Juggling home-schooling with back-to-back Zoom calls. Combating video fatigue while missing face-to-face contact with coworkers. Struggling to keep up with the demands of real-time communication. Aargh! The pandemic has pushed the workforce onto a steep learning curve since the beginning–and technology has been at the center of everything. How has it changed employee experience? While progress and adjustments have been made, how could it be further improved?

That was the topic at the heart of a From Day One webinar in December moderated by Fast Company contributing editor Lydia Dishman. Some of the panelists spoke from years of experience working remotely, while others hailed from more traditional industries like construction and hardware. But all agreed that the swift and seismic shift in working conditions pointed out the need for immediate adaptations across the board, with technology proving at times to be both a help and a hindrance, prompting a search for balance that continues to be negotiated.

Dishman, at the beginning of the webinar, highlighted Salesforce research showing that employees working from home as a result of the pandemic had only a 1% reduction in productivity, while Microsoft research found that people were working more in the evenings and on weekends.

In light of these adjustments, the webinar speakers stressed that they’re highly conscious of avoiding employee burnout, maintaining a strong corporate culture, and helping their workforce adapt to new conditions and best practices–without further disrupting their personal lives.

Jamie Hillegass, director of talent, development and learning at the construction-supply company White Cap, described the particular challenges faced by her “very traditional industry” with many locations across the U.S. This included reinventing meetings for which people would fly into headquarters from all over the country to discuss important topics like succession planning. “These are things that we traditionally felt like you had to be in person to see each other,” Hillegass said. The transition to digital meetings involved “teaching the organization and the leaders who are becoming more familiar with Zoom and some other technologies how to do it,” she said. “To that point, in a three-hour session, how do you keep it motivating, and people engaged, without getting distracted or going off camera? Setting some of those rules and expectations for being on camera was a new thing for our organization.”

Familiarizing executives from the top down with new technology has been uncharted territory for many organizations, participants agreed, noting that the comfort level with different digital tools varied among generations. Christine Doucet, Ace Hardware’s director of employee engagement and head of the company’s charitable foundation, said: “We do a lot of communication with our store owners, and they’re not used to this technology. Not every audience is sitting in front of a computer all day.” Doucet said she started preparing them ahead of time, for example asking everyone to be on video. “I learned pretty quickly that with some audiences, like our hardware-store owners, many of which are baby boomers, I needed to spell it out, like, ‘This is the expectation, if you can. This is how it’s going to work.’”

Over-reliance on video calls, however, has been an equal challenge. Joey Levi, director of pre-sales for North America at LumApps, an employee communication and collaboration platform, has been working remotely for more than 20 years, but saw things change when more colleagues connected virtually in 2020. “I did a lot of personal Zoom meetings early on,” he said. “And then they all stopped because everyone got really exhausted by them.”

He later added: “On the sales side, it’s very difficult for both the prospects and customers and for salespeople, because you’re shifting into a new paradigm of trying to engage somebody. But you’re now boxed into a meeting in a video. You can’t go to dinner, you can’t do the normal things you would do, and it does definitely bring a challenge.” One of them is a lack of feedback. “When you’re dealing with people in sales, a lot of times they will go off camera,” at which point “you have no idea–are they paying attention to what you’re talking about? Do they get it?” One solution he suggested: “Getting people to start to be more conversational in their approach to presentation.”

Micha Mros, HR technology leader at insurance brokerage HUB International, echoed his sentiments. Like Levi, she and her team had historically worked together remotely, but “prior to COVID, we were on site with our clients,” she said. “So we got to meet them, see them, create that bond with them. And although we did use–and still do use–a variety of different software to communicate, we never really pushed people to turn their cameras on, you know, to engage in this way. And now we ask all of our consultants to make sure that their cameras are on.”

Technology has not yet provided a substitute for deeper, in-person discussions, Mros said. “We do things like discovery sessions with our clients, which typically would be on site for three or four days,” she said. “We found that it has been a difficult transition to get people to stay focused for four days on camera. So there have been some struggles.”

Fostering engagement with in-house employees has also emerged as a priority too, participants said. That means getting feedback from workers about their well-being, adjustments they’re making, and what works (and what doesn’t) in the new remote, more tech-heavy environment.

Laura Sewell, EVP of human resources in North America for Avanade, a digital-transformation consultancy formed by Microsoft and Accenture, said she’d seen more “reliance on video and recorded-video messages to really build that connection” because workers are seeking those ties in the absence of being together in person. “And I think the other shift that I have seen is leveraging technology to conduct what I call pulse checks with our employees in real time,” she said. “We’re aggregating results to HR quickly, enabling us to respond and adapt in real time to employee sentiment. That wasn’t something we were quite leveraging as much prior to the pandemic that we’re now doing weekly.”

Listening to employees and adapting accordingly has brought a decrease in formality and previously rigid schedules and structures. “We have introduced and launched what we call alternative ways of working, which enable people to work four 10-hour days [and] have a day off or afternoon,” said Sewell, the goal being to “create these flexible working schedules with some parameters around them.” Participating employees have agreed to anonymous surveys to gauge productivity, “so that we can get a better sense of whether this is working–or creating added pressures in your life, where you find that you’re working five 10-hour days instead of having that extra day off.”

The speakers agreed that the new reliance on technology and flexible working conditions are here to stay. “We have all learned that we can work remotely–that we can still engage with folks without being in the same room with them,” Mros said. “Personally, I’ve learned that maybe I don’t have to travel as much to visit with clients to get my work done, which would save them money and make me more productive. And I think that the way that we do business, because of this, will be forever changed,” she said.

“I wonder how many of my clients will never return to brick and mortar. How many folks will end up being permanently remote? And from talking to my clients, a lot of them with offices in large metropolitan areas really don’t have any plans on going back,” Mros said.

“If this had happened ten years ago,” added Levi, “this would be really difficult to work from home, because we wouldn’t have the ability to do this video stuff, et cetera. I also think that the trend for a lot of people before Covid was already that technology was driving them to work longer hours because it’s immediate. It’s in your phone. It’s in your hand. It’s constantly there. And so I think the benefit of knowing how that affects everybody in the organization means that the things we talked about are more about your life-work balance and making sure you understand if your employees are actually well and mentally well.”

He added: “People were getting used to working on the weekends and working at night and working in the morning and working during lunch. So I think the benefit for the employee is going to be more sensitivity.”

Sheila Flynn is a Chicago-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Times. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.

Skills-Based Hiring: Getting Started and Overcoming Common Objections

It’s never been easier to put skills-based hiring into practice. The tools and the resources are there–and the potential benefits are abundant. And yet, some leaders and hiring managers are skeptical.“One of the major positives about the skills-based approach is that it adds more science and rigor to the hiring process,” said Christopher Rotolo, vice president of global talent at Mitek. Adding science, Rotolo says, adds objectivity, which can remove some of the bias and “increase the validity of the whole hiring process.”“The fact is that over 60% of people don’t have a college degree. But that hasn’t stopped employers from benchmarking candidates that way,” said moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company. Dishman moderated a panel of leaders during From Day One’s recent webinar about Skills-Based Hiring: Getting Started and Overcoming Uncommon Objections.Unconscious bias can easily creep into the hiring process when looking at a candidate’s resume, which can reveal indicators like elite educational opportunities, prestige, race, and even generational wealth, none of which are necessarily predictors of career success. Hiring almost exclusively on skill can help employers dial into what really matters.Rather than focusing on degrees, says Amanda Richardson, CEO and head of people at CoderPad, “You have to dissect the role into the skills that are needed, working with the hiring manager and people who are currently in the role. The most important part of the conversation is not just ‘What are the skills?’ but ‘What does good look like?’” This approach requires more in-depth conversations between hiring managers and department leaders to get a stronger sense of not only what success looks like, but how previous successes can be communicated during the interview process.“I find that taking a practical approach [means] literally saying, ‘What does a great answer sound like? Does this person really know what they're talking about?’” said Stacey Olive, VP of talent acquisition and employer branding for Medidata, Dassault Systemes.“Because there’s not an empirical objective test for everything, we really have to go based on our conversations with people.” This means hiring managers need to prepare upfront so they can infer if they’re hearing “flowery language” merely alluding to past success, or if a candidate actually has lived experience that will be beneficial to the role.Focusing on skills-based hiring isn’t just a great way to reduce unconscious bias, it can also make the hiring process quicker. “A little bit of upfront work on understanding and aligning on the skills and the level of the skills needed will actually make a much faster hiring experience,” Richardson said.Semoneel Bamboat, VP and global head of diversity, inclusion and talent acquisition at Capri Holdings, shares that while her organization has a rubric within which they score talent competencies on a scale of one to five, her team does not let the skill scoring fully dictate the conversation.“While we have numbers and rigor around it, nothing is set in stone,” she said. “The purpose of that really is so we can cast this wide net. We don’t want to be that specific, because we don’t want to then lose sight of someone that might not fit that exactly.” Skills-forward hiring should be used to identify previously untapped candidates, not a blanket way to eliminate unusual or creative choices that could be an interesting fit.Richardson adds that getting too technical in the taxonomy can overwhelm the conversation, especially as hiring managers try to parse the subtleties between junior and senior versions of the same role. “I've seen the situation where developers start arguing about the nuances of ‘What does it mean to be very proficient versus mildly proficient?’ And I think you can lose the forest for the trees pretty quickly.”Copying and pasting old job descriptions when looking to fill a role is no longer enough. Instead, there should be periodic check-ins to make sure descriptions are up-to-date as the nature of the work, and therefore the role, continues to evolve. Part of this can be solved by shortening and simplifying the job listing. “It tends to be a lengthy laundry list of desires and needs. Instead, employers should aim to distill it into ‘What is the required skill for success?’” Olive said.With an eye toward DEI, Bamboat’s organization uses short external job listings with neutral language, keeping the more elaborate and specific job description for internal use only among the hiring team. “We take a lot of the details out to be able to cast that wide net,” she said.“We never want to post the exact job and be very specific about those requirements, because we feel like we’re decreasing our talent pool.” Bamboat shared the well-known study that showed women tend to only apply for jobs where they feel they will fit every single benchmark. Shortening the list of requirements can make it more inclusive. Once candidates make it to the interview phase, the hiring manager can discuss the specific details from the full listing to gauge if it’s a fit.In conversation moderated by Lydia Dishman of Fast Company, the panelists discussed the topic “Skills-Based Hiring: Getting Started and Overcoming Common Objections” (photo by From Day One)Pamela Rodas, global senior director of talent acquisition at Telus International, hires for a company with more than 3,000 types of job profiles, all of which are changing rapidly as her organization embraces hybrid workplaces and remote opportunities. In turn, she and her team must change how they assess skills. For example, her newer sales development hires may not have been exposed to an in-person environment where they could hone their technique. Therefore, she finds herself hiring more for soft skills or what Dishman prefers to call power skills, especially as the post-pandemic corporate environment has higher than ever expectations. “All of our clients want to go faster. So forget about skills, do you know how to do the job and do it in less time?” Rodas said.Trying to identify those more amorphous qualities, like being a fast learner, in a candidate can be a challenge. Panelists offered two solutions. The first is reviewing case studies. “To identify these characteristics that lead to outstanding performance, you study what those outstanding performers do,” Rotolo said.The second, is conducting actual testing during the hiring process. “Work simulations can be helpful, whether that means programming together for two hours or sitting and doing a sales demo. What are those real-world experiences where you can actually test the proof points?” Richardson said. Just having a great conversation in an interview is not necessarily enough.But the interview process can still be helpful if you are asking the right questions. “The research still says that behaviorally based questions are the most valid. And there’s really two types: ‘Tell me about a time when’’ past experiences, or situational questions,” Rotolo said.Rodas believes it’s also important to have an honest conversation about the nature of the role and pay attention to the applicant’s response. “The recruiter can [now] spend more time with the candidate talking about how they would endure the type of workload we’re going to put on them. In any type of business today, that’s worth 10 times more,” she said.This also means asking the right questions internally too, to ensure there is no unconscious bias at play and that a candidate’s competency is still at the forefront. “We have an opportunity now to ask [hiring managers], ‘What's the basis of your decision?’” Olive said. “You have to understand and politely point out where you think you see bias happening.”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.

The Long-Term Shortage of Talent in the Post-Industrial Age: How Companies Can Respond

In the early industrial age, companies had a hierarchy built around manufacturing and machinery. But now workplaces are organized much differently. Their new priority? The talent. We’ve entered an era where the shortage of workers, obsolescence of skills, and new levels of employee agency will present employers with historic challenges. Most companies are not ready.The new Intelligence Age is a time when skills, employee creativity, information and AI will define our companies. In a recent From Day One webinar about “The Long-Term Shortage of Talent in the Post-Industrial Age: How Companies Can Respond,” speakers explored three strategies for success: rethinking the organization as dynamic rather than static, rethinking management with human-centered leadership, and rethinking HR as no longer an expense center, but rather a function like R&D that must build and invest in the company's people.All told, this means we need to redesign our companies around the person and shift to a new model for work. The time to act is now, experts say.The Changing Power Structure in the Labor MarketThe renowned Josh Bersin, founder & CEO of The Josh Bersin Company, says that with Baby Boomers retiring and declining fertility rates, there will be smaller generations coming forward to replace them. Employers will have a high demand for skilled workers but a much smaller talent pool, he says.“If you look at the supply and demand of workers and the labor force, it’s absolutely different from what we’ve seen in the past,” said Sania Khan, chief economist and head of market insights at Eightfold, an AI-driven talent intelligence platform.This could signal tough times ahead, especially in an age where companies are defined more and more by people and ideas than by machinery and products. “Scarcity of talent is one of the biggest challenges out there for companies,” said moderator Steve Koepp, From Day One’s chief content officer and co-Founder.Bersin notes that his company is getting consistent feedback from employers post-pandemic that they are having trouble sourcing new talent and with the retention of what is “a highly empowered workforce. We have employees saying, ‘I'm going to quietly quit. I'm going to work my wage. I'm going to do what I need to do. I don’t care what you say. You don’t like hybrid work? Tough luck, I’ll go find a job where I can work remotely.”Bersin predicts this is a long-term trend, and companies need to get smarter about finding and keeping their people. This is especially true in industries like healthcare, which is facing a major labor shortage despite a recent BLS report predicting 54% of new jobs will be in healthcare due in part to that same aging population that is decreasing the workforce.A Renewed Focus on Employees and ProductivityWith technology changing rapidly and more and more roles relying on it, companies will need to prioritize upskilling and reskilling opportunities to keep their workforce up-to-date and competitive. “Companies will need to focus on their employees,” Khan said, noting that companies that don’t prioritize training are already experiencing higher employee turnover.Another way to curb turnover is to take a hard look at workplace policies and make sure they are serving employees personally to make the organization more attractive, whether that is through flexible hours, hybrid options, and even AI assistance, Khan says.Bersin’s organization just finished a report on the prevalence of the four-day workweek or work time reduction. “This is becoming a big deal because employees want flexibility. We’re finding that this idea creates job productivity, and forces companies to redesign jobs,” Bersin said. “There are things that we’re going to do that seem unnatural now to deal with this labor shortage. In the future they will be commonplace. That’s just one example.”The recent webinar featured Josh Bersin of the Josh Bersin Company and Sania Khan of Eightfold (photo by From Day One)This changing definition of productivity, a focus on “revenue per employee” rather than hours worked, will also serve working parents well, Khan says, as they manage to get more work done in a shorter period.“Hiring more people isn’t necessarily more productive,” Khan said. Companies will start to measure their success by how efficiently they are utilizing their human resources to generate revenue, a focus on output rather than the size of the team. “The companies that are really good at productivity are good at human resources. They’re good at training, facilitating workshops, redesigning jobs, flattening the corporate hierarchy, changing the role of leaders, and democratizing career development,” Bersin said. “These things that might have felt like ‘nice-to-haves’ ten years ago are becoming critical to becoming productive in this new economy.”Reimagining a Skills-based HierarchyIn the information age, employment has been less about job titles and more about the work, Bersin says, with employees taking on tasks and using their skills for objectives far beyond their stated job description in order to accomplish the mission of the day, week, or month. “These rigid job descriptions, titles, and hierarchies are getting in the way of reorganizing and redesigning the company to be more efficient,” Bersin said. He anticipates an existential change in which the titles of managers and corner office perks will be deprioritized in order to get the work done.In turn, companies will be looking less at what skills prospective employees currently have and instead look at adjacent skills that show an employee has the potential to be upskilled to be the right fit, Khan says. A focus on skills, says Bersin, can also pave the way for automation. Employees can be allowed to utilize the top of their skill set if their lower-level, less skilled tasks can be automated.“If you look at the needs of an organization, you can put employees in specific, goal-centric projects,” Khan said. “Instead of just having you siloed to one department, you can now move around to where you’re needed based on your skills.” This would also allow employees to be well-versed in the whole enterprise, rather than just one area, so both the individual and the organization benefit. And tools like Eightfold can use machine learning to help companies analyze what skill areas are lacking and fill those gaps with talent.How Leaders Can Adapt to the New Workforce“Leaders have to understand this labor shortage existentially and operate in a company where transformation and growth isn’t an episodic thing–it's never-ending,” Bersin said. “The new model of leadership is, ‘can you build a company that can move people around, that can develop people, that can hold people accountable, but also give them the opportunity to move when you need them into a new place?’ Those are different kinds of leadership skills.”And with the hierarchy flattening, workers need to be prepared to sometimes be leaders and other times be more subordinate depending on the current project. “We have to democratize the concept of leadership.” Those with flexibility and an appetite for innovation will be most attractive to potential employers, Khan adds.And in a talent-driven company, HR will become more and more essential, and will be called on to understand a wide variety of skills, roles, and changing corporate models to operate within skills-based planning, Bersin says. Gone are the days where HR will be associated with conflict resolution and complaints. Instead, HR is becoming a forward-thinking, technology, and data-driven career path.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Eightfold, for sponsoring this webinar. You can read more from Josh Bersin on the post-industrial age here.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.

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