Perks vs. culture: How benefits define your company

Ed Ligonde, EVP, Nielsen Benefits Group; Allison Cohen De Paoli, Founder, Altiqe Consulting; Lori Lantz, SVP and Chief People Officer, CableLabs; Debi Yadegari, Founder and CEO, Villyge

Transcription:

Announcer (00:08):

Please welcome to the stage, ed Legon, E V P, Nielsen Benefits Group.

Ed Ligonde (00:20):

Well, Good morning. Hope everyone's doing really well today. It's actually Lefonde, but I feel like I shouldn't argue with the voice of God. Probably bad karma for me today, but anyways, really, really excited to get into this. I'm Ed Lae the executive Vice President of Employee Benefits at Nielsen Benefits Group out in Southern California. I'm really excited to get into this topic today, perks and Culture, how it defines a company, but before I do, I'm definitely going to bring up some diamonds in their space. So first up, I'll bring up Debi Yadegari of Villyge. She's the co-founder and or founder and CEO. Next up I've got Allison De Paoli of Altiqe Consulting right here in the heart of Texas. And then of course Lori Lantz, the SVP and Chief People Officer at CableLabs. Well, I'm really excited to have an awesome conversation about perks and culture and just our perception of either and is it a world that they can kind of coexist or how do we define perks? How do we define culture? Are they competing ideals? I mean, even in the title of the session, it's perks versus Culture. But one of the things I'm really excited to talk about today with you all is can they coexist? Right? Can we create kind of a symbiotic relationship between both or are they complimentary? Right? So, let's talk about that. Let's jump right in. Debi, I'd love to start off with you. What do you think when it comes to perks and culture and is there one more important than the other?

Debi Yadegari (02:00):

Absolutely. So there's no verses, right? We can have our employees set up with every perk out there. Every company out there can go and pick up off every vendor and say, this is awesome. Our employees are supported every which way possible. What do you think is going to happen if you don't have strong culture? If you don't have empathetic leadership, do you think it's really going to make a difference to your attrition rates and your productivity rates? The employees are going to be happy, but they might, they'll still probably look for another opportunity if they don't have the cultural support that they need to flourish in their roles. Culture is the foundation for everything. Culture is what drives productivity. Culture is what drives retention. And the way to set up culture is really to empower leadership in how they are best supporting their employees. If we don't have that as a foundation, anything that we layer on top is a perk or a benefit, in many ways it's meaningless.

Ed Ligonde (03:00):

Absolutely. Lori, I would love to hear from your vantage point.

Lori Lantz (03:03):

Sure. So I feel like when you're thinking about perks and the last panel somebody mentioned about benefits generally medical, dental, vision, those are table stakes. Everybody expects those. And so when you're thinking about perks and those add-ons, if you're not really listening to your employee population, if you don't really understand what's important, you can be picking the wrong things and then it almost seems incongruent with a culture that you're trying to create. Whereas if you are aligning those things, and to Debi's point, if you're engaging your leadership in being mindful about being empathetic leaders and showing compassion for what employees are going through as whole people, and then your perks are part of that whole experience for the employee, then the perks and the culture support each other and kind of amplify and it becomes evidence of the culture that you're trying to create.

Ed Ligonde (03:59):

Yeah, I appreciate you saying that.

Allison De Paoli (04:01):

I think an example of a perk versus a culture would be helpful. I have a client that is a precision manufacturer. I want to do open enrollment meetings during Covid, which that surprised me to start with. Every chair was exactly six feet apart, there were 200. So they are very detail oriented and they're very value oriented. Their culture is that they don't overpay and they negotiate everything. Their perk is that their specialty medications cost zero. So the perk aligns with the culture and I think it's just a little thinking through it that kind of gets you there.

Debi Yadegari (04:44):

But especially what you were saying about the pandemic and also about really taking the pulse of your employees. If we look at the pandemic at the beginning, everybody was getting puppies, so what was the hot ticket? Companies were like, where's pet insurance? Where's pet care? This is what we need yesterday. It was interesting on the panel one of the speakers was mentioning when they really dug down into engagement levels, nobody was really taking advantage of some of the pet perks, sorry, to many of the vendors out there selling pet perks. And then employers really were like, all right, well quick, we need this and we need that and we need this and we need that. And employees may have had more perks than ever before. They were getting home deliveries of food. What happened, right? We saw the SHE session, we saw the great resignation, we see the great reassessment and what we are, what's going on right now is what I'm calling the cultural revolution. All statistics show is that what employees really want right now is to be amongst community of care. They want to feel that the person or persons on the other side of the screen zoom or those few days when they're going into the office, that they're part of a community coming outta the pandemic. I think all of us have really come to understand what's important to us personally, and certain perks are not going to cut it for us.

Ed Ligonde (06:01):

I think you shed a really important light there. That's exactly what happened throughout the pandemic. People are now no longer working in the office every day depending on the organization, they are working remotely. And of course now culture I think is even 10 times more important because how do you connect, bring everyone together, but separately. And another thing from an emerging benefit perspective, so many things you mentioned pet insurance and family planning and mental health, and these are all solutions that employers can implement. But I would argue that that is part of, that can be part of the culture, but are indeed perks, right?

Allison De Paoli (06:40):

So, I think that one of the things that we're starting to learn is that particularly for the younger parts of the workforce, the workplace has replaced part of the community, a pretty significant part of the community and religious institution. So the support is coming from the workplace. So it can't just be, I'm going to throw this thing at you. You have to understand why you're throwing the thing.

Debi Yadegari (07:08):

Absolutely. And for so long we were trying to get employers to understand that they had to care personally about their employees providing connections to lactation consultants. Whenever was it important for the employer to get involved in that type of relationship with the employee? Why? Because it takes a Villyge, and as you were saying, now we're really dependent upon our workplaces. And what has also changed is technology. We talk a lot about there being no boundaries. There were no boundaries before the pandemic either. But if we take a huge step back maybe 30 years back to Blackberry days when we weren't on our phones, so much time actually stopped once things started to evolve and we had 24x7 access to our employees. Remember we were talking about policies about are you allowed to email your employee after hours? What's allowed, what's acceptable? Depending what industry you're in, if it's law or accounting or another billable type of industry, you are at the mercy of your employer. So in exchange, employers have to understand that if they are invading that personal time, they almost have an ethical duty to support the employee personally as well. And while that was a selling point or something that many vendors, Villyge included was trying to push pre pandemic, I think coming out of the pandemic, employers understand that and they understand that when they support, to Allison's point, when they support the employee personally, they're going to derive a large return on investment there because employees are going to be supported in ways that pump up and boost their productivity. And there are dividends that really affect the bottom line. So therefore there's not just that ethical incentive, but there's also a financial incentive for employers to get involved in supporting the employee, which in turn creates a culture of care. So it absolutely is all weaved together, but everything has to come back and focus on, to Lori's point, why are you putting that perk in place and what is going, what are your expectations and how are you going to track that? I think a lot of time benefits leaders feel like they're throwing spaghetti at the wall. We have to stop and really take the pulse of our employees and figure out what they need and what is your culture, what best represents your workforce?

Lori Lantz (09:32):

And I think, sorry, Ed I think that also is something that emerged. We all experienced it with the whole Zoom screen cats walking across keyboards and kids running in and spouses forgetting to put their pants on as they right through the frame. And we just learned about each other. And so some of that understanding of our employees, and we're a smaller organization and so maybe it's a little bit easier when it's a smaller organization, but you just learned more about people as whole people and you started to learn that some people are showing up with ponytails and hats because that's the best they can give that day. And that became more acceptable and people became more vulnerable. And fortunately in our organization our CEO is kind of naturally very generous and employee-centric in his thinking. And so it was for us, kind of an organic opportunity to really learn and then understand how can we best support people? What are we seeing? So I think sometimes you can do that in a formal way through surveys and questionnaires and focus groups and things. But it's also just paying attention to what does it look like day to day and where are people struggling and where can we be a community of support? And then you can start aligning things to put those things in place.

Debi Yadegari (10:56):

And what you were saying also develops trust. Trust between employees and their managers. And when you have trust, that goes towards building a positive culture where everybody can thrive. We talk so much about allowing people to bring their full selves to work. That goes a lot further than our outfits and our hairstyles and maybe our cultural backgrounds. It's also what baggage are we caring with us? Who are we caring for at home? What are we responsible for outside of the workplace? When you have employers that understand that and when you have a community and culture where employees start to develop trust and develop that personal relationship where you see what's going on in people's backgrounds, productivity, really, really, really sores.

Allison De Paoli (11:40):

I think one other thing is we have some really wonderful clients and for the most part, they actually are concerned about the humans in their employees. And sometimes they're larger employers and things become a little less personal. But I think one thing that the last couple of years did is while not always overly skilled, allowed the human part of the manager or the leader to be expressed, I saw a lot of people say, okay, we got this thing going on, we gotta figure out. And it was a much different conversation than it was two or three years ago that people, employees were allowed to be human and leaders and managers. And yes, they are two very different things. Were allowed to be human in return, but I do think we need to teach that skillset a little bit because sometimes it doesn't come out quite right.

Debi Yadegari (12:34):

Yeah Absolutely. And we've talked a lot about employee burnout, but right now we're also, our managers are experiencing burnout because we're holding them to a much higher standard than we've ever held them to before. As you were saying, not all managers are leaders. Most managers are not taught how to manage. Our managers rise to the ranks often because there are great individual contributors, not because they know how to be there for an employee, not in because they know how to rally around their team. Think about some of the best sports teams out there, what makes the coaches the best? They know everything about their players. They know when to insert players here. They understand who's the fastest, who's the strongest, who can play at all, right? I'm not a sportsperson where I'm going. When you understand what's going on in the background of your employees, that's when you can begin to truly lead because you understand everything. And until you understand that you're oper, you're not operating at full capacity. So as organizations, we have to think about what kind of skills are we going to provide to our leaders and how or managers and how are we going to make them convert into true leaders.

Ed Ligonde (13:44):

Do you ever find that that's difficult to get leadership for focusing on upscaling managers and things of that nature? I mean how, walk me through, and especially Laurie, you work at an employer and you have that vantage point I want, I'd love to hear everyone else's opinion as well. Walk me through how you would maybe take this particular conversation to the leaders at your organization in and with yourself and get them to buy in.

Lori Lantz (14:09):

So, a lot of what I try to focus on around professional development and leadership development are more of the skills around emotional intelligence and having difficult conversations and leading through change and bringing those conversations on a regular basis to the leadership. And it's not a one and done thing. They can't sit there for two hours and oops, I get it. And so there has to be repetition and there has to be follow up. And so creating those kinds of paths towards leadership development can help. And then when you think about, we works with us at CableLabs, and that was one of the reasons that we chose to add that to our suite of support because Villyge actually offers real time support for leaders. So even though they kind of conceptually get this idea of emotional intelligence or conceptually understand about vulnerability and courage, and we talk about all those things sometimes in the moment when they're faced with something that they don't know what to deal with it, we can't expect them to know how to do everything all the time. I don't know how to do everything all the time. And so being able to say, here's these multiple ways that you can get support. Sometimes it's calling your HR business partner. Sometimes it's engaging with Villyge that has very targeted going on with my employee and here's some things that I can do to support them even though I might not be fully comfortable. And so I think when you're looking at investing in those things as an organization you have to feel out the tone of the executive leadership. And if they're maybe not fully understanding the value behind that, then you look very directly at retention and at productivity and engagement scores and what's going on underneath that and get to root cause. And then you can put things in place that elevate the strength of your leadership because that has a direct result to what's going on with your employee population. So sometimes you can use data and numbers to be influential. Sometimes if it's a leadership group that already kind of understands that having them participate in it is hugely impactful in the organization if they're modeling these things in these conversations.

Debi Yadegari (16:38):

And to take back your question just to the basics, statistics show that 85% of managers are looking to upskill in the area of how to support their employees personally. They understand that they need help there. And when you look also down to the stats and you look at back to some of the numbers, 54% of employees have left their employer because of the way their manager responded to them personally. Think everybody has either had this story or know someone. Can anybody relate? That was my muse for why I started Villyge. Everybody everybody knows stories there. I'll share one story that I was speaking on a panel and a gentleman afterwards came up to me and oftentimes we think about managers not doing the right thing towards women, but this was actually a gentleman who came up to me afterwards and said that everything resonated with him because when his father was going through end of life issues, his employer was not there for them, him personally. And it caused tremendous stress in not only his life but his family's life, that he wasn't able to be there and show up the way he wanted to. He was a senior professional at a financial firm. He was the CFO and he was answering to the CEO o. So of course culture always comes top down. Three weeks later, his father passed. It wasn't three weeks later that he gave his resignation letter. It was 18 months later because as a CFO he had to wait for that perfect opportunity. And at 18 months he submitted his resignation letter at the exit interview, at no time did he share the true reason of why he left. He said, I have a new opportunity, great high five, great firm that you're going to wish you all the best. In his mind he was like, peace out done. And when I talked to him about it, he said, for those 18 months until he actually left, he barely showed up. He was the person who had worked for this company for 17 years and given his all and then for that last 18 months, he completely checked out this stuff really does matter. And it affects employees at all ages and stages of their lives, whether they're men, whether they're women, whether they're older employees, whether they're younger employees, we need to support our employees through the various life events that they're tackling.

Ed Ligonde (19:04):

So, I have to imagine that this is especially throughout the pandemic, I feel like we kind of hit the reset button on how to manage employees and deal with organizational culture. And everything you all are saying is spot on, but I have to imagine that's additional stress on your lives and not knowing exactly what to say and when to say it. And I know at Villyge of course, this is kind of the lane you shine in as well. Can you walk me through briefly where you plug in, especially I know that you actually work with Lori.

Debi Yadegari (19:36):

Yeah so for a long time, organizations have realized that they've got to do something about this. So they'll bring in an outside consultant to do manager training, manager sensitivity training, empathy training, or they'll try and build something. So you're going to brain dump on your leaders on March 17th, what may or may not become applicable until 3, 6, 9 months down the road. So the way Villyge tackles this is we provide what's called just in time guidance because managers and leaders are busy, they don't have time to stop and take notes and flip back to that notebook when the event arises. So for instance, if an employee is experiencing a life event, something as fun as getting married when lots of us will lose our heads in magazines and planning and all sorts of digging deep into websites or if someone's having a baby, if they're undergoing a fertility process and adoption process, if they've experienced a loss, a miscarriage, if they're going through a divorce, we help guide the managers to understand the facts and circumstances around that event. Same way that we talk about de and I out there in our communities, it's helpful to when we are able to stand empathetically in the shoes of the employees. And we can only do that when we have the knowledge and facts to do so. Villyge Upskills managers in knowing just the circumstances. For example, if someone's going through an adoption process, hey, they could be on a Zoom call with a client, but they're going to have to drop at a moment's notice because that social worker might come and knock on their door and can't risk not answering that door. Or if they're in the office, they're going to have to rush home. So imagine this different experiences, employee boss client gotta drop from Zoom in the chat, sorry, manager has no idea. What do you mean this is an important meeting? What are you talking about? Sorry, emergency came up different than if the manager has the heads up, then someone's going through the adoption process. Hey, social workers here, high five, explain to the client, this is awesome. It's an ability for that boss to shine in front of the client, have this is awesome, we're supporting our employees going through this family building process. It allows managers to show up in a different way. If they're experiencing something terrible like a loss, we're going to provide them with the details and what they can say, what they cannot say. It's hard. It's hard dealing with these things. And oftentimes we walk in eggshells around the office and we just don't say anything. And so the idea is just in time guidance for when you need it.

Ed Ligonde (22:01):

I'm a big Simon Sinek fan and one of the things that I've loved and found profound that he says very simple is the greatest contribution a leader can make is to make other leaders or to make other great leaders. So I'll throw this over to Allison really quickly. From a benefit advisory perspective, you work with employers? So can you walk me through everything that Debi and Lori are talking about from an organizational perspective and how benefits maybe fit into that mix?

Allison De Paoli (22:30):

So in a lot of the things that you're talking about, benefits kind of tangentially weave their way in, which is typically how we hear about things. So we express a lot of empathy and we provide a lot of resources and just a conversation. Sometimes it's just talk it out. Sometimes it's what can you do, what can you not do? And I think giving permission to people to be human, and I talk about that a lot and I just think it's incredibly underrated. I think when people are experiencing a high or a low because adopting a child is a high, right? Well what if your child is ill? And I think sometimes it's easier to be supportive when the child is ill than when there's one coming or when one has just arrived. And I may be the least politically person, correct person ever. I've said a few things to benefits people. I'm like, really? Let's reframe this. And they're like, oh. And they don't always do what I ask or sometimes I get a little pushback. But I think having the little bit of a challenge, and I think as an advisor, it is my job to advise and it is my job to develop a trust relationship where they know that I have their best interest at heart. And they is not just the HR team, but it's the actual people that work there as well. And those are overlapping constituencies and competing constituencies sometimes. But somebody has to put all those people in a place where they can work together. And that's what we think our role is at Alte is not just here's your benefits plan. Who cares? Sorry really, who cares? But it is how do we advance the mission of the organization, take care of the humans, grow the leaders? Because you're right, it is the job of a leader to create new leaders. So, how do we do that and how do benefits overlap? And the actual medical plan or the dental plan or the vision plan, that's the eighth thing on the list. It's let's deal with the problem and let's get people to where they need to go.

Debi Yadegari (24:50):

I love that because all of the emphasis within organizations up until about now has been on how do we push forward those work goals? How do we teach managers to put forward KPIs, how teach managers how to do performance reviews? We need to teach organizations and managers at all levels how to be human. And that's going to make a huge difference.

Lori Lantz (25:13):

And I thought it was really interesting if you saw the keynote opening the conference yesterday, the founder of the Muse, and they did that survey of they found that 80% of millennials and Gen Z people starting jobs feel that it's perfectly acceptable to leave within the first six months if the organization is not aligned with their personal values or if the opportunity is not what they expected it to be. And that's the emerging workforce. And so as an employer being able to have congruency between what are the the culture, what are the values of the organization, can't just put, it's not just a poster on the wall because people feel it, right? Culture is a felt experience. It's the way we do things around here. And so if what you proclaim your culture to be is not the felt experience, then that inauthenticity shines through. And for a lot of people it that's the end of it. And so there's also this understanding of even if somebody joins an organization and they don't maybe want to utilize a particular benefit or perk or thing that's available, but they like that the organization has it because it speaks to what's important to that organization. And maybe at some point in the future they would need to utilize that benefit. But it's thinking kind of holistically about the alignment of if we say that individuals is one of the core values at CableLabs, that everyone brings a unique gift to the workplace and we can't do one size fits all cuz that has never worked and it will never work. But we can be thoughtful about that being congruent, that the way we treat each other, the benefits and support that we offer, the way we compensate, all of those things are aligned then that's what brings referrals. This is an amazing place to work. You should come work here. That's what brings longevity, that that's what brings people wanting to advance their careers in that organization. So all of those pieces come together.

Debi Yadegari (27:28):

And to that point, 35% of job offers are rejected based upon culture. And when you look at websites such as comparably, when you go to their homepage, companies these days have a culture score and that's where your applicants are going. They're going to do their diligence. This was discussed in yesterday's keynote as well. And when you drill down to why people leave within that first six months, 58% of the time it's because of culture. Culture that didn't shine its head during the interview process, but they found out in those first six months. And just a suggestions, some things that we talk about with some of our clients is back to the intersection of perks and culture into Lori's point. I recommend everybody really put together a pdf, a book by an electronic book on what your culture is. So when you're recruiting, you don't want to give people a list of your benefits with bullet points. That was yesterday. Now to Lori's point, we're invested in a care because we love supporting all ages and stages and wanna support employees throughout that stage in life. We have in place Milk store because we believe in supporting working mothers and everybody. And we wanna level the playing field, not just a bullet point, but why and have pictures of things going on within your organization really try to frame out what the culture is there back to the intersection of how benefits can interweave with culture.

Allison De Paoli (29:01):

And that support is, it's the number one thing we get asked about. So right now we don't have a client that has all the staff they want. They can't recruit it, they can't retain it. I don't know where all the people went, but they went somewhere. So I do not have an employer that has a recruiting pool that they want to have, and they have people that are leaving so they just can't keep up. And it is a lot of that is support is I don't feel supported here, I don't fit in here, I don't. And millennials and younger Gen Z, well bye. And some of them just leave. They just don't come back and you have much more experience that than I do, but they just don't come back. And that's a huge problem. But people expect as the workplace becomes the community, that's what people expect. So you better figure out a way to do it.

Lori Lantz (29:57):

And sometimes it's accomplished through actual just policy. We moved to an unlimited PTO policy about six years ago. So prior to the pandemic, and I gotta say that saved us enormous headache and process when the pandemic did occur because of all of the regulatory compliance that came out. Some of it was short term, temporary things about mandatory sick leave and mandatory pay for leave and all of those things. And we just already did all of those things. That was a choice that we made as an organization. And to your point, it's not just a bullet of we have unlimited PTO. The reason we have unlimited PTO is because we say we want you to manage your energy, not your time, and we trust you to do your jobs. And that's how we operate.

Ed Ligonde (30:51):

I feel like employees are, or as human beings, we're emotionally driven. And what I'm also seeing is that employers are spending a lot of resources and time on making sure their first impression, the greatest resignation has been affecting everybody. You were just saying, I don't know where people went, but they're out there somewhere, somewhere. But it's hard to find people. But nevertheless, employers are investing greatly in their first impression to bring that employee on to market themselves, basically sell their organization anymore. It's a candidate market. That being said, are we missing the boat though after that, once that employee is an existing employee, they're six months in. How do we continue that same kind of culture for that employee so that they don't feel left out so that they don't feel like, oh, you just want the new guy, the new gal in place anymore? Does that make sense?

Allison De Paoli (31:38):

It's a huge problem. Huge. I work with a recruiter and often when he comes in say, you don't have a retention problem, you have a recruiting problem, you didn't recruit the right person and then you treated them in a way that doesn't work for them. You certainly address that. You have a lot of experience with that. But that is typically, you're not giving me right impression of who you are. And that can be a challenging thing

Lori Lantz (32:09):

That, yeah, and I think if you do have that honesty that was another thing brought up yesterday is that you can't be all things to all people. And it takes thought and intention to say, who are we as an organization? What is our story? What matters to us? What are our values? How do we operate? And then down to the leader who's doing the hiring? What is my style? Who am I looking for? What is it? That's my approach. And being honest about that through the process, even when it's the talent is scarce and things take a little bit longer and we get tempted to put a warm body in the chair, it's never a good idea to do that because we miss, if we rush, we miss and we have to move with pace. But if we're not honest they're going to be interviewing us as much as we're interviewing them. And so you can't fake that because, you're going to be found out. So if we make the good hire to begin with, then we can double down on, let's talk about your professional development the first month that you're here, where are we going to go about having that direct relationship of trust with their leader? Tell me about who you are as a person. What is it that lights you up? What are your stories? If we invest in those things immediately and we're congruent with how we talked about ourselves in the beginning, then that all comes together and the benefits and the perks and the policies, all of that compliments what the culture becomes.

Debi Yadegari (33:42):

And to bring it all together. When you're saying you've sold the candidate, oftentimes candidates are sold because they've gone to comparably or if they've done their research or they've looked at the news, they've looked at the website, what they stand for, that's oftentimes the company intention. But what the actual employee experiences down six down the road, six months later, that's sometimes a gap. And so I think everything that Lori's saying is true, and we have to figure out what we're doing internally to make sure that those company intentions get pushed down throughout all levels of leadership, which can be challenging in larger organizations. And when we look at our quit rates, it's no surprise that oftentimes it's relegated to a few departments where a few different managers. And so what can we do to change culture? One story large manufacturing plant worked 24x7. The quit rate during the day was much higher than the quit rate for those working at night. Okay. You would think that it would be a harder gig to work at night. When the organization really dug into what was the difference, the manager at night was putting on music, and as everybody was working all night long, they were jamming out and talking. So everybody was happy and we cannot discount happiness in the workplace, which goes right to culture. And so when they were able to figure out that it was music that was motivating people, that was an easy fix. Throw some tunes on and let's shake the manager up during the day to realize, to check in on their employees, how are you? What's going on in the background back to upskilling managers in EQ? So sometimes it's the simple things, but we have to take a step back and say, what's the employee experience? What is the company intention and how are we going to close that gap?

Ed Ligonde (35:33):

And then I'll take a step further in just ensuring that the environment in which they're working in is allowing them to bring their best self to work because that ultimate, it's a mutually beneficial situation. The employee feels bought in to the mission of the organization, they're bringing their best self. They feel valued as a member of the team. They're driving impact in as such, driving more and more production, which obviously helps the employer aspect. I mean, a really quick story flying here. As recently as Tuesday I was on a Delta flight and hands down best flight attendant I'd ever had. She was so engaging, she was hilarious. A bit of the southern charm that I loved at this well but just made sure everyone felt like they were kind of having a party in the air. And there were several people around me that were scared of flying. They were having a blast the entire flight. And so towards the end I asked her, why are you so happy? And she ultimately just dove into a little bit of her story and said, well, my former employer, an airline that will not be named, it was all about if they wanted a drink, give them the drink. You just nod. Don't really talk to them. You're just there to make sure they feel safe. You're not there to make them feel amazing. You're just doing a job. And in here they allow me to be who I am and to really make people feel amazing. Which again is to everyone's point here about bringing your best self to work. And I even asked her, I was, do you see yourself doing this for a long time? She said, I can't see myself leaving at this point. What do you think about that concept about the atmosphere of an organization and how it affects the results of an employee?

Debi Yadegari (37:06):

Biggest thing that comes to mind, it's free. We're all here buying for benefits leaders. We're always stuck to these budgets. Culture is free creating the atmosphere for this flight attendant to be happy and bring your best foot forward in a way that's going to drive loyalty and retention. It's free. It's free. That's amazing. But it comes from the top. It comes from the top.

Lori Lantz (37:30):

And I think that that's also the flip side of that is there are going to be people that aren't a good fit. And it doesn't mean because they're bad or they're wrong or not always sometimes, but sometimes it's just a mismatch. And it's okay to have that honest conversation. It's okay to say, you seem unhappy it, this seems like there's a disconnect. And you start at the level of, is there something missing that you can articulate for me that I can help you with? Because maybe we can, we can fix this. And if that doesn't course correct the situation, then sometimes it is a conversation of is there a way that I can help you find what would be best for you? What is best for you? And maybe that's not with our organization. And I've had the opportunity to have those conversations and rather than it becoming a very contentious progressive discipline sort of situation, it becomes a conversation where you're still letting them be who they are and not making them bad or wrong, but it's just being real, right? I'm not sure that we're going to be able to provide for you what it is you're looking for. That flight attendant at this previous company, they were not able to provide what she was looking for. And so rather than square peg, round hole, or her feeling like she's bad or wrong because of how she wants to show up, it's just being honest. And that can be really hard. That is not intuitive for a lot of people. And so going back to having those conversations about curiosity and about trust and about transparency, making that the platform is generally going to result in the better outcomes.

Ed Ligonde (39:19):

And all of this takes a lot of time too, to be intentional to make sure every single individual in the organization feels that you're trying to look out for their best interests. But then there's also this comparison between how do you really quantify that from a return on investment perspective? And one of the things that I talk to with a lot of my partners is return on engagement. And so how do you quantify that? And is there one that maybe is more important than the other when you're talking about perks and culture?

Debi Yadegari (39:47):

I have a few thoughts on this to take a step back. I mean, engagement is the most important thing that you need to look at. I think when you're rolling out perks, but how are you going to get engagement is how you onboard the benefit and the perk. And HR leaders are busy. I don't put this on you as a vendor, I'm saying turn to your vendor and say, do this for me. Provide me with the communication packets that I need to go out with a big bang back to the don't just put a bullet point on your list of benefits every time you roll something out or if it's there, do a refresh and hey, we've got this and bring in senior leadership and explain why you're doing this. We did this at CableLabs and engagement rates are much higher at CableLabs than at some of my Wall Street clients who the cultures still a few years back and they haven't caught up. And we see direct connections between our engagement rates and rollout. When rollout has the backing of senior leadership. When a CEO comes in and says, this is an amazing benefit, this is why we're putting it in place and this is how we wanna support you, and this is representative of why we care about you and how we care about you, different than if it's just a memo to everyone, Hey, we just engaged with this partner, it's out there for you. Our engagement rates can vary. They're all very high. So we're proud of that. But it can vary. There's a shift of 16 percentage points between our highest and lowest engaged company.

Allison De Paoli (41:21):

And I think not only does senior leadership need to be engaged, but you need to communicate with people where they are. And some people like text messages and some people like to talk on the phone and people wanna get a video message and some people wanna go to a webinar and some people do not want to deal with you at all. And you have to. It doesn't mean they're not listening and it doesn't mean they're not paying attention. And I think that's a mistake that we often make is those people will often hear exactly what you say when they need what you've provided, they'll go get it. But most people aren't like that. So you kind of have to use exponential communication can't be one strategy, it has to be many strategies. And I was particularly resistant to text messaging, but I will tell you it's the most effective way to communicate with people.

Lori Lantz (42:11):

And people have short memories. And so sometimes, and this is always a challenge in HR, where you carefully craft your communication and you have your plan and you repeat and you do it by these various ways and then you know, still get maybe 10% absorption people who actually remember and dial into that. So you have to be patient. But I think it is important to come back and refresh and remind people, Hey, do you know that we have all of these things? And when somebody can tell a story about maybe not revealing everything personal, but being able to share from that higher level leadership to say, I have a situation where X, Y, Z has happened and this is the perfect support for that kind of situation. People remember that. People remember the storytelling and because there's emotional connection and people are wired for connection and there's something in them that connects to I've been through that, or I know somebody who's been through that, and while this leader is willing to actually share with me this personal thing. And so it connects the dots. And again, there's that example of the support or the perk matching the culture.

Ed Ligonde (43:29):

Yeah, I'm hearing trust, I'm hearing transparency. It's kind of insane how transparency within an organization can drive some pretty great value, but let's say you're doing all your research, you're intentional and you're hiring, but sometimes things just don't work out as well as you'd plan. So is it a set it and forget it, or is it a kind of strategy with regards to culture and of course plugging in the perks to enhance that culture? When do you recalibrate, reassess? How do you go about doing that?

Lori Lantz (44:02):

For us we do the anonymous employee engagement survey and we do, I've chosen to pace that at about an 18 month pace because the worst thing you can do is ask people what they think and ask for their suggestions and then be silent. And so just understanding the pace of how your organization moves, how long does it take to take in that information, assess it, figure out where we can do things differently, communicate it back out so that people know that when they're asked it matters. And so culture shouldn't, it's never a set it and forget it. And there has to be an evolution. I don't think you want to do whipsaw changes of now we're all about this. Wait, no, now we're all about this. Cuz that feels inauthentic as well. So I think there's kind of the core identity and even that over time might shift or change, but then it's just continuously calibrating. And sometimes that can be done through the anonymous survey where you get a report that you get numbers and percentages, and that only tells you so much because you have to dig deeper than that. You have to understand, well what did that mean to that person? Because if I'm asked a question about value in the organization or something, the way I interpret it is going to be different than the way Allison interprets it and the way Debi interprets it. And the day that I took the survey, what was on my mind? Was this just the crappiest week ever? And so I'm a little down on things or did I just have an amazing week? And so you gotta go beyond just the report and actually get to their stories. That goes both ways. And I think that's where it kind of has to be an organic moving conversation.

Allison De Paoli (45:53):

And I think the reporting back out is something that often gets overlooked. A lot of it comes in, but then nobody hears what happened and they're like, eh, whatever. And which is the last thing that you want to happen and probably isn't what is actually happening, which might be the more important part of that.

Debi Yadegari (46:09):

And I think to that point, can you just said it and forget it, I think we need to wage an internal PR campaign where we're always talking about who we are, what we stand for, what benefits we have, and again, why those benefits are in place. Remembering that we sold everybody a package of goods on day one. And as Lori said earlier, memories are short, time goes on, there's a lot of turnover within organizations and we wanna make sure that everyone's on the same page as far as priorities and care for the employee.

Ed Ligonde (46:48):

Absolutely. So we've got about a minute left here, and so I just wanted to give you all one last chance really quickly. Any parting words for our team here that's listening in on this conversation? Any nuggets of gold you can share?

Lori Lantz (47:03):

I just always come back to culture is really about the felt experience of the people in the organization. And if there's a disconnect between the highest levels and decision makers and their experience, if that's a big difference, then the individual contributors or the people in different parts of the organization, then that's where you're going to have turbulence and that's going to roll out into all of the metrics that we measure about engagement and retention and all of those things. And the narrower the gap is between that felt experience and the more alignment you have, all of those metrics are going to be stronger and better

Debi Yadegari (47:44):

Talk to the humans.

Ed Ligonde (47:47):

Shorten to the point.

Debi Yadegari (47:49):

And we have to remember that managers are so well-intentioned and they are going to be the greatest contributors to your culture. So let's provide them with the skills that they need to treat the humans better. Yeah,

Ed Ligonde (48:06):

Perfect. The last thing I'll say is perception is reality. So as an employer the amount of energy and time that you spend on your culture and your perks, the communication strategy, the ongoing aspect of that is going to resonate with your staff, whether they're new employees and ongoing. But thank you all so much, seriously, Debi, Allison, Lori, really appreciate your conversation today. Thank you all for joining us today as well. So that's our story and we're sticking to it.

Lori Lantz (48:35):

<laugh>.