a unicorn. They've got, you know, tons of investment in them. So something will happen one way or the other there. The blue area, since I've kind of gone to the lower, right. Is we say driving engagement by other areas. So you might say Culture Amp, like they've, you know, they're pretty, pretty engagement. But the reason we put them there as they did the acquisition of Sugata I guess about two years ago now which was a performance management vendor and a big part of their focus is now pushing quite a bit more into the manager and coaching side.
Stacia Garr:
So they, we just actually learned that they're doing a partnership with a vendor that's pretty popular here in the Bay area called Life Learning Labs, I think is what it's called. And they're creating kind of little micro learning bursts that are getting put into their solution to support the performance and engagement work. So that's why we've kind of said that we've see them as being a little bit more on the moving into this blue blue section and then the others who are in that blue section Betterworks. They bought a vendor that you all may be familiar with called Hyphen which was kind of in the continuous pulse survey space. That was, I think again also about two years ago Reflektive bought a vendor, they've been in engagement as well as performance, but they also bought a vendor called Shape Analytics.
Stacia Garr:
And then they themselves recently got acquired by LTG. And so that's going to pull them kind of more broadly into the talent space. Well, so while they're still still kind of swimming here or there, that's them. And then Fortay their their initial approaches talent acquisition but they kind of take this broader, broader look at talent acquisition and engagement as being related. And so they are packaging that together. But so again, you know, we're kind of putting this together because we think that having the, the background and where these vendors are and what they're doing can help consumers understand, okay, this is, this is their natural bet just to round out. And then I'll, I'll pause for comments over on the left, on the professional services side. So Willis Towers, Watson they've got a pretty robust engagement solution that we got briefed on this year that we hadn't seen before.
Stacia Garr:
And they've got a lot of clients using it. It's as you would expect reasonably tightly coupled with professional services offerings. But it can be bought standalone is my recollection. Yeah. Okay. And then Qlearsite, we have them kind of on the bubble because they were started by a bunch of former IBMers. And so the look and feel of their reports and a lot of their thinking kind of comes from that professional services background, but they are definitely a SAS company. So that's why we've got them on the bubble. So anyway, a few questions for you. One is this useful, this is the first time we've tried to think about this this way. So is it useful? Two, if it's at least a little bit useful, which you'll probably say, cause you all are very kind, how could we make this better?
Stacia Garr:
And three, are there any other questions you have? Yeah. Speaker 4?
Speaker 4:
Yes, of course. It's very useful. The reason being is exactly what you said at the very beginning with the top bubble who's sponsoring them where they came from, who they're, like you just said for the last one who their originator employees founders are speaks to probably what to expect from them. They're probably not going to be so different and varied. I don't recognize any of these names. So I need to know the generation that came before because I'm familiar with those ones. It's super interesting how fast things are moving.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Yeah. Great points. Thank you. How about others?
Speaker 1:
I love the breakdown. I'm curious on how they're actually like, it feels like they're all going to go towards that bottom right bubble in terms of their development paths. Like my perception is the classic survey vendor is basically limited in scope now because things like Culture Amp and the others have taken the survey and they generated a, you know, no, do this or no, try this, or no, think this, on top of the survey. So I feel like the whole lot, you know, in the professional services background, there was a person saying, Hey, your survey says X, you should do Y. When you get to the Culture Amp site, it's like your survey says X here's three AI driven suggestions of what you could do. Like let me less than professional services. So I think it is really, really interesting because it understands the background. I feel like everyone's going to be driving to that bottom right corner.
Stacia Garr:
Hmm. Yeah. That's an interesting point Speaker 1. And what that also brought to mind for me is the point that I made about acquisition, right? Like Peakon and Glint via acquisition effectively had the capability to drive through other talent areas because of that. And Perceptyx is building a performance and recognition solutions. So, yeah, so that's really good points. Speaker 3 I thought I saw your hand up. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
I don't know if it's the previous life of accounting. The CPA in me that looked at this and thought, and now what I kind of want an Excel spreadsheet or a grid that says you know, here's what it was, here's what it is. Here's what it does. Here's what it might merge with. And I think it went from, I looked at this, I spent two minutes looking at it. I thought that's interesting, but to take that from, that's interesting too, now this is useful and I can action something from it. It would need a bit more for me. So it really depends on what your purpose is. If it's a, you know, an information piece. Yeah. I look at it and I, I thought it was informative, but I wouldn't do anything with this information.
Stacia Garr:
That's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. I think on the report we have quite a bit more kind of detailed as you would expect in a report, but I think what that makes me think of is Priyanka. Maybe there's a you know, given this as if you were looking at this vendor asking these types of questions or something like that, that would push people with okay. Do not toss this point. That's interesting. But what do I then go do with this? Yeah. Super helpful.
Speaker 3:
So what, now what?
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Priyanka and I were talking about this, and she's like, but we haven't finished writing this. I'm like, this is the perfect time to get feedback. Let's throw it out there. So thank you. I know we've had some folks join since we started. You will see that I've promoted you to panelist. The reason for that is so that if you want to show your video and participate actively in the conversation by a video, you can, if you want to not be on video, but still participate, please do. And we do have chat. So please go ahead and put anything you want in there. Wait, I think there are people in chat. Sorry. I totally missed that. Okay. So let's see here.
Speaker 5:
Hi. yeah, maybe just a questions to you to help understand what are some of those criteria is that some firms on this, this I'm asking you because from the professional services background they might be a few more firms who might know me offer such services like the likes of Concentric and probably many more. Right. so yeah, maybe what are some of those criteria that might help to give some context? I don't know.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. So the criteria is they have to be in our study. And so to be in our study, that means that vendors have to go through a pretty exhaustive vendor survey and they then do a 75 to 90 minute briefing with Priyanka and me. And then ideally they also will send a survey to their customers so we can get a sense of their customer satisfaction. So the, I guess we know that this isn't necessarily totally exhaustive, even though we have 60 plus vendors in the overall study. But if you know, folks who we should consider putting in or who would want to participate, please share, share who they are. We'd like to make it better. Thanks.
Backgrounds of employee experience vendors
Stacia Garr:
Any other comments or thoughts on this one? We have a couple more for you all. Okay. All right. Let's, we'll keep going. So we did the same thing with our friends in the employee experience space. And so the way that we separated this was focused on engagement and Ex or focused on CX. I think as you guys, as you all would expect given kind of the nature of our work, we didn't have any who are only focused on CX cause then why would they be in a people analytics, tech study? But so right now but there's a ton of folks who are focused on both CX and EX, and those are the folks who were in the middle. So yeah. Confirmit, Ennova, Macorva, Medallia, Press Ganey via the SMB acquisition last year, Qualtrics Questback and SMG. And so that means that they are all pretty actively working most likely with the operation side of the house on collecting customer experience data, and then also working with HR, collecting employee experience data. Moving over to the other, oops, yeah Speaker 1.
Stacia Garr:
Looking at this particular set. This is one other, the structure that strikes me, there's a whole set that do passive detection and there's a whole set of do active detection. I think actually delineating on that is quite interesting from a market perspective. So something like well, Yva's has got both, Microsoft is mostly passive, things like Questback and Confirmit are pure survey based. And that is that's going to be a dividing line and how this plays out over time.
Priyanka Mehrotra:
If you can tell me how to show that.
Stacia Garr:
We've got these folks here, so we'll get to, I completely agree, because we are, so we have been discussing this at nauseum of how to divide these folks up. Cause you're right, right. So exactly, as you said, you know, Medallia and some of these others, you know, Yva, Worklytics, clearly they are the, the challenge. And so let me, let me maybe step back. We, I find it interesting and I want to know if you will find it interesting that the, all these CX folks jumping into EX or kind of making a lot more noise about EX, a lot of them have been here for awhile. But like for instance you know, one of the things that we learned last year was just how active Confirmit is in our space. And part of the reason that we were, I use it, they were a CX vendor.
Stacia Garr:
Part of the reason that it wasn't as obvious they were EX vendor is they white label, a ton of stuff, but they're actually the underlying platform in a lot of other platforms, it turns out. And that was something new that we learned. You know the combination like with Press Ganey, who only focuses on healthcare, on patient scores, which are CX and and what nurses and doctors and others think is totally fascinating. All of that really influences how they approach this market. Right? So that was part of the reason that we thought to look at that, you know, to call out those who do CX and EX. On the engagement and EX side, you know, these are folks who have very firmly made the transition, not just because there's some who we put Glint on the other side. Cause like, you know, if you look at, for instance, Glints marketing, 85% of what they talked about is just pure employee engagement. The folks who are here are very much, so some engagement, some experience like really evenly divided. And so we thought that, you know, kind of that combination of engagement of EX, whereas the other folks are clearly eat, just EX plus CX. We thought that was interesting, but maybe it's not that interesting. I don't know. Well, what do you, what do you all think?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think I don't, I don't disagree with this breakdown is that the, the question in terms of, you know, the Press Ganey is, and the Medallia's of the world are looking to link experience to an end state outcome. Like there's no point in measuring experiences for experience sake. There was never an point in measuring engagement for engagement's sake. It was always, how is this driving something we care about? But I don't, I think that the bubbles help, cause it's like, this is a vendor who's going to have some sense of how experience relates up to customers, et cetera, customer experience. And they can measure those two things together. They've got that kind of understanding and expertise, whereas the others are detecting things about employees from the floor of their work. So I don't even know, I don't know if it's a useful distinction.
Speaker 1:
I just it's. It is. It's very distinctive and how the information is captured is not the purpose is, as I think is really clear, but the how of that capture is where there needs call that or not. I don't know. It's something that strikes me as a really big change in how we are listening to employees, whether we're listening to them and giving them a chance to, you know, actively express what they want because we're filling in a survey or we're literally just scraping their communications paths and time and response frequency and detecting stuff from that. Like they're very distinct processes. So yeah. I don't know how you build that into the model, but as I've been watching this space evolve, that whole passive thing is quite distinctive.
Stacia Garr:
Yup. Great. Anyone else have thoughts?
Speaker 1:
Yeah. I wonder if maybe there's a, for the sake of this year, there's almost an asterix that we put on some on the ones who are passive, you know, or passive primarily or something like that. And then in next year, maybe it'll, it'll be a little bit clearer. I think as a researcher, there's always this period where you see things changing, but there's not quite change to fully articulate it, like as a thing. And I think that we're there. Like we know it's a thing, but like it's not clear where the chips fall yet, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Stacia Garr:
Okay. That's, that's all super helpful. So, but to, to Speaker 1's point, you know, Yva and Worklytics over here, and Microsoft Viva, which is obviously a combination of a whole bunch of different products, those are all looking at passive data sources over here on the left. And on the right Medallia is, Qualtrics has some, I don't think Questback has any, I don't think, did Ennova how any passive data do you remember Priyanka?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Not much.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Confirmit, not no Macorva I don't think so. Yeah. So that's kind of the distinction on this chart.
Backgrounds of "no" survey vendors
Stacia Garr:
Okay. So then moving to our last one. So these are, these are folks that are, have kind of traditionally swim in, in what feels like slightly different lanes, but are now much more clearly saying we're in the engagement space via non survey methods.
Stacia Garr:
So the home for, for some of, for the ones on the left that's organization view, they do, it's pretty sophisticated, actually extremely sophisticated text analysis to understand, you know, themes, perceptions, et cetera on the far right, we've got Swoop Analytics, which under the hood does ONA. If you look on the top of it, it actually, doesn't, it's not as obvious as for some of the others, like let's say a Polinode, which is very clearly pure ONA but they do ONA to understand engagement and then R Squared is really, they do a combination of these two to understand engagement as well as some other outcomes. So you know, again, kind of back to the point of earlier, is there another chart that's just, you know, scraping of communication data, that's the non survey approach on here potentially on that might be another way that we could think about this. But the idea is trying to open the aperture of folks a little bit to say, you know, look, engagement by and large has meant survey historically. And it's moving forward is not going it's already not totally only meaning survey, but in some instances it's meaning no survey and it's these other approaches as well.
Stacia Garr:
Any thoughts or questions on this one, Or how does that make you all feel like that's a pretty big shift, right? From asking people the questions that we know they do engagement to looking at just their data. Speaker 3?
Speaker 3:
It almost feels like performance management five years ago. Right. I was like, this is the traditional approach. We do this thing. And it goes in this document and we share feedback and surveys are the same thing. It's this formal approach. And we gather feedback and we share the results and we do something about it. So I think it's, it's great to see it moving in this direction. I guess I'm new to these particular vendors. Can do you, can you tell a little bit more, but what they're actually analyzing? Like what data is it that they're getting access to and then producing an output from
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Priyanka, do you want to take a first swing or do you want me to?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Yeah, so it's primarily for Organization View it's employee text data and that can be in any form that is already collected by the company. So it may be survey texted, or from a survey that a company, might have run and pulling from there. It might be some other form of feedback that the company might be might've collected. So they don't actually collect the data. All they do is they take the employed text data provided by a company and run their sophisticated text analysis on it. R Squared does mainly thought communication, text analysis or communications data created by employees whether it's a communications tool or emails, jobs, things like that. That's what they analyze. They also do ONA and similar to Swoop both of them do organizational network analysis by looking at collaboration data. So who is collaborating with who looking at that data, that the networks that they're creating being themselves. And Swoop in particular has integrations with Yammer and Facebook workplace. So they collect a lot of employee data from those communications platforms and tools, particularly.
Speaker 3:
Thank you.
Stacia Garr:
And in particular, R Squared claims to have a pretty high level of accuracy when it comes to turnover predicting turnover I don't remember if they made any claims on engagement. I don't recall that they did, but but they are certainly selling this in, in the engagement space. Yeah it's very, this is kind of very on the edge of things. And so, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of data ethics and privacy implications and all the rest of that go along with this. Yeah Speaker 4?
Speaker 4:
You just said it. So the technologies are catching up to be able to do this. And then can you just summarize, like how many years have these companies been in business doing this one, a thing, you know, which came first, was it the business plan or the technology so that you can, and then what you just said and there's ethics and other considerations for the future?
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So R Squared I think is about three years old. They came out of a different industry. They were, Oh, I think security, I think like internet security is my recollection, but don't 100% hold me to that. But definitely a background in folks who had a different, who had expertise that could be applied to this space in, in a different way. It's kind of the point. And so on that one, which, which came first, I think they saw a problem and they said, Hey, we've developed texts somewhat similar that could address this problem, but they didn't come there. They're part of a group of vendors or vendor leaders who don't have the HR backgrounds who don't, you know, I think there's, there's a lot of within our industry, a lot of almost unwritten rules of, you know, what's okay and what's not.
Stacia Garr:
And so they're, they're part of a group of folks who are coming in and without knowledge of those rules, which is good and bad, like I'm in many instances, I'm all for breaking the rules. Like let's try things, let's experiment, let's do the rest of that. But I think that some of the, the concerns that our industry has tended to abide by you know, they're getting communicated, but I will say there's others who are in that group. And I'm not saying this particularly about R Square, but in general, I see these vendors get educated, which is like one of the coolest things that we get to do. We get to see them come in and be like, could I do this thing? And then they talk to people like us and then a whole bunch of customers who were like, yeah, maybe not quite that way.
Speaker 1:
And then about 18 months later, they're like data ethics and security are really important. Like, yes, yes they are. So I think, you know, even though this is kind of a long way of getting to what I think your question is like, you know, are they aware of these things? Are they taking these things into account? The industry and customers are educating them. So like none of these vendors can run any farther than a significant group of customers we'll let them run when it comes to things that are on the cutting edge and what I have typically seen as vendors just kind of get pulled back when customers are just like, well, we're not going to do that. Like I get that, you could do that, but we're just not going to do so, Speaker 1?
Speaker 1:
I'm just curious on how on how ONA gets into the experience category. But I think, I wonder if that is your question, cause you highlighted it on the edge and listening to you and thinking about it. I can see that it is and I think that it isn't. So I'm quite curious on to, you know what led you to including it, but as an edge category, because I think that would be instructive
Stacia Garr:
Priyanka?
Priyanka Mehrotra:
Yeah. So I think more than experience, I would say they're leaning towards engagement right now, the way that they're doing it is looking at collaboration data to see how engaged an employee is by looking at their interaction levels, their communication levels, things like that. So for example, one of the use cases that Swoop highlighted for us was that they use data from Yammer, for a customer to see what was the level of interaction and communication during a webcast event for a company that had just shifted to remote working and that they use sort of like a standard to say that okay employees are really engaged because they're messaging and they're really on Yammer and our Yammer is going to berserk because of the amount of communications that it's listening. So that's how they're looking at engagement in this nontraditional sense.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. Okay. That makes sense.
Stacia Garr:
I think this is at least for me, it's some of these vendors those who say they're doing engagement, like it makes me uncomfortable. Cause like I have a very clear in my mind definition, like as a social scientist of what engagement means and that it is, but I also recognize that that's very like 2005, right? Determine engagement has just been trod over by everyone, I mean anything. And so as we think about this market I think that we just have to recognize that the way folks are thinking about engagement is different and what's most important is for the customer to understand what that means, because that may be, that may be great for them. You know? So some of the things that the ONA vendors in particular are good at is when, you know, one company acquires another figuring out where, how are people interacting and connected to each other. And, and what's important to keep in place what's important to strengthen et cetera. And that's a form of engagement, you know, how people are connected to each other. So I think we just have to kind of, as I tell my daughter have a little flex brain here, even though it might make us a little bit uncomfortable.
Are we seeing shifts in how to maintain employee engagement/experience with more hybrid work model?
Stacia Garr:
Okay. So we have roughly 10 minutes left and we did get some questions. So we'll go ahead and pop those up. I will say many of these questions, we don't necessarily have the answers to, so this is very much so a discussion, but since they were submitted, we wanted to make sure that we brought them up. Okay. Are we seeing shifts in how to maintain employee engagement experience with more, with more hybrid work model? So I would say that we're certainly seen shifts in measurement of employee engagement and experience. And we saw a lot of folks try a whole bunch of different things over the course of the last year. So whether that's, you know, the collaboration discussion or kind of more open collaboration and open communication about what's happening in the organization you know, I think we saw kind of the burst of happy hours and connectivity, and then it feels like that's kind of died off a bit.
Stacia Garr:
So I think this is still an open question that people are trying to figure out. And then I think also they're trying to figure out what is it going to look like when you have a subset of employees who are in the office during a certain period of time versus others? So I think right now we're seeing a lot of experimentation, a lot of ideation, but obviously most people are not back in the office yet, or they're not really back in that hybrid environment yet. So I don't think we've seen any, anything definitive. That's kind of my, my sense. How about others? Or maybe let me change the question. Have any of you all seen anything cool that you're like, Oh yeah, that could really work. Or that's something that I think is I haven't seen before. I know there's a lot of you on the phone, so feel free to come off, mute. Speaker 5. You came off.
Speaker 6:
So I don't know if it's something I would consider like super innovative as much as it's something that I hope sticks, but it's this notion of bringing the employee experience to the employee wherever they are. And I think before, if you want it to be a part of the culture of a company, particularly a large organization or one, that's a small kind of tight knit startup, you have to be with those people. And it's not to say, you have to be like, there is a hard requirement. It's more you miss out on so much of the institutional knowledge and comradery and kind of connection building that is really helpful. But I think the pandemic caused a lot of companies and people to think about how do we meet that, how do we take all that investment we've made in snacks and table and pool tables and stuff, and bring that to the home because we can't give everyone a pool table. And so I like the trend of meeting people, kind of what that experience at home and little things, you know, I've seen little stuff like just sending people, Postmates gift cards or Uber eats gift cards to grab lunch because we used to have catered lunch on Fridays or something. You know, it's sending them gift baskets saying, just thinking of you, you know, I saw one and it's something I got actually at two years ago, but it's something that is completely applicable now, which is, it was a succulent that said life would SUC without you. Adorable. Like it was the card made my day more than the actual succulent. But I think that that organizations are making people feel valued in many ways. But one of the things that I think is really working is just those unexpected delighters. And I hope that's something that continues because I think that's something that makes work feel much more personal. Despite not being able to have that intimacy or that closeness of physicality.
Stacia Garr:
I love that. Yeah, Speaker 3.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah, it definitely has seen some creativity in our teams. We just released a big project. And so the VP of the, our technology group ordered hats with the name of the project on them for the entire team to surprise the person who had spearheaded it. And so now every time there's a meeting for that project. And so getting creative in, in the box of your zoom meeting or your teams meeting and what people can actually see and participate in. So I've seen a lot of that. I think the extension of that is supporting the whole person versus the employee. And what we've seen is what I've been calling for the last year, uninvited authenticity into people's homes has allowed us to open that conversation to now. I no longer just support you getting your work done, but I support you managing your entire life so that you can get your work done. And so I, I definitely think that there's been a switch there on the focus and I'd love to see that continue for sure.
Stacia Garr:
Great. Yeah. I love that.
Stacia Garr:
Anyone else.
How can people preserve serendipity and watercooler talk remotely?
Stacia Garr:
Great. Thank you. Well, I think that one ties in actually pretty well to this, this next one, around this concept of how do we preserve serendipity and watercooler chats remotely? So I've seen a few technologies that are trying to do this. So things where, for instance, you can kind of effectively walk into the coffee shop if you will, or walk into the office. And it's kind of a virtual environment that kind of looks like it and you just, you know, like sit yourself down to work, right. And you're there. And then people can see who else is in the space. And, and if you wanted to like, just bump into someone, you just move your little avatar up to them. And then in that instance, both your cameras go on and you're talking. And so by going to basically into this space, you acknowledged that I'm open to these serendipitous interactions, but you're still getting work done while, you know, in between these different interactions. So that's one thing that I've seen folks do that it seems like it has some potential at least. I'm wondering, have you all seen anything else?
Speaker 2:
I think we've certainly seen that exact use case Stacia being used really, really well at events as well. So the kind of breakout rooms at events where you can go up to different vendors and speak to them in that kind of similarly serendipitous setting that's yeah. Seems like a really exciting use case to be able to deploy that within the organization
Speaker 8:
As well. So yeah. Very cool.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5:
The other software I've seen is donut.com, D O N U T a and instead of moving your avatar is, and it being on you to initiate it actually initiates for you. So it randomly starts setting you up for 10 minute meetings. And I think that to me is much more of a watercooler experience. Cause you don't know who you're going to run into. But it does allow for that continuous watercooler chat, which is kind of cool.
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. That's a great suggestion.
Speaker 2:
I think you can set up a similar thing on, on Slack as well to do that right. That you can kind of set that up across the organization or whoever's in the Slack different Slack channels and it'll automatically bumped them together, which is really cool as well. Yeah.
Stacia Garr:
Cool. Yeah. Is that just a bot in Slack?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, exactly.
Given there are so many useful & varied solutions, how are companies creating a seamless experience?
Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Cool. All right. Then let's go ahead. Given there are so many useful and varied solutions, how are companies creating a seamless employee experience? Well, that is multi-billion dollar question. So I mean, I guess kind of stepping back, kidding that I think that we spend a lot of time talking about the importance of it, of a tech ecosystem and, and having a clear perspective on what the employee experience needs to be and then your tech ecosystem matching that need, or that experience you're trying to create. I think that you know, that's obviously the 30,000 foot level. Then there's as we get further down, you know, how are you making sure that these different technologies are integrating together? I think that is, there are a number of ways to approach it.
Stacia Garr:
I think every vendor has some way that they claim kind of makes it so that it's seamless and easy. And so for some of them, it absolutely is. I think that one of the things we've, you know, Vizier is doing some work on this and I think it's meaningful, there are some vendors who have been really working to kind of create their ecosystems where they do clearly work together well. And they've put an effort, extra effort. And so potentially thinking about if you love one system and seeing who's kind of already in their partner ecosystem, who might fill your techniques as a way to begin your pyritization efforts. I think that can help with creating this seamless employee experience. But I think that, you know, this is obviously a very complex challenge that folks are facing and unfortunately given that complexity, it kind of depends on the individual situation. Anybody have anything to add to that?
Speaker 7:
Well, one thing that is happening and probably will continue to be a trend, is this stuff showing up in the work tech. So being, having the experience show up in Slack, Teams, and Viva so that it, even though behind the scenes platforms, there can be many, many of them, but you know, they're creating apps so that they, you know, show up in the flow of work. Yeah.
Stacia Garr:
Great. Speaker 2?
Difficulties between people analytics & employee experience?
Speaker 2:
It's kind of similar to Speaker 1's previous categorization comment. But I wondered if you'd seen or sensed any difficulties in terms of the customer within the organization between people analytics and employee experience when the two teams or departments are distinct. So how did EX vendors manage when those two teams aren't necessarily working very well together and who are they selling to primarily and what are the kind of challenges there?
Stacia Garr:
I think that the first first thing is, is what kind of EX vendor is it right? Is it, is it a service now or is it a, you know, a Medallia cause they obviously their primary customers are going be different folks. And then, you know, in terms of kind of what does that look like together? Our advice is always to run it through people analytics just because you're looking to, they've got a pulse on so much other data that you wouldn't necessarily want that to be just stuck in one part of the organization. So even if, you know, to use your example, Speaker 2, the engagement and the people analytics folks are maybe not playing as nicely together as they should. Ultimately people analytics I think is kind of the source of truth or will be over time. And so if I'm a vendor, that's where I would be trying to drive the focus. You know, obviously you work with whatever customers you're working with, but I'm trying to kind of keep that focus over on the people analytics team would be my thought.
Speaker 1:
Just a quick kind of pile on to the conversation. One thing I think if you're an EX vendor and your EX people are not connected to your PA people you're likely to orchestrate things that don't count. Like one of the things we're seeing, especially with the Medallia relationship is the data tells you the, where it makes sense to listen. If you just think about experiences, experience, like you can listen everywhere. I see a lot sort of back to this question is like, how are companies creating the experiences? Like half of them are wondering around like wondering where to start. I don't think we've got the answer of how yet. I think we're still questing on a how to start. And I'm one of the things we're seeing specifically with the PA team is like, okay, well, which populations do we have, no do we have kind of materials signals that there is a, there's a reason to go, listen, we're not just listening for listening sake. So is it onboarding, is it promotions? Is it new managers? Is it all these different places like that? The situational data starts to tell you where it's important to listen. I cannot see you being successful without that really good understanding of the dynamics in your business. So otherwise you're going to put listening and for listening sake and yeah, you know, people get what you get, you get the Alice in Wonderland outcome. Like where are we going? I don't know. It doesn't matter.
Stacia Garr:
Okay.
Speaker 1:
So yeah, it's a great question because it's often not the people on the EX team that should be making the experience process. So they have to be integral to the how and why and where, there's personal view and what we're seeing, what we're seeing from the conversations we were in.
Stacia Garr:
Cool. Thank you.
Speaker 2:
Awesome. Thank you.
Conclusion
Stacia Garr:
All right. So we are just at a time there was one question, but I don't, we're not going to cover that one. So I just want to plug our next Q&A is going to be on the purpose, purpose driven organizations work that we did. So for those, you know, we did an entire year of study, first research and this podcast series, which we just wrapped up on organizational purpose. And so we're going to do Q&A session on that. So if that's of interest, that's April 15th there's two other events I wanted to flag for you all. If you have interest in attending one, maybe not as relevant for this audience, but potentially is on learning content. So how do you think about learning content?
Stacia Garr:
What content different audiences need, when they need it, why they need it, how to deliver it, et cetera. So if you have learning folks or yourself for learning folk, that cares about that. We're going to do a roundtable on that on April 13th. And then the other one, which probably is more relevant to this audience is a roundtable on DEIB. So diversity equity, inclusion, belonging, and skills. So we just kicked off a study where we're going to be looking at what are the skills that an organization needs to be more diverse, equitable, and focused on inclusion and belonging. And how do we think about those groups of skills? How do we think about how we drive that change across organizations? So that'll be around table that we are doing on April 22nd.
Stacia Garr:
So if you all have interested in that one we'd love to have you participate. And then I will give a plug for one more piece of research we have going, which is on DEIB and Analytics. So we are looking for research interviews for that. We will have a roundtable because we've got a lot going on right now. We're kind of pacing that one a little bit slower. So they'll probably be in May. But looking at the intersection between diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and analytics, and how we make it stronger, better look at the data we need, et cetera. So lots of stuff going on around here. So thank you all so much for coming today and always appreciate the really active participation from everyone in the conversation and hope that we see you on another one very soon. Take care.
Learning Content In The 2020s: What The Literature Says
Posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2021 at 5:17 PM
Looking at recent thought leadership in the L&D space, one glaring theme pops out—learning tech. Learning leaders, practitioners, and vendors alike are talking about skills tech, AR / VR, microlearning tech—you’d be forgiven for thinking, “It’s all about tech!” Our recent research confirms the ascendancy of learning tech.1
BUT.
Even as learning tech has its time in the spotlight, learning leaders are realizing that what they’re trying to share via tech—the information that helps employees develop—is equally if not more essential than the tech that delivers it. In short:
The effectiveness of learning tech relies on the strength of the learning content it conveys.
This brings us to our current line of research—content.
In recent years, we’ve seen a massive increase in the amount and types of learning content available to employees—both internally created and owned by the org (proprietary) and externally created (nonproprietary). With this expansion of options, L&D leaders are pressed to ask questions like:
- Where should we get content? Should we create it in-house or acquire it from a third party?
- Should the type of content (i.e., nonproprietary vs. proprietary) change how we deliver learning?
- How can we avoid overwhelming employees with learning content?
- Within my org, who should own what content?
- How can we measure and improve the effectiveness of content?
These questions gave rise to the overarching research question we hope to answer through this work:
How can orgs enable employees to access the right learning content, at the right time, in the right format (to give them the right learning experience)?
Themes from the Literature
We reviewed the current literature on content (including content management, strategy, operations, and tech) to understand what orgs and thought leaders are saying about content. We also wanted to see if any key steps exist to deciphering how orgs think—and should think—about content.
The following word cloud is the product of the 50 articles that we reviewed (see Figure 1).
This word cloud illuminates several content-related trends.
- First, Figure 1 highlights the significance of the word “more.” With an ocean of learning content available to employees now, people are overwhelmed. This reality was eloquently described by one author who said:
eLearning content is being created and shared faster than you can blink. While today's employees want to direct their own learning, digital information overload can make that a difficult task without a roadmap.2
This content overload gives rise to the question:
With so much learning content available, how can employees easily find what they really need?
- The prominence of the word “need” in Figure 1 emphasizes the importance of enabling learning at the right time and place. For employees to learn in the flow of work, content must be easily accessible at the point of need.
- Finally, “strategy” in Figure 1 is noticeably smaller than some of the other terms. This reflects a trend we see in the literature: Content strategy is present but isn’t a fully developed concept with L&D quite yet. By contrast, it is a fully developed concept with marketing and enterprise content management—and we drew on some of the literature from these areas for this lit review.
To add to this analysis, the literature reflects 5 key themes:
- Content management tech doesn’t equate to a content strategy
- Marketing and enterprise content management offer lessons about content for L&D
- Democratizing content creation
- Should delivery modality dictate content decisions?
- Current literature says little about proprietary vs. nonproprietary content
Let’s dig deeper.
Content management tech doesn’t equate to a content strategy
Although many L&D articles reference content (CMSs) and learning content management systems (LCMSs), few address how to build a content strategy.
So what exactly is a content strategy? Author Chad Udell writes:
In its simplest terms, content strategy for formal learning is a holistic plan for content—the knowledge that you want the learner to receive and retain.3
A content strategy helps orgs be more intentional about the content learning leaders produce or acquire—typically to support the org’s business goals. It also helps keep content consistent and focused (including a consistent tone and voice—a form a branding). This focus stands in stark contrast to many orgs’ tendency to pump out more and more new learning content for the sake of content, ultimately overwhelming and misguiding employees.4
Hoping to make content more manageable and accessible for employees, some L&D orgs look to content management tech as the “silver bullet” answer—thinking their problems will be solved even if they implement the tech without a clear content strategy. This attempt often backfires—or at least dies a slow, quiet death—when nobody uses the tech.
So, instead of a tech-first approach, learning leaders must design a holistic plan for content—a content strategy—and set up any content management tech to support those larger goals.
A learning content strategy is not the same thing as a learning tech strategy: It’s not enough to buy new tech—orgs need to choose content to support their business and learning goals.
Marketing and enterprise content management offer lessons about content for L&D
Marketing offers relevant advice to the L&D world when thinking through questions related to content. If you swap “buyer” for “learner,” marketing-related resources can share key lessons for L&D on cultivating a consistent brand, conducting a needs analysis, and understanding one’s own audience when it comes to content.5 Both marketers and L&D practitioners need to understand:
- Who their audience is
- Why that audience needs our services
- What content we should provide
- When to trigger the buyer / learner to action
- Where buying / learning can best happen
Marketing offers relevant advice to the L&D world when thinking through questions related to content.
These ideas are captured well in Figure 2.
Where marketing diverges from L&D is on the point of content ownership. While marketing typically has a central content team and a consolidated source of content operations, many orgs can’t centralize all learning content creation.6 L&D must figure out questions about learning content ownership without leaning on marketers’ experiences.
Where marketing offers insights into understanding our audience and cultivating a brand, enterprise content management focuses on standardization, governance, and modularity to enable orgs to create (or facilitate the creation of), manage, and personalize content at scale. Potential lessons for L&D from this area of the literature include:
- Personalization of content can only be scaled by standardizing content7
- Standardizing content requires breaking it into small, reusable component parts8
- Establishing clear processes for content creation and ownership—governance—is critical to successful content management9
Democratizing content creation
Content has traditionally been handled with a “top-down” methodology, with orgs deciding what employees need to learn, and then creating or providing the relevant content. However, approaches like user-generated content flip this traditional approach on its head. Now employees are encouraged to create learning content.
User-generated content taps into the idea that workers are already sharing information with their peers. One study found that this type of peer-sharing often occurs through answering questions via message or social network (39% of respondents), and through sharing articles, podcasts, and other mediums (37% of respondents).10 The thinking is:
Workers naturally share information with peers, so why not equip them to create content on behalf of the org?11
By actively engaging employees in the process of content creation, user-generated content also promotes learner engagement and satisfaction. The content also tends to be more relevant as it results from real employee needs and experiences.
However, user-generated content isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. While democratized content is proprietary, it’s also less centrally controllable than other proprietary content—bringing in questions about the quality and reliability of the content itself.12 Learning leaders need to ask questions about their role in user-generated content: How should L&D facilitate peer-sharing learning and / or conduct quality reviews of this type of content?
Should delivery dictate content?
Nobody knows—yet.
Different types of delivery options have become increasingly popular of late. Among these are microlearning, mobile learning, and VR: In fact, one recent study documented a 7% increase in mobile learning from 2019 to 2020.13 While the literature reflects this shift, many recent articles discuss how to best create content specific to delivery modalities.
The literature reflects a shift in the learning tech market toward specialized delivery methods—and offers lots of advice about how to create content specific to those methods.
One author, Dr. RK Prasad, offers insight into what a content strategy specific to microlearning could look like. He recommends that learning leaders should rely on gamification more than instructor-led training (ILT): This, he argues, would make learning content more digestible for employees and less expensive for orgs in the long term.14
Another article focused on how to create a content strategy for mobile learning, stressing the importance of the content “lifecycle” and the need to transform content to fit a mobile platform.15 Similarly, another source addressed content development for VR training, and detailed the 6 steps needed to convert content for VR and then test it via this medium.16
The question then becomes:
Should the delivery method change the nature of the content or should orgs make all content reusable, regardless of the original platform?
We couldn’t find any answers in the literature, so we plan to explore this question further in our research.
Current literature says little about proprietary vs nonproprietary content
Heading into this research, we hypothesized that the type of content (i.e., proprietary or nonproprietary) would change how orgs select, prioritize, deliver, and measure learning content.
One reason we believe the content type matters so much is that ownership of the content can change depending on the content type.
In many orgs, a central L&D team fully owns nonproprietary content related to topics like leadership development, while subject-matter experts (SMEs) outside of L&D own proprietary content related to org-specific intellectual property, systems, and processes. L&D may facilitate delivery of that content, but an SME is responsible for creating and maintaining it. User-generated content complicates matters further by distributing creation and ownership even more broadly thoughout the org.
This reality has serious consequences for content strategy, delivery, and measurement. So, for L&D, this means fully answering the question:
Who owns what learning content within the org?
- Should business SMEs be responsible for generating subject-specific content (e.g., related to processes, systems, intellectual property, etc.)?
- Should L&D own all content creation? Should L&D own any content creation?
- How does L&D’s role shift as it relates to both types of content (proprietary and nonproprietary)?
Unfortunately, we found little to no information in the literature weighing in on these questions. We look forward to exploring them in more depth as part of this research.
Top Sources Worth Reading
5 articles in the literature provided great insight into how learning leaders should be thinking of content, including taking advice from some marketing professionals. We found these sources helpful and encourage you to check them out:
10 Steps to Building a Successful Content Strategy
James A. Martin | CMS Wire, January 2018
The article, while initially created for marketing, outlines 10 key steps to creating a content strategy, including choosing the best tech and tailoring the right content for the job.
“To be successful, though, you can’t push out content ‘spray and pray’ style, hoping at least one piece hits its target audience in just the right way.”
Highlights:
- Choose the right tech that allows you to update content
- Be intentional about your target audience and build learner personas
- Conducting a content audit will increase engagement
- Cluster content into digestible chunks for employees
A Content Strategy Isn’t Just for Marketers
Bianca Baumann | Training Industry, Sept/Oct 2017
This article points out the steps L&D can take when creating and implementing a content strategy, pulling from parallels with marketing.
“Ultimately, having a strategy in place helps create meaningful, engaging and sustainable content, and allows to identify the right content at the right time for the right audience.”
Highlights:
- Leaders need to think through both the substance and structure of the content
- Leaders should consider workflow (e.g., resources needed) and governance (e.g., policies, decision-makers)
- Implementing a content strategy requires the following steps (resembling the ADDIE17 model):
- First, learning leaders need to identify a training gap (analysis), strategize before designing (strategy), and create a communication program upfront (plan)
- Next, leaders need to consider reusing content in different forms (create) and think through different learning modalities (deliver)
- Finally, leaders need to align measures with their org’s needs and objectives (measure) and make sure to keep content updated (maintain)
Reusing Content Is Key in Today's Quickly Changing Marketing Landscape
Anjali Yakkundi | CMS Wire, November 2020
This piece discusses how content can be reused by considering content assets to be more like Lego pieces than fixed creations, in order to adapt content to different delivery platforms. This Lego approach frees content creators from spending time updating, managing, and tailoring content—freeing them to focus on other activities like content strategy.
“By breaking down content to smaller, reusable chunks, marketing teams can more easily reuse, recombine and repurpose content to be used on multiple channels.”
Highlights:
- To democratize the learning, content owners should reuse the content and involve multiple team members in the process
- Content owners need to act with agility: They can use a “test-and-iterate" content strategy and be ready to shift priorities when required
- When repurposing content, it’s important to make any changes needed for the context in which the learning’s being presented to the target audience
Bringing Content Strategy into the Blend
Phylise Banner | TD Magazine, August 2017
This magazine article discusses how blended learning can be best served with a content strategy that addresses 3 domains: objective, content, and human.
“When content strategy is done well, no one notices that it’s there. They are too engaged with the experience—which is exactly what we want from our learners.”
Highlights:
- Content strategists need to:
- Create learner personas to describe and understand the attributes of employees
- Build an org-readiness matrix
- Conduct a content audit to analyze which types of content are working
- Understand workflow and governance by having a content lifecycle
- Identify a team to facilitate the learning culture and carry out the content strategy
User-Generated Content: Socialization of eLearning content
Satyabrata Das | eLearning Industry, December 2020.
This article lays out key advantages and disadvantages of user-generated content and the reasons why this type of content’s becoming increasingly popular.
Highlights:
- User-generated content’s gaining traction in formal learning (while it’s been popular in informal learning)
- Advantages of user-generated content include high engagement, greater relevance, and greater acceptability
- Disadvantages of user-generated content include dependency on a few users to generate content, questionable reliability and accuracy of the content, and incomplete coverage of relevant areas
Additional Reading Recommendations
- “Tip: Content Strategy for Continuous Learning,” Learning Solutions / Monica Kraft, 2014.
- "Delivering Personalized Experiences at Scale: Three Kinds of Output Types," Content Rules / Val Swisher, 2020.
- “Transforming L&D Content Into Immersive VR Training Tools,” eLearning Industry / Christopher Pappas, 2020.
- “Microlearning Content Strategy ROI: How To Maximize It With Gamification,” eLearning Industry / RK Prasad, 2020.
- “Engaging Learners Today: Five Key Takeaways from Content Marketing,”com / Vibons, 2018.
- “Why You Should Rethink Your Learning Content Management Strategy,” Cornerstone OnDemand, 2018.