Compassion and Transparency in Performance Management
BY Krista Sherer June 09, 2023“We need to know what we do matters,” Janet Ahn, president of Americas and chief behavioral science officer of MindGym said with regard to employee needs and the evaluation of their work. “How does my personal purpose grow and align with the wider organization's purpose?” Ahn introduced the panel session titled “Performance Management in an Era of Rising Worker Expectations” at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference. Steve Koepp, co-founder and chief content officer at From Day One moderated the panel of four expert leaders to discuss the changing landscape of reviews, compensation, feedback, and employee wellness.Swati Sarupria, the senior director of talent and organization effectiveness at Splunk, said that many companies are creating clearer guidelines with more structure and transparency around performance management, and embracing employee feedback. “When I hear about the feedback from the employees, it's welcoming because it has always been this black box,” Sarupria said. “I think the structural changes and the transparency are also welcome.”Laura Lomelí, Ph.D. the area vice president of people insights at BetterUp said she is pleased with what she and her colleagues see in their partners. “Our partners are spending a lot of energy on up-leveling their managers and their skill sets to provide effective and kind feedback,” she said. “This investment reinforces a culture of feedback, which ultimately makes these performance conversations a lot easier.”Leah Pimentel the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and culture with the University of California (UCSF) said that a performance review should not be the first time an employee gets feedback.“You should be getting feedback at every one-to-one with your manager, and they should be very clear about your goals, where you want to go, and how you get there?” she said. Pimentel said the review is a partnership and that managers should look at how to help their employees grow, achieve in their job, and assess what training and resources they need to excel. “I believe the pandemic renewed these conversations with a breath of fresh air,” Pimentel said. “It allowed us to pivot in a new direction, make sure that our managers have enough training, and look at how we were equipping our managers to be better performers and better givers.”Having consistent feedback is vital, Pimentel said, and having a six-month check-in on an employee's career path is also helpful, so no one is blindsided. “Having employees feeling empowered with the ability to paint their own career is something that can inspire people,” she said. “Asking them, ‘what do you want to do? How do you get there? How can we work together to achieve it?’”The full panel of speakers during From Day One's Silicon Valley conference (photos by David Coe for From Day One)Rekha Gurnani Chowdhury, senior director of global compensation and people analytics at Box said that the future of performance management will be the transparency between pay and performance. “Ultimately what employees want is a feeling of control,” Chowdhury said. “They want to know that they have a way to influence their outcomes, whether it is pay related, or other organizational outcomes.”The way to do this is to make the outcome very clear, Chowdhury said, and that there is an assumption we don't know how compensation is determined or that these decisions are being made somewhere in secret. “If anything, we're actually getting more clear with how we think about performance, how we make the connection between your position and range and how your performance for the year is,” she said. “We are enabling managers to have these conversations and to make that link.”Creating a Safe Space in Your WorkplaceAs for the question of employees asking for empathy in the workplace balanced with the need for managing employee evaluations, Lomelí with BetterUp was happy to lean into the challenge. “I love this question. So recently, the U.S. Surgeon General put forward workplace well-being as a top priority. And one of the components of workplace well-being is mattering at work,” she said. “And, I think that compassion and empathy are really critical for people to feel that they matter at work.” Lomelí said it’s important when we think about performance management systems and the process when assessing how we deliver feedback. “If you think about the system that you might be developing, it’s important to ask, ‘how do I actually deliver the feedback within that system?’” she said. “It’s about appreciative feedback, and appreciative feedback doesn't mean you only say good things. It's actually clear, very prompt, and kind.”Pimentel said that oftentimes people are worried about how they will be perceived or are fearful of speaking up because of possible retaliation. She said she and her counterpart worked on creating psychological safety with confidential safe spaces for staff, faculty, and residents of the University of California (UCSF) to address the issue.“You can come and say what you wish, come up with ideas and we can implement them,” she said. “We take all of that data and we share it with the chair of the department, and we work to use my budget to implement solutions.” With a rising competitive job market, Pimentel added that giving new hires welcome kits to understand their brand and feel appreciated is helpful. “You spend more time at work than you do at home,” she said. “And with this competitive market, you want people to realize why they are working with you, and that you care about them and value them.”DEI Efforts in a Changing Work SettingAs for the hot button regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion, Sarupria said that as companies are acquiring people to come back into the office more, there will be an impact of diverse representation and that in the context of performance management, the missing element in traditional practices has been the appropriate conversation about equity and talent, and not ratings. “The conversation between managers and their peers and the conversation between managers and their senior leaders needs to provide equal access and visibility to talent,” Sarupria said. “And typically under ratings, the quality gets masked because you're just talking about numbers and who needs to go where.”Sarupria said at Splunk they are working through a structured guide overlaid with data to highlight certain pools for what these review conversations look like. “I think the more we can overlay data and the more we can provide structure, there is going to be equity naturally in the process itself,” she said.Lomelí added that focusing on teaching managers how to lead inclusively and being cognizant of cultural differences are also important when focusing on DEI practices. “So what are those key behaviors and mindsets that managers need to be working on in order to be inclusive, how they provide those ratings, and how they're providing that feedback?” She said it is also key to prepare employees for these conversations, so both parties are set up for success. Koepp asked the panel about compassionate feedback and Lomelí said that in the gathered metrics at BetterUp, they have more than 2 million coaching sessions added to partner data. The metrics show that in times of uncertainty, having a strong culture of feedback and a well-built coaching structure, employees feel more supported by their manager, peers, and their organization. “And because employees feel more supported, we see improvements in team innovation, agility, resilience, and performance,” she said. When it comes to burnout and highly motivated people such as healthcare workers, Pimentel said UCSF saw a great deal of disengagement from their faculty during the pandemic. Her team’s solution in addressing the issue was offering appreciation and increased communication about employee needs such as pay. “We started having different cultural events with the faculty and residents to show them our appreciation,” she said. “We did an underrepresented minority bowling event so people could meet one another and feel that there are resources, and others that care about them.”Transparent and Contextualized Compensation With the goal of increased transparency and reducing gender and racial pay gaps, new laws in California and other states require the position’s salary or hourly wage range to be posted in any internal or external job announcement.As the compensation expert based in a public company in California, Chowdhury said this conversation has been her focus for the last few months. There are different ways companies are sharing their pay structures, some upon request, others publishing on an accessible shared site. “Most companies have really embraced this change, it’s the way of the future,” she said. Chowdhury said Box has decided to share their salaries globally, not just in the states where mandated.Chowdhury shared the importance of context in compensation.“We wanted to have consistent treatment,” Chowdhury said. “We didn't want employees in California to feel like they had to ask to get that information, and then if you're in New York or Poland you can't.”Additionally, conversation and context are important before sharing numbers, Chowdhury said. “You have to help people understand how these ranges are developed and what their position and range is,” she said.Although it can be tricky to communicate about pay without sharing performance ratings, Box’s process with employees is about sharing feedback, sharing the message behind the rating, and avoiding labels. “I feel like more and more, we will have to be very transparent,” Chowdhury said. “We are going to have to share that if you have this specific performance rating, this is the kind of increase you're gonna expect to get, with this as the multiplier.”Chowdhury said she believes we are also going to start seeing leaders and managers being more regimented in their compensation decisions. “They have to own those decisions, be able to talk about it, and explain it to their employees,” she said.The concept of pay parity, ensuring that employees in the same job and location are paid fairly to one another regardless of gender and ethnicity, is also being added to the conversation. “I think there's gonna be more discipline and more focus on the internal parody of making compensation decisions,” Chowdhury said. “ I see it as a positive thing with pay transparency. The more knowledge we can share, the more we're all on the same page, the better.” Chowdhury said this will all take some time but that she was interested in how other companies are managing these conversations and enabling managers.Sarupria said Splunk uses segmentation (a tool in performance management that defines different groups of employees) for their talent acquisition decisions, which does affect an employee’s goals and compensation. “People do not know where they stand relative to certain individuals, but they do know what percentage of the work they're getting right,” she said. “So from there, they can gauge how they're performing.” Compensation is intricate and involved, Sarupria said, adding the whole pay-for-performance branding needs a refresh.Chowdhury agreed and said there are multiple elaborate factors that play a role in determining how someone is paid but that the future of compensation will be market driven. “Payment decisions are not just made on performance, it's about location, relocation, and even a company’s tier system,” she said. “I think we will see that base pay will just be market driven. Performance is going to be removed from this whole conversation.”Chowdhury said companies may reward performance somewhere else, like with bonus scales and perhaps will be based on equity. However, the conversation and debate are ongoing with pay transparency laws and inflation in play. “The conversation is shifting,” Chowdhury said. “We all need to get on the same page and have enough data to make these decisions.”Focusing on a Flourishing WorkforceNearing the end of the discussion, Lomelí was asked to define well-being as opposed to wellness. “That is a wonderful question,” she said. “The way I would think about it is that well-being is something that we can drive to and there are different predictors for it. It's your physical wellbeing, your emotional cognitive wellbeing, all of those striving behaviors impact your wellbeing.”Wellness is more of a driver of well-being, Lomelí said.“What's most important is that being well and flourishing has a huge impact on your performance, your ability as a manager, and your team's performance innovation,” Lomelísaid. “And, it serves as a buffer, especially in the environment that we're living in today, especially here in Silicon Valley.”Krista Sherer is a strategic communications consultant with a background in journalism and corporate communications. She resides in Sebastopol, Calif.
Employee Engagement and the Macroeconomics of Talent
BY Krista Sherer May 17, 2023“Unless you’ve been under a rock, employee engagement is a hot topic,” said Matthew Willis, senior vice president, North America of Advantage Club. In a talk at From Day One’s 2023 Silicon Valley conference, Willis stressed his love for “employee engagement, or the employee experience, culture, or whatever it is we're calling it today.” Advantage Club currently works with companies such as Target, H&M, and Bausch + Lomb to run their in-house recognition programs, but intends to take a more prominent role in the coming year as a branded provider of employee recognition and engagement programs. “Think of it as an Uber for recognition, mindfulness, and wellness,” he said. According to Willis, with 45 percent of employees working from home, and the average cost of hire in the United States at $4,700, the most critical factor for people in talent acquisition, human resources, or people strategy is the employee experience. Because of these numbers and the data from employee satisfaction scores, companies are paying more attention to this issue, or they should be.“Talent acquisition teams are kicking and scratching to get people in, and the job market is still very hot,” Willis said. “So, all of a sudden, the chief executive officer who said, ‘Yes, I was interested in the Employee Satisfaction scores (ESAT), and I'm interested in turnover,’ is now saying, ‘I'm interested in turnover and the ESAT scores, but I'm also interested in our employee net satisfaction score.’”Companies have always been attentive as to whether their customers refer them, but Willis said that businesses are now focused on whether their employees will do the same. As a result, leaders are assessing engagement surveys and analyzing data using metrics that were overlooked three or five years ago. “What we're getting, as a result of this, is a kind of human resources tech boom and the macroeconomics of talent,” Willis said. “We're getting a spotlight on employee engagement, experience, and culture.”Willis said that this moment could be a unique time for professionals who live and breathe this information. But there is a caveat. “The information can be skewed in a lot of different ways,” Willis said. “What we do know is that 90 percent of businesses indicate they recognize their employees.”Working against this data, Willis said, are the statistics showing that 40 percent of employees said they had not been adequately recognized by their supervisor in the past, and 65 percent say they have yet to receive any recognition at all.“So we think we're doing a good job, but if you ask the front lines, we're not,” he said.Willis acknowledges the challenges that come with employees working from home, asking for flexible scheduling, and still wanting to feel like they belong. Also, although compensation is the number-one motivator for workers, employees are showing they need more recognition and credit, as well. And only 21 percent of global employees are engaged at work.“What does that mean on an active weekly basis?” Willis asked. “It means employees are not getting involved with company activities. So, we know there's disengagement, there's silent quitting, there's career cushioning. And there are the layoffs.” These are tough problems for leaders to solve. Conflicting data points make it difficult to find immediate answers, but identifying employees’ needs is the first step. Willis says that recognition culture is rooted in hearing employees, celebrating successes, and creating a feedback loop to create a healthy employee experience and increased engagement. Relating recognition to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Willis adds that, as you address employees’ needs, their motivation rises.“This is consistent in all companies,” he said. “I don't care if your company size is 100 or 250,000.”Willis also notes recurring themes in employee satisfaction surveys: “I want the opportunity for growth. I want a sense of belonging. I want to believe in the company or product,” he reiterated. “We’re seeing a greater need for flexibility and scheduling in the workplace. And we're literally seeing the words ‘recognizing, achieving, belonging’ more, and more, and more.”He stresses that this input predicts a company’s turnover and that leaders should take responsibility for the outcomes.Willis led the thought leadership spotlight (photo by David Coe for From Day One)Willis also points out that the six predictors of job satisfaction, according to Gallup, are culture, autonomy, growth, opportunities, flexibility, purpose, and recognition. However, he cautions that employees’ needs differ depending on factors like generation, business function, and location.“Paying more attention to employees’ needs creates avenues for recognition,” he said, adding that top companies are working on monetary and non-monetary recognition and celebration across channels. This type of recognition can look like acknowledging work anniversaries or birthdays. There is also value-based recognition, when employees receive badges or rewards for living up to a company’s core values. Cultural commitment is also something that can be recognized. “What is our culture?” asked Willis. “Let's ask what we want to see in our culture. Then, let's start recognizing those things,” he said. “Not just with a sales quota for the quarter. How about service? How about above-and-beyond awards? We're creating those awards, and then we're celebrating across the organization.” Willis and Advantage Club are seeing flexible awards and point systems in larger companies with 250,000 employees and above. Swag is still essential, but it’s thoughtful swag. More importantly, they see rewards like online team building, online communities, experiences, wellness, and non-traditional benefits like pet care or self-care. Having buy-in from your leadership and CEO is crucial, Willis adds. Using data and tying the employee experience to metrics is critical, but you have to get support from the top. “Our job is to manage up during this time, as well as sideways, and use data. We have to tie it to metrics,” he said. “And no matter how we slice this or dice that, we may have all the data in the world, but if you have the CEO who has not bought in, it's going to be very difficult.”Willis says the time is now to use recognition and awards to your advantage in your company. If you have the ear of your executives, use it; if not, tie the metrics to turnover rates or absenteeism. “To get executive buy-in, track what you normally do, but then say, ‘We're gonna adopt this new engagement platform,’” he said. “‘And at this point, we're going to tie that into our turnover rates. We're going to anchor that to absenteeism.’”Feedback loops embedded into engagement events create communities, Willis says. One way to be successful in this strategy is to have an engagement manager. “You can create exciting, fun activities aligned with the cultural values,” he said. “You have to keep things fresh. We have an engagement manager for a number of our clients, and they meet with you every month.”The pandemic changed many things about how we work, and Willis says that innovation is at an all-time high in the HR tech world. But employees speaking up about their challenges and needs is primary. “We’ve been talking about engagement and recognition for years,” he said. “All of a sudden, we are feeling the pain, and our employees are telling us about that pain.”The beauty of hearing this message from employees so clearly is that we can do something about it.“At the end of the day, I'm going to join an organization where I can thrive and where I love the culture,” Willis said. “The companies that don’t step on the gas with employee experience and engagement will be outpaced by those that do.”Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, Advantage Club, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Krista Sherer is a strategic communications consultant with a background in journalism and corporate communications. She resides in Sebastopol, Calif.
Changing Women’s Health Care Through Grit, Grace, and Humor
BY Krista Sherer May 05, 2023Women and people of color who have experienced any sort of health issue know that our standard of care is somewhat abysmal.“We don’t deserve a second-class medical system just because we were seen as second-class citizens for such a long time,” said Surbhi Sarna, Y Combinator partner and author of Without a Doubt: How to Go From Underrated to Unbeatable.“I wanted other people to understand the importance of women's health,” Sarna told moderator Rosalie Chan, senior tech editor of Insider, in a fireside chat at From Day One’s 2023 Silicon Valley conference. Sarna said the experience of turning her health scare into a success inspired her “to change the state of women's health care.”The Journal of the American Heart Association concluded in 2022 that women were less likely to be admitted when presenting chest pain in the emergency department. The study also confirmed that women and people of color waited longer to be seen by physicians.Sarna had an ovarian cancer scare in high school and suffered from debilitating pain. It took months for medical professionals to tell her she had a complex ovarian cyst. Grappling with invasive blood tests and ambiguous ultrasounds, she was left with the options of surgery, the possible side effects of a biopsy, or allowing the mass to dissolve independently.Ultimately learning it was not cancer, Sarna wanted to make a change in the world of women's health and began working on raising capital to create a first-in-kind microcatheter for the detection of ovarian cancer.“And so the idea was born,” she said. “But women's health in 2010 was the least sexy area for raising venture capital. So, talk about being doubted! I always had to go in front of a room of men and say the word vagina because it's part of women's health.”Sarna says that responses to this clinical term were perplexing, with men leaning either in or out. In addition, the fundraising process was nightmarish, with people telling her that women’s health was “bikini medicine.” Nevertheless, she proceeded.“It took me a year to raise $250,000 to build a prototype,” she said. “Doubters even said the market size was too small. Yeah, women only make 50 percent of the population – tiny market size.”Additionally, it was difficult to attract male engineers to the project of creating a women’s health device with a young female chief executive officer at the helm.“Eventually, I did find a team who believed in it,” Sarna said.She recalls that the strategy of putting fear into her donors' hearts finally worked.“If they didn’t invest in me, they would miss out,” she said. “I told them nobody else understood this disease state as well as I did and that I could write a textbook on it. Of course, the first several checks written were all from women, but women who believed in it.”Sarna’s doubters only motivated her more, driving her to raise $20M in venture funding and to complete three clinical trials with two first-in-class FDA approvals. The result: nVision Medical, which developed the first microcatheter for the identification of ovarian cancer. In 2018, Sarna sold the corporation to Boston Scientific for $275M, more than 15 times the money invested and one of the most significant exits in women’s health. She stayed on for the following two years, running the organization in preparation for its inception. “It was a very proud moment for all of us,” she said. “But I realized I wanted more people to understand the importance of women's health, and I wanted more examples of women leaders out there reaching for their dreams.”As a woman of color raising capital in tech and medicine, Sarna is candid about her experience of navigating structural biases and her struggle with self-doubt in her book.“I wanted to be honest about the challenges, what it was like to fundraise as a woman, and then to be pregnant, and then have a one-year-old at home at the time of the exit,” she said. Sarna says the unconscious bias and sexism she experienced in raising capital fortified her and fueled her courage to speak up for other women. “Before, I might not have felt comfortable to call it out,” she said. “And now if I’m in a roomful of men, and they're talking over another woman, I just say, ‘Sorry, Bob, I think Sally was speaking.’”Currently, as a partner with Y Combinator, where she invests in early-stage companies or startups, Sarna says changing corporate values are at the forefront of their work. “Leaders of companies are revisiting their values and having open discussions about them,” Sarna remarked. “All of us know that culture happens one way or another, by accident or by design.”Sarna says that, in times of turbulence, employees return to cultural values, which are a company's glue. “Values are the light at the end of the tunnel,” she explained. “ They keep you going and remind everybody why they are there in the first place, why the companies work matters, and why they matter.”Rosalie Chan of Insider interviewed Surbhi Sarna during the From Day One session (photo by David Coe for From Day One)As someone who built her ladder to her success, Sarna says that having strong values to return to while raising money for capital was necessary. “I can't tell you how many times I talked about this in the book,” she said.In light of news about Theranos risking patients’ health by misrepresenting the accuracy of blood analysis technology and defrauding investors, Chan asked Sarna how she assesses due diligence as a partner. “What I’ve come to realize after working with the hundreds of founders is that the vast majority just aren't like that,” Sarna said. “Most of us have gotten into health care because we hope to make a difference to patients.”Sarna does intrinsic motivation sessions with her founders at Y Combinator. The sessions are based on the neuroscience of our spontaneous tendency to be curious, seek out challenges, and gain knowledge without rewards. These gifts will keep you going in the face of obstacles and doubt.“When everything is falling apart, your data doesn't come out the way you want, or your current investors aren't willing to write you another check,” she said. “What keeps you going? What is that intrinsic motivation?”Sarna says the latest session with her team was very emotional because many members were personally impacted by issues related to health care in one way or another. “They fundamentally want to create positive change in the ecosystem,” she said. “So, I'm not blind to what has gone on around us; I remain very optimistic about the mentality of most founders, especially in the health care and life sciences space.” Chan asked Sarna, a founder in biotech without a medical background, how she assembled the right team. Although Sarna graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied molecular and cellular biology and bioengineering, she does not have a medical degree. Sarna says she started with her previous boss, David Snow. The initial meeting was uncomfortable, but Sarna suggested he consult with her and try it out. After a couple of months, the partnership was sealed and the company was off to a good start. “I think you need to remember that the reputation you build is so important, especially right now, on top of all these layoffs,” Sarna said. With a strong partnership and an established team, Sarna and her colleagues were methodical about their cultural values. For example, employees needed to enjoy working, not just show up for a paycheck, and to have a good sense of humor. “We wanted people who would take the work seriously; don’t take yourself as seriously,” Sarna said.From that point, Sarna says the team had a good understanding of their cultural values, technical skills, and the operational skill sets the work required.“The combination was just magical for us,” she said. “We had an extremely high retention rate after that, because when it fits, it fits.”There were mistakes along the way, Sarna admits. “I once hired someone who kept calling the word vagina a ‘hoo-ha,’” she said. “They were the Head of Clinical, and needless to say, that hire did not work out.”Still, Sarna says that these experiences helped everyone stay clear on their commitment to their values. “It cemented our values even more,” she said. “And whenever we tried to move outside our values, it didn't quite work for us.”Chan asked Sarna how Y Combinator supports startups in developing healthy cultures. “Being a founder is an incredibly hard job; a lot rests on your shoulders,” Sarna said. “But one of the advantages is that you can be deliberate about the culture from day one, and it can be an extension of yourself.”Sarna says that corporate values and culture are concepts you feel and live naturally, but that they need to be talked about and revised, so the company walks its talk. “If you have a cultural value of integrity, or you are holding yourself to high standards when it comes to handling data, it extends into how you make choices,” she said. Ending with the trending topic of layoffs in the tech industry, Chan asked Sarna how she thought this would impact the startup ecosystem. “It takes one door closing before you can even notice another one's open,” Sarna said. “And I think that a lot of the engineering talent that has been let go in the valley is thinking, ‘Maybe now it's time to pursue that dream I had of starting another company or bringing this innovation to life.’”Y Combinator sees over 17,000 applications twice a year. “Right now is a great time to do a startup, because it takes seven to 10 years to build a good, solid company,” Sarna said. “Even though I can't crystal ball what the economic climate will be then, it may be better than now.”Krista Sherer is a strategic communications consultant with a background in journalism and corporate communications. She resides in Sebastopol, Calif.
Building the Values of Inclusivity and Collaboration Into a Tech Brand
BY Krista Sherer March 19, 2023“We were building a plane and flying it at the same time, with the hope that we were not going to crash and burn but soar to new heights,” said Aruna Ravichandran, chief marketing officer for Webex by Cisco, the conferencing and communications platform, about the company’s rebranding in the middle of the pandemic. In a fireside chat at From Day One’s recent Silicon Valley conference, Ravichandran said that tools for collaboration and video conferencing were suddenly in huge demand, democratizing the hybrid workforce. “We had to do something in a hurry to send the message to the world that we are not just about video conferencing, we are about the entire collaboration portfolio.”Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco Systems, along with the company’s board, invested in an immediate brand transformation, creating an entire marketing team from scratch and ran with remodeling their identity in the spring of 2020, Ravichandran said. This metamorphosis resulted in changing a video-meeting product into a collaboration portfolio as a $5.5 billion business.“Webex is no longer just about video conferencing; it’s a single app for everything to do with collaboration,” Ravichandran said. “So from the same app, you can do video meetings, you can do chat, you can do voice, you can do polling, you can even run event webinars.”Ravichandran led the transformation not only with speed, but with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as core values for the production. Collaboration and inclusivity are about breaking down silos across geography, individual work arrangements, and socio-economic groups, as well as building this promise into the brand and its purpose, she said. “We influenced the engineering teams to create inclusive features,” Ravichandran said, “so you can speak in English and translate what you are saying into 108 languages in real time.”Additionally, the company wanted to give equal voice to different personality types, including both introverts and extroverts, creating innovative solutions for people to express themselves in their own ways. “We had to make sure that this was not just a marketing rebrand, but that there was inclusivity in the underlying technology,” she said.Multigenerational diversity was a consideration too, with four generations currently active in the workforce. Ravichandran said they wanted to ensure they were thoughtful and authentic to their customers and employees. “It helped internally and externally to set the stage for what Webex is,” she said. At the conference, Ravichandran was interviewed by From Day One co-founder Steve Koepp Even with a video collaboration tool as her business, Ravichandran has been vocal about face-to-face meetings being vital to Cisco’s culture. Moderator Steve Koepp, From Day One’s head of content, asked how they manage the tension, and two seemingly clashing forces, of people wanting flexible work hours while working from home and businesses wanting employees to return to the office. “How do you make bringing back people into the office a magnet and not a mandate?” she said. “It’s a very tough problem to tackle.” Ravichandran said the answer is also a combination of culture and technological transformation and that offices built before the pandemic aren’t suitable for the changes that have happened with employees or the innovative technological advances over the last three years. “More and more, facilities, leaders, and chief innovative officers are starting to think about how they have to transform their offices,” she said.HR professionals are central to finding solutions to this challenge. “They have to give the flexibility while simultaneously allowing employees to innovate,” she said.Building this kind of culture will take a great deal of transformation and the code still needs to be cracked, Ravichandran said. However, she believes that this change will likely happen in a couple of years and that diversity is at the heart of the strategy for talent acquisition and HR leaders. “One of the beautiful elements many of us in the tech world learned is that talent is global. So every geography has something to bring to the table,” she said. “When increasing your innovation in an organization, diversity is very important.”As for marketing in the future, Ravichandran said that artificial intelligence (AI) and the latest chatbot, ChatGPT, will be game changers. There is a caveat to how it is used, though. “You have to give ChatGPT the right input to get the right output,” she said. “It will help make you more productive. It’s not going to eliminate jobs; it is going to make your job much more productive so that it will free you up to think about additional things.”Ravichandran added that sustainability is critical for all tech companies and is currently on every CEO’s charter. “Technology innovation is going to be a part of sustainability,” Ravichandran said. “And the HR community’s input will be important.” Krista Sherer is a strategic communications consultant with a background in journalism and corporate communications. She resides in Sebastopol, Calif.