Coaching in Fair and Effective Ways in a Hybrid Work Environment 

BY Jennifer Haupt | June 20, 2022

The hybrid work environment is here to stay–and companies need to provide coaching in a personalized way to match an employee’s remote, hybrid, or in-person work schedule. What are the emerging best practices for ensuring equity in such a variety of situations? How can employers avoid favoring those who spend more time in the workplace, known as proximity bias, and offer recognition to those who might feel isolated? How can an environment of inclusion and belonging be fostered? These questions and more were addressed in a panel discussion moderated by Fast Company staff editor Lydia Dishman as part of From Day One’s May virtual conference on new approaches to coaching and recognition.

The session kicked off with a discussion on the difference between coaching and mentoring which, the panel agreed, cross a lot of gray areas. “When I think of mentorship, I think of partnerships, guiding a person with experience that you have been through,” said TeNita Ballard, global diversity and inclusion business partner at Intel. “I look at coaches as eliciting answers already within an employee.”

Ballard gave the example of when she was a mid-level manager and her boss asked her to speak on a panel. She was nervous and felt insecure, but her boss coached her through it so she could succeed. “She wouldn’t have put me on that platform if I wasn’t ready, said Ballard. “What she had to do was coach me to make me laugh or make me realize she asked the right questions: So what are you working on? How are you going to guide them through X, Y, and Z? She coached me through the process.”

Jill Carter, director of leadership and organizational development at Intermountain Healthcare, added that at her organization, mentoring is more for competency development, and coaching is about helping an individual achieve their own goals and objectives.

Speaking on coaching, top row from left: moderator Lydia Dishman of Fast Company, Mary Vinette of Technicolor, and Caitlin Collins of Betterwork. Bottom row: Jeff Orlando of Medtronic, Jill Carter of Intermountain Healthcare, and TeNita Ballard of Intel  (Image by From Day One)

As a coach, making sure you ask the right questions, questions that a person understands, is critical for success. “Focusing on developing fundamentals, versus always focusing on outcomes, is also key. It makes a huge difference to be able to help guide someone in understanding how to improve certain skills, behaviors, knowledge,” said Caitlin Collins, an organizational psychologist and program-strategy director at Betterworks, a performance-management platform.

Collins learned her first lessons in coaching from her father, who played pro football and then volunteered as a high-school coach. “All that applies in the world of work outside of sports—making sure we’re doing something better on a smaller scale, so that we can improve the outcomes on a bigger scale.”

Mary Vinette, global head of learning and development at Technicolor, spoke to the importance of using coaching to create safe spaces for employees to grow into their best self in the workplace–and gain the confidence that leads to success. She said coaching can lead to higher levels of well-being at home and work, and integrating those two parts of life has become more important than ever in the hybrid workplace.

“If I’m trying to be this person at home, this person at work, this person with my boss, and this person with my direct reports, that’s exhausting,” she said. “What we are in now is a time when everybody’s exhausted. It’s this integration of the whole person that helps you say yes to the things you want, say no to the things you don’t, and be okay with it. It’s the coaches role to create the space to say it’s okay.”

The panelists agreed that implementing an equitable coaching program becomes more difficult with employees working remotely. According to Jeff Orlando, VP of global learning and leadership development at Medtronic, a health care technology company, greater employee initiative may be required to level the playing field. “Raise your hand, let people know if you need to be coached,” he said. “We don’t necessarily know, through our talent processes. We need to hear it from you.”

As far as creating a safe space during virtual meetings, Ballard suggested allowing people to be visible who want to show up on camera, and also allowing people to have their cameras off. “To create a safe place to create well-being,” she said. “We’ll check in versus just jumping into our meeting. How is everyone doing? What's going on?”

Carter added that training coaches to be inclusive is another piece of the puzzle. “We’ve taken the opportunity over the last year to train inclusion coaches, specifically for [diversity, equity and inclusion],” she said. “We actually step our coaches through something called ‘How do you be an inclusive coach?’”

When it comes to implementing a coaching program in the most equitable way possible for all employees, Orlando recommended starting with peer mentoring. “It’s a step in the direction of coaching and broader mentoring,” he said. “There’s been some great research that peer-to-peer mentoring builds affiliation, builds engagement, builds a sense of belonging, and it builds that muscle between employees.”

Jennifer Haupt is a Seattle-based author and journalist.

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Which Benefits Provide the Best Worker Outcomes–and Return on Investment?

There’s no end to the list of benefits employers can offer now, from pet bereavement leave to baby bonuses and ketamine therapy. But the books have to be balanced at the end of the year, and company leadership isn't inclined to cut a check for anything that doesn’t demonstrate a return on investment. Caught between job seekers who expect competitive packages and the budget-conscious C-suite, benefits professionals have to make tough choices.During From Day One’s April virtual conference on finding benefits that support individual needs without busting the budget, five benefits leaders with decades of experience gathered to discuss which benefits provide the best worker outcomes–and return on investment.Vetting New Benefits OfferingsKimberly Young is the VP of global benefits at HR tech at Amentum, a government contractor for defense, security, intelligence, energy, and environment projects. The first question she asks to vet a new benefits platform is how it will integrate into the company’s existing tech stack; otherwise, the lift to simply implement it may be too great.“The biggest challenge is how to onboard new technology and integrate it with those existing portals related to payroll, your HR data system, and other feeds,” said Young. “Additionally, we look for ease of administration and implementation. The time and resources it takes to invest and implement new technology is high on the list.”Employers have to know that adding a new benefit or platform will be worth the time, says Devin Miller, co-founder and CEO of emergency savings platform SecureSave. The communications component alone can require a lot of time and resources, so “it has to resonate, it has to be easy to administer, and employees have to like it,” he said. “It has to be cost-effective, and then it has to be provable so that you can stand up in front of a management and say ‘this is the impact we’re having.’”Communicating With a Multigenerational Workforce“As benefits professionals, [communication] is an age-old struggle,” said Elizabeth Chappelear, North American head of strategic benefits at life sciences and biotech firm MilliporeSigma. “Employees don’t care about their benefits until they need them, so we have to make sure that when they do need it, they can find it.”Panelists agreed that the familiar challenge of communicating benefits isn’t made easier by the current makeup of the labor force. “This is the first time we’ve had five generations in our workforce, and that means different preferences,” Chappelear commented. Her team is creating home mailers at the same time they’re posting QR codes in the breakroom, hosting webinars and virtual benefit fairs, and building microsites. “We’re constantly challenging ourselves to evolve that communication to meet our employees where they are.”When Carrie Theisen revamped Fannie Mae’s benefits for the first time in more than a decade, communication was one of the first things she tackled. “I start with communication, because it’s just so critical,” said Theisen, who is the lending company’s SVP of total rewards.Theisen began by surveying all employees. She learned that more than three-quarters of employees were happy with the benefits package, but they also found that workers were requesting benefits that Fannie Mae already offered. “That told me that we had a good, solid package, but we just weren’t communicating it well.”Given the size of benefits packages now, total rewards leaders have to be marketers as well. Theisen’s strategy was to create a value proposition and a brand for their benefits, centered around a five-pillar graphic. “Then we looked to add a lot of low-cost benefits that we could implement quickly, then packaged those two things together. The new branding with the new benefits helped build excitement with employees, and it’s become a key differentiator for us.” In fact, their benefits satisfaction score went from 79% to 91% in a single year.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the conversation among benefits experts from SecureSave, MilliporeSigma, Spring Health, Fannie Mae, and Amentum (photo by From Day One)For those who need to increase uptake, an immediately applicable benefit can be an easy avenue into broader benefits engagement, said Miller. That starts to tip the scales of the equitable exchange of the benefits–you just got to get them engaged in the process, and finding a broadly based appealing program is an important first step.”Expanding Benefits to Reach an Entire WorkforceBenefits that would have been rare differentiators a decade ago–like mental healthcare access and fertility treatments–are now common features of benefits packages. What’s the next evolution?The next wave is specialized programs for high-touch conditions, says Casey Smolka, head of actuarial analytics at mental health benefits platform Spring Health. By expanding healthcare into specialized programs, employers are able to support workers with often overlooked needs. And it can still be a cost-effective addition, he said. “Everybody has a really solid therapy program, but what are you doing for substance use disorder? It’s a really costly condition, and you may have only a couple of people who need the support, but if you don’t give them the support they need, the cost to your company and to the employee is astronomical.”Some benefits are retention-boosters. Smolka looked at Spring Health’s own workforce and found that those who engage with the company’s mental health benefits have a 22% higher stay rate than those who don’t.SecureSave’s Miller noted that access to benefits isn’t always equally distributed, with white collar workers often “soaking up” the bulk of the benefits budget. Perks aimed at hourly and low-wage workers–emergency savings programs, for example–can be a way to support workers at all levels, from the office to the shop floor.Some panelists acknowledged how challenging it can be to find the right constellation of benefits for some demographics–Young, for instance, is still looking for the right partner to serve Amentum’s LGBTQ+ community. Others talked about having to forgo some popular benefits–like student loan repayment and lifestyle spending accounts–because they’re just too costly.Yet all agreed that the most impactful provisions don’t necessarily have to be budgeted for. Fannie Mae doubled its parental leave from six to 12 weeks, added caregiver leave, catastrophe leave, bereavement leave, grandparent leave, plus added more vacation time and extended flexible schedules.“People want to make more money, they want time off, they want retirement, they want good health care. Those are the table-stakes components,” said Miller. “You want to strengthen those programs, and make sure that people use them and value them, but you really need something that is going to be impactful for your organization.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, the Economist, the Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | April 10, 2024

Where to Start: Making the Workplace Inclusive of Neurodiversity

It’s estimated that 15–20% of the global population is neurodivergent in some way, and growing awareness of diagnoses has people curious. They want to learn more about the term, what it means, and how they can support people who identify that way.Neurodivergence describes so many different experiences, but generally, people who are neurodivergent process information differently than most individuals. This includes people on the autism spectrum, people with learning disabilities, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Tourette’s syndrome.Millette Granville is the VP of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at digital learning platform 2U. She’s seen the appetite in her company and has been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm. “We have over 200 employees that are actively engaged in our abilities resource network. They were really, truly ready to get started building the community. I was not as prepared for the thirst for knowledge from our people, from leaders, as well as our employees about what exactly we need to do to make sure we are supporting our employees.During From Day One’s February virtual conference on getting to the next stage of diversity and belonging, Granville and her industry colleagues gathered for a panel discussion on neurodiversity in the workplace and how they’re changing their organizations to be more inclusive of neurodiverse needs.Neurodivergence can describe so many different diagnoses, experiences, and needs. It can also be invisible. “Neurodiversity is hidden in plain sight all around us,” said Hal Lanier, client engagement leader at accessible tech company TextHelp. So how does a workplace become inclusive if the needs can be hard to identify?An Inclusive Interview ProcessSome leaders begin with the hiring process. Monica Parodi, VP of talent acquisition at The New York Times, said she’s starting at the beginning, using tools to comb their job descriptions for noninclusive language. They’re also adding details about the hiring process to the company’s career pages so candidates can prepare in advance and avoid uncomfortable surprises.The panelists discussed the topic "How Companies Are Embracing Neurodiversity in Innovative Ways" at From Day One's virtual conferenceOnce candidates get to the interview stage, they’ll see other changes. “We know that the first 30 seconds [of an interview] are really uncomfortable for a lot of people who are neurodivergent. So we take that space and say, ‘we’re going to ask very structured questions to everyone, and we’re going to limit small talk,’” Parodi said. “We’re also making sure panelists understand neurodivergent behaviors and don’t penalize candidates if they don’t make eye contact, if they’re writing questions down, if they’re pausing, or if they’re asking you to repeat questions.”Building a reputation as an employer that is supportive of neurodivergent employees doesn’t happen by accident, she said. “There’s not one single place that you focus on; it’s weaved into every single part of your process in business and brand.”Designing Learning Opportunities with Neurodivergence in MindLearning and skill development programs often designed for the neurotypical employee are also getting a revision. Joshua Crafford is the VP of leadership learning and development at financial institution Synchrony. He said that his experience as a person with learning disabilities shapes his work. Crafford uses his personal point of view to design better learning experiences, often asking himself, “how would I have to learn the material?”For instance, Crafford talks to his audience to understand their learning styles, he teaches concepts, not just rote memorization. “It’s designed to be simplified. It’s built for all learners, divergent and neurotypical. We make sure that people can interact with the information through discussions and gain others’ perspectives.”At aerospace and defense technology company Northrop Grumman, VP of talent management Jackie Reisner considers use cases when creating and evaluating skill development and training programs. Who’s going to be using it? Can you involve them in the design? Can you ask them what does and doesn’t work about the programs?Perhaps most importantly, does everyone have to complete the training in exactly the same way? Because neurodivergence represents non-traditional ways of processing information, it represents many different learning styles.“This is something that we have to be more open-minded about: there’s got to be more than one way to get to the goal,” said Reisner. When and how the training is delivered should be flexible and adaptable by the learner. The goal is that everyone learns, not that everyone completes the training in the same way.“I know from a compliance perspective, that feels challenging, because you want to just check ‘yes, everyone in my company took ethics training,’ Reisner said. “But if you can get more models, more ways people can get to that end state, then you’re going to see so much more success.”Don’t Assume, AskThe challenge for many who are neurodivergent is that they will prefer not to disclose their diagnosis at work–and others may not know they’re not neurotypical. That’s why many leaders are making these changes and accommodations available to all employees–not just those who openly identify as neurodivergent. No one should be forced to disclose neurodivergence if they don’t want to. “An individual should not be required to disclose to get assistive technology,” said Lanier of TextHelp. “There are a lot of organizations that make our product available for everyone.”The best practice is to simply ask employees what they need, panelists said, and be open to creativity. “Companies come up with all these accommodations, and it looks like a list to choose from. That can be great, but you have to remember to ask people what they need as well,” said Reisner. “At the end of the day, we have to ask, ‘how can we make your life easier? What are you seeing as challenges in the workplace, and what would be the ideal state to make this workplace a great place for you to work regardless of that neurodiversity status?’”At 2U, Granville leans on the neurodiversity resource networks for ideas and policy review, also considering parents and caregivers who are responsible for neurodivergent family members. “We rely on good communication and connection,” she said. “If leaders have questions, they can lean into our resource groups, myself, or our DEI team and also HR to make sure that we’re guiding people in the right direction, and doing what's best for them, not what we think they need.”To Lanier, it’s a matter of psychological safety, and high-performing teams feel free to be themselves. “Is it safe to take risks and be vulnerable and be fully known?” he said. A workplace that is psychologically safe is welcoming to all, neurodivergent or not.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, the Economist, the Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | March 29, 2024

How to Create and Sustain a Growth Mindset to Nurture Talent

When Dr. Mary Murphy was working on her PhD at Stanford, she was mentored by Carol S. Dweck, best-selling author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, a book that covers the potential of individuals. Now a social psychologist, Murphy has taken the mindset concept a step further and for over a decade has studied how the “fixed” or "growth” mindset affects not only individuals, but groups of people. Murphy discussed research from her book, Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations, and how it can help teams during a fireside chat at From Day One’s March Virtual Conference.Those with a fixed mindset, Murphy says, believe in being born with skills that can’t grow any further. While those with a growth mindset believe they can learn and grow into new abilities. When talking about teams, organizations, families—there is a similar mindset culture.In a fixed mindset culture, or a “culture of genius” as Murphy called it, the focus is on the star performers. The opposite is a “culture of growth” where there is a focus on continuous learning so anyone can grow and contribute. And it’s that culture of growth that organizations need.Idea SparkIn 2005 during her PhD program, Murphy clearly recalled when this group application of mindset sparked. She was at a grad student seminar supporting a friend, where a professor voiced his opinion about what the fatal flaw of this student’s work was. Another professor chimed in and disagreed, saying the fatal flaw was something else. In essence, it was a battle of which professor was right.“I saw what it was doing to my friend,” she said. “All of a sudden, he lost focus. He wasn’t able to answer questions.” Unfortunately, the experience was so painful that months later he hadn’t continued his work.Two weeks later, in a different seminar, she witnessed something else. Rather than critiquing the students about what was wrong, the professors offered ideas on how to grow the project. The effect was clear. “The students were able to respond totally differently,” Murphy said. “They were able to actually engage in the brainstorming, answer the questions, and they left motivated to dig in.”Reflecting on those two experiences or environments, she realized how much a group can impact an outcome. The harsh approach was not motivating at all. On the other hand, the mentality of growth and how we can all contribute really turned things around for the better.Dr. Mary Murphy discussed her new book Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations in a fireside chat moderated by From Day One co-founder Steve Koepp (photo by From Day One)Murphy presented the idea to her new mentor, asking what if mindset is more than just internal? What if it’s baked into culture and influences the cultivation of talent? She blinked a few times and said, “No one's ever thought of mindset this way. But we should do it together. And that began 15 years of work on reconceptualizing the mindset, as not just in our head, but also as this cultural feature.”Time to StudyNow with 75 studies in her back pocket, Murphy has seen firsthand just how deep mindset goes. Murphy and Dweck looked at the mindset of teachers and faculty members in K-12 and college and how they practice that in the classroom.“We look at how that impacts student experience. We’ve created apps that actually measure student experience in the moment looking at their sense of belonging, whether they think their teacher has a growth mindset, belief for them or not, their sense of self efficacy, their trust of the teacher.”What they found was that even if a student has a growth mindset, when set into a fixed mindset culture, they won’t have the opportunity to benefit from their growth mindset. The group trumps and stilts their progress.  In the National Study of Learning Mindsets, a randomized control trial of more than 12,000 students around the country underwent a growth mindset program to see how it would impact their grades and if they’d be willing to take challenging courses. As expected, it had a positive effect. Their GPA was higher and more of them enrolled in the challenging courses than the control group. They also looked at where the program didn’t work.“The answer was two places,” Murphy said. “It was with teachers that had more fixed mindset beliefs or engaged in fixed mindset practices, then giving students that personal growth mindset. The effect was zero. It had no impact. It wasn't even a small impact – it had no impact.”The other place it didn’t work was when peers didn’t engage in challenge seeking, then students were less likely to want to work hard. But when there were teachers and peers who relished a challenge and supported each other, the growth mindset helped students flourish.Organizational CultureWorking with companies of all shapes and sizes, Murphy saw similar results. The mindset of a team at large has a huge impact on creativity, collaboration, and innovation. In one study in particular, they looked at the difference between a psychologically safe environment and a growth minded environment. They found that psychological safety is the baseline for any other growth to take place.“Psychological safety just means that you're willing to speak up when something’s gone wrong. But growth mindset culture really is being vigilant about how to improve what you’re doing, your interactions with others, the outcomes and the strategies that you’re trying. You’re proactively looking for improvement opportunities.”In fixed mindset cultures, they search for the narrow genius prototype to come up with all the answers. When in reality, a growth culture would open up the spectrum of recruiting, looking more at positive values. As Murphy says, a growth culture helps organizations naturally look for more diversity. “What’s most important is the extent to which people are willing to develop, grow and learn.”Changing Company CultureIn her book, Murphy goes over four common mindset triggers which can help individuals understand where people are on the fixed to growth spectrum. In turn, those who work with those individuals can help them shift. For example, one trigger is praise. If someone else gets praise, how does the person react? Are they happy for them, or are they jealous, thinking they are less than? One way to help foster a growth mindset is how praise is given. Rather than a “good job!” which doesn’t offer helpful feedback, Murphy suggested managers repeat what the person has done so well, so they can replicate that and others can encourage.When Satya Nadella first came to Microsoft as CEO, he described Microsoft as everyone thinking about their own silo. He read Dweck’s book and wanted to help Microsoft become the first growth minded culture and company. Kathleen Hogan, head of talent, asked how things needed to change so they could recruit and onboard people that would help shift the company’s culture. She implemented changes, but success didn’t come right away. Some bragged they had the biggest growth mindset in the room. “She had to really talk to people about what a growth mindset actually looks like. And to bake that in to some of the incentive systems and also some of the mentoring and sponsoring and support systems so that people could take on challenges could make mistakes, and actually get points for the learning and the growth from those mistakes and the communicating of those mistakes across the company, so that the whole company can learn at the same time more rapidly.” That’s when things picked up. Slowly but surely, the culture was changing. It became okay to make mistakes, but putting out ideas and taking risks and being open to failure became the norm. And that’s how they got cloud computing. Was the culture change worth it? No doubt about it.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.

Carrie Snider | March 28, 2024