Today I’m welcoming Justin Holland, the CEO and Founder of HealthJoy to talk about health benefits — and why it’s so important for employers to deliver a quality healthcare benefits experience for their employees, wherever they’re working, remote or on-site. Healthcare has changed radically — it’s far more complex than it ever was. And right now, employees need more help and guidance than ever. 

Sexual harassment is not an easy topic, and with the advent of most employees working from home, it has taken on a new dimension of difficulty. Identifying it with concrete evidence is sometimes a feeling you get because you know the other person's behavior or comment was not appropriate. Still, the question is, was it sexual harassment. 

Keep in mind that sexual harassment does not always occur through physical contact. The spoken word, emails, texts, and video conferencing can all serve as vehicles to deliver sexually harassing messages. 

Further, sexual harassment can be delivered in various ways. Comments targeted to your gender, wardrobe, hairstyle, or even an inappropriate joke can be construed as sexual harassment and under many legal jurisdictions can be reported as such. 

Working with virtual assistants can be a great benefit to organizations of all sizes and industries, and especially useful for start-up companies and small businesses looking to grow. Using virtual assistants can take many burdens off of a business owner and can do it in an economical way. Often, business owners will take on the tasks and duties associated with all aspects of their business leaving them to become overwhelmed and over burdened, which can lead to burnout and the potential demise of their business. Hiring virtual assistants of varying specialties can help streamline the processes and procedures established for a business and provide the expertise a business may be missing. 

In this episode of #WorkTrends, entrepreneur Nathan Hirsch, the co-founder of OutsourceSchool, describes the myriad benefits of hiring virtual assistants. He explains how to properly hire, onboard, train and manage virtual assistants to get the most from the skills they bring to an organization. He, also, shares advice on when the best times are to hire virtual assistants with specific skill sets during various business growth milestones.

HR is navigating endless changes right now, including how to best advise and equip employees with the savings and financial planning they need. What’s different: we’re not face to face. The tools and information need to be online — and in a platform that makes sense, offers simple and clear navigating, and presents the best savings opportunities there are. Employees are under enough pressure as it is. And they need a way to better support the financial stresses they’re under. And with the world changing so quickly, we need a platform that can leverage the power and the scope of automation. And while we’re at it, let’s make it trustworthy, reliable, scaleable, and easy for both employers and employees to use. 

Today I’m sitting down with Augie Smith, Founder of Otherhood, to talk about how his company partners with employers to help their employees with a pressing challenge today: saving as much pre-tax income as they can for what matters: healthcare, education, and retirement. We’ll be looking at the role of automation and AI in this innovative platform, and talking about why employee self-service is so important when it comes to benefit management.

Reflektive’s new report on performance management shows like every other aspect of how we work, there are major changes afoot. The 2020 Performance Management Benchmark Report, as it’s called, is hot off the presses.It surveyed over  1,000+ HR professionals, business leaders and employees, on the state of performance management, including trends, employee needs, and sentiment about the future. 

Jennifer Toton, Chief Marketing Officer at Reflektive, joins host Meghan M. Biro to download some of the more compelling trends that the survey uncovered. The report sheds light on the present and the future — and how the shift to remote working has changed our views and expectations on performance, as well as our desire for feedback, reviews, coaching, communication, and time.

The pandemic has thrown a curve ball to many people in the workplace. What was once normal is now the old way of doing things. The new normal came quickly and it didn’t give people a chance to catch up. Many employees were faced with working from home or someplace else that is not optimal for many reasons. Some find the noise distracting, the workspace inadequate, the routine disruptive or the technology lacking in ways that is causing people to fall behind in their work. 

In this episode of #WorkTrends, I’m spending time with two veterans of remote working, Maria Orozova and Scott Thomas. They own and manage a creative services agency and do this successfully as a married couple. Many of the struggles employees and businesses are facing now are challenges they overcame in their many years of learning how to divide child care, finding ways to create “alone” time, delineating between work and home hours and using good tactics for interactions that don’t create communication fatigue.

You’ve worked hard to create an engaged, loyal workforce. Then 2020 hits. Overnight we are sent to at-home workspaces working in physical isolation. We balance the stresses of health and wellbeing with maintaining performance in our jobs. Civil unrest has quickly heightened emotions and anxiety. All this and we’re barely past the mid-year mark. In a work world where our teams are distributed physically and mentally, how can we build and maintain trust among our workforce? Further, how do trust and belonging drive sustainable performance? 

Today I’m sitting down with Iain Moffat, Chief Global Officer of MHR International, to talk about the importance of safety, relationships, and purpose as the cornerstones for building real trust in today’s workplace — and radically strengthening the company culture. These may be uncertain times, but creating a sense of trust and belonging in your workforce and your workplace gives people an anchor we all need — and it’s an incredibly effective way of sustaining the kind of performance and engagement that, in turn, sustains your business.

Before COVID-19 one of the most popular ongoing discussions at #WorkTrends was about the gig economy — which was already breaking open the traditional 9-5 model of working and shifting the perspective from payroll to project. Coworking, freelancing, independent contractors — we were looking at generational preferences and realizing that it was highly likely that we would not be bringing talent into the workforce the same way we had before. 

Then came the pandemic, and suddenly we shifted to remote working and flexible schedules out of necessity — which as more than one colleague of mine has said is, after all, the mother of invention. And with that shift came the realization that we really can break out of the 9-5 mold, undo our adherence to staying in cities in order to be near our workplace, and detach from the need to stay on salary for being independently affiliated. There are, of course, tangible matters to address, including how we best source and hire freelancers with the chops and skills we really need. But here’s another revelation: HR is a great opportunity for hiring freelancers – and being a freelancer. Freelancers with HR talent are on the rise and for a number of reasons, we’re going to see more organizations turning to freelancers — and finding that both strategically and practically, it’s a win.

Today I’m welcoming Chris Russell, Founder, HR Lancers, and Jim Stroud, VP marketing, Proactive Talent, to talk about the enormous shift we’re seeing in how people work and how organizations hire — from salaried to gig. And that includes HR as well, which may surprise some of you. But with millennials leaving major metropolitan areas and remote working becoming the norm, freelancing is becoming a viable way to build a great HR team. We’ll talk about effective strategies for hiring the best and the brightest freelancers for HR, from best practices to best resources.

There’s so much uncertainty about what will happen to the workplace — whether we will wind up staying remote or mixing it up, or be able to return to a physical workspace. Will it be safe, will it be a best practice? There are a lot of questions facing us and we’re not going to have the answers for a while now, given what’s happening in the country with COVID-19. 

Against this backdrop, we still need to hire people. And we need to find a way to onboard them into a work culture that inspires and engages them. Just how to do that has always been a challenge. But now it’s even more so — because we can’t rely on proximity to transmit behaviors or a sense of shared purpose, or energy, or enthusiasm. It all has to happen in a way that transcends physical boundaries and is effective nevertheless.

Today I’m welcoming John Baldino, President and Founder of Humareso, to talk about the best practices for onboarding your new hires into your workforce, no matter where you are — and how to uncover the blind spots in your onboarding process as well as your workculture to make onboarding a success.

The Supreme Court recently handed down a landmark Federal civil rights law that protects gay, lesbian and transgender workers from workplace discrimination based on sex, including gender identity and sexual orientation. The ruling extends protections to millions of workers nationwide, and it’s an incredible victory for inclusiveness and diversity. But on a day to day level, we have a lot of work to do. Even in workplaces that consider themselves inclusive, coexistence can be harrowing for those whose identity doesn’t conform to gender stereotypes. 

In many ways and on many levels, we so often don’t know what our fellow coworkers are going through. We don’t see their struggles — and in some cases, that ignorance can make it worse. Since bias, diversity and inclusiveness are very much front and center for so many conversations about work, and they should be, I wanted to make sure we looked at how it is for LGBTQ employees. That’s a segment of diversity and inclusion we don’t focus on enough. So we’re going to head from an expert on the issue who’s developed a very effective methodology for increasing empathy and self-awareness. It’s a tool for reducing unconscious bias, microaggressions, and other challenges that LGBTQ employees face all too often, and creating a sense of camaraderie, collaboration and support that truly includes everyone. 

Today I’m welcoming Elena Joy Thurston to #WorkTrends. Elena is an inspirational speaker and founder of the PRIDE and Joy Foundation, and she has an incredible life story. She’s here to talk about the connection between growing our self-awareness and making our work cultures truly inclusive.

Leaders today are grappling with very real and pressing challenges: keeping their workforce safe, balancing the need for business results with the need for compassion, staying ahead of new laws and regulations, grappling with whether or not to reopen and how to do it safely. As they put their hearts and minds into how to improve their work cultures on a very fundamental level, two factors to keep in mind: resilience — the ability to weather changes and struggles and bounce back intact, and diversity. 

Forward thinking leadership means taking a clear stance on diversity that is effective and relevant. It’s one critical way to increase the resilience of your organization and your work culture. If you don’t address the problems that make your work culture brittle, it snaps under pressure. If you don’t aim to expand your workforce to represent as many diverse points of view as possible, you lose that ability to make the best decisions based on seeing all the possible angles. But if as a leader you don’t have a well-developed sense of emotional intelligence, you won’t practice the empathy and the clarity to understand the dynamics at work in your organizational culture, and steer your workforce through a crisis — any crisis. And you likely won’t be able to keep your best talent for very long. 

Today I’m welcoming Melissa Lamson, CEO of Lamson Consulting to talk about the new imperative for leaders — to bring resilience as well as diversity to their organizations, and why the two go hand in hand.

As hiring kicks back into gear with companies rebuilding workforces, adding new employees, and shifting gears to meet the needs of reopening and ramping up business, here’s the question. Are you getting the results you need to get from your hiring technology? And: Are you getting lots of leads from third party job postings, or reducing time to hire? Are you meeting your diversity goals? Does your ATS help you bring in people who join the organization and stay, and thrive? Are the new hires a good match, and are you able to leverage metadata to find out?

The answers to those questions are going to be increasingly key in the coming months and the near future. Today on #WorkTrends I’ll be talking to Doug Coull. Doug is the founder and CEO of APS, Inc., makers of SmartSearch talent acquisition and staffing management software. He’s here to discuss why we need to get real about ATS. It’s a lot more than a process or a tool. An ATS system thrives on guidance, collaboration and partnership. That means having an ATS partner who can work with you to create great solutions. An ATS partner helps companies make the best decisions around hiring — to improve their hiring success and sustain their business as they move forward, regroup and rebuild. There’s a lot to know about the why and the how of ATS.

Leading through a crisis used to be part of the conversation but now, in these times, it is the conversation. We’re in a health crisis, an economic crisis, and also a social crisis — and all are having a heavy impact on our workforces. And these strategies apply to any crisis — hopefully they won’t be as mammoth as what we’re facing as of late. 

The good news is that if leaders take the right approach they can help steer the company and their people through the maze of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety and be in far better shape when they come out on the other side of the crisis. That means being as transparent as you can be, communicating clearly and frequently, and being careful about the speed and velocity of any decision, or pivot. Leaders have had to oversee a dramatic shift to remote work in so many industries — and in others, they have had to find ways to help make their workforce safe. But these are all the factors of trust — and trust is the glue that’s going to hold your organization together, no matter the nature of your business, or the size of your workforce.  

Today I’m talking to Doug Butler, the CEO of Reward Gateway, on #WorkTrends. We’re going to be looking at how leaders bring their organizations through a crisis — and how to make the best decisions and changes to sustain yourself over the near term and the long term. Reward Gateway is an organization that has adaptability built right into its DNA, and it’s a great example of the kind of flexibility and forward thinking we all want to have in our own organizations. But the ability to survive a crisis has as much to do with each and every person in the organization, and with the leader’s capacity for empathy, ability to converse their energy, and to look forward with clarity.

What’s happening today has thrown lives and work into turmoil, but we’ve never adapted more quickly. What’s enabling some businesses to pivot in record time is being grounded in the technology needed to keep the workflow going, and the people who possess the digital skills to make it happen. 

Digital skills were in high demand before Covid-19, part of the digital transformation some call Work 4.0, and that demand is increasing. As businesses scale, adjust, strategize, and aim for the future, their survival depends on workforce that’s skilled in digital skills — including analytics, data-driven decision making, and new and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

How do you create that workforce, as a startup, an SMB, as a Fortune 500? By understanding the nature of your business, assessing what you need to function, and identifying the gaps. And there are effective strategies to assess the digital skills of prospective hires today that accommodate a changed hiring landscape. 

On this episode of #WorkTrends, sponsored by SAS, our guest is Sean O’Brien, Senior Vice President, Education at SAS. We’re discussing how to create a digitally skilled workforce, including assessing the skills gaps you may not even realize you have in your company. Sean will talk about the new realities and challenges organizations face as far as hiring talent, and how to better develop the talent you already have.

On a granular level, work cultures are made of relationships, and relationships are made of interactions. Every interaction we make has the opportunity to benefit our relationships or potentially cause damage. In work, where relationships are the backbone of collaboration, productivity, engagement and teamwork, interactions are important to get right. 

But it’s not always that easy, or that simple. Even before the pandemic triggered a lockdown and work from home, we weren’t always succeeding. Now that we’re working remotely with increased distraction and less direct contact, or on the front lines as essential workers under tremendous pressures, the dynamics have gotten even more complicated. Zoom fatigue and incivility are just two factors undermining our working relationships, whether we’re aware of them or not.

Today, Robin Rosenberg, CEO and Founder of Live in Their World, as well as an executive coach and clinical psychologist, joins #WorkTrends to talk about the best practices for improving our work interactions and our empathy for each other, and learning how to repair the damage before it adds up to an impasse. Robin’s organization, Live in Their World, uses VR technology to teach us not just how to walk in each other’s shoes, but “in their feet,” to truly experience their perspective and build bridges rather than walls.

What is wellness? The definition has been thrust into high contrast by COVID-19 and our changing work landscape. Working remotely or not, employers tending to employee well-being are finding themselves at the cutting edge of employee experience when their wellness offerings fit the needs and lives of their people. 

At #WorkTrends we’re looking at some of the companies who are focusing on wellness as a key differentiator -- in terms of employee performance and experience, and also customer experience. And we’re looking at how the pressures and challenges today are helping to catalyze a new definition of what wellness means. It’s not a matter of offering isolated benefits or perks anymore — it can’t be. As companies shift to flexible and remote working out of necessity, they’re finding the need to provide a through-and-through culture that embodies their values — and wellness is an enormous component. 

Today I’m bringing Arthur Matuszewski, VP of Talent, Better.Com to #WorkTrends to talk about how he and his company are innovating a wellness culture that employees thrive on. It has demonstrable benefits in terms of customer success, and some of its most popular elements may surprise some in this audience.

Work is all about relationships — you and your boss, you and your managers, you and your teammates, you and your direct reports, and everyone else. Every single one of the relationships we have at work (as well as everywhere) has to be carefully managed, or it can go south fast. At work, compound that need to manage your relationships with the pressure of the workflow, and there’s little margin for error. And teams are becoming the functional nucleus for more and more organizations.  81% of employees work on teams — cross-functional, multi-layered, remote, hybrid, of all shapes and sizes. And no team can function without great management and great relationships.  But here’s the good news: managing is a skill like any other. There are effective strategies and approaches for every kind of managing we do: up, down and across — to improve our work, our effectiveness, and our relationships.

Today we’re going to learn from an expert on the workplace — in fact she’s an expert on so many facets of technology and teams that it’s hard to keep track.

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered intense economic and social disruption and it’s far from over. And our work landscape has changed and will continue to evolve. For businesses, steering through COVID-19 and navigating this new work landscape requires savvy and careful strategizing. More than ever, HR is playing a critical role. And you need the best information you can right now — from managing a newly remote workforce, facilitating furloughs and layoffs, and helping the business leverage provisions of the CARES Act, understanding and tapping into the Paycheck Protection Program. 

This is a new normal that can seem like anything but normal, and among many HR practitioners, there’s a very real need for guidance and support. One very effective strategy is HR outsourcing. But it’s not about giving up control. It’s about the value it can bring to the business. 

Today I’m bringing Tom Hammond, VP, Corporate Strategy and Product Management at Paychex, to #WorkTrends for this sponsored podcast on the why and the how of outsourcing HR. We’re going to talk about the best strategies for surviving these tough times, and supporting our businesses and our employees through it. In light of COVID-19, we’ll be looking at a range of outsourcing models — such as professional employer organizations (PEOs) and administrative services organizations (ASOs). We want to help our listeners understand how these solutions can support them right now — when we really need them.

Right now organizations are seeing their mettle tested and one thing that’s helping them keep their workforces aligned, engaged and supported is a great company culture. We’re going to talk with organizational culture expert Josh Levine about what makes a company culture matter now — such as how leaders play a key role, and why being there for your people may also mean shifting priorities for the duration. Messaging and zingy purpose statements aside, companies that operate from a foundation of truly essential values and demonstrate caring and perspective are the companies who are going to do better in the long run. Can we say that a culture of caring is good for business? Right now, I think we can. And Josh Levine has a lot to say about what we can all do to strengthen our culture — and strengthen our connections to each other as we work remotely, work differently, and work together.

The world of work is in the midst of a reckoning. From finance to retail to hospitals to energy to technology, there’s not one sector that has not felt an impact of the COVID-19 pandemic of its toll on the economy . But we’re evolving, and quickly. Weeks in, many organizations are past that sudden pivot to remote teams and are now stepping back from doing triage to think about what’s truly important for supporting our people. That includes technology, security, and knowledge — as in learning the skills, approached, and technologies we need to know to function. Laying the framework for a successful shift to what happens now, and in the future, depends on expanding on the lessons we’re learning right now. 

Today I’m talking to Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek, Chief Marketing Officer at Skillsoft, to #WorkTrends for this sponsored podcast on the key to remote workplaces that allow your people to excel, thrive and grow. We’re going to talk about the challenges for leaders and managers to engage and support their remote teams, why knowledge is so important right now to all of us.

On today’s #WorkTrends podcast we’re talking about the skills our workforce will need for the future — and why we need them now. The skills we’re going to need to achieve in the workplace of the future have everything to do with attributes, behaviors, habits and mindset that support collaboration, creativity and innovation, and empathy. And the new workforce is trending to high-performing, sometimes cross-functional teams, with less hierarchy and more independence. To thrive in this context, we need to harness our incredible potential as humans — and be able to use our skills to excel. This is going to matter increasingly, as we face the hybrid workplace of the near future. Today’s guest, Angela Maiers, is here to get us mapping to the skills of the future. Angela is an edupreneur, a futurist, an author, an innovator, and the founder of Choose2Matter, a global nonprofit.

As younger-gen (I’m not saying young gen intentionally) and Next Gen hires come into organizations and show their incredible aptitude and promise, we’re certainly justified in wanting to reward them and promote them. Continuity is on our minds right now as we search for the light at the end of the tunnel of this current crisis — and look for how we’re going to sustain our organizations for the future. And it’s the bright stars in our own workforce that may wind up leading the way. So how do we best develop them? How can smaller organizations keep pace and provide access to coaching and support? The answer may lie in AI. 

An AI-driven digital coach named Amanda is actually proving to be a phenomenal solution for companies looking to train, develop, and educate front-line managers, supervisors, and upcoming leaders. It was launched by  Kevin Kruse of LEADX using technology powered by IBM Watson. We’re going to talk about what it is, how it works, and why it’s leveling the playing field for organizations no matter their size. Both 80% of those polled on whether or not they wanted robot coaching, and the same percentage of those polled on whether or not they want human coaching said yes, they do. The bottom line isn’t machine or person. It’s having a coach, period. And the results with Coach Amanda are really compelling.

Even right now, even with everything, we need to amp up our workplaces like never before. Culture keeps us together — but you can’t create a great culture if you’re not leading like a rockstar, and treating your employees like MVPs. So many organizations are morphing right now into remote and fragmented workforces — by necessity. But we’re really looking for the glue that will keep us together. Tell you what we all need to keep the beat: Culture. A culture that celebrates empathy, emotional intelligence, innovation, alignment and growth Culture is a dynamic reality that can make our people feel awesome and want to keep on rocking. Or, it can make them want to go join another band. 

Culture also sets us on a course for the future. And all the organizations I know are obsessed with what the future holds. Culture helps us attract the next superstars to our organization, helps the leaders connect with the rest of the workforce, and supports the employees who have the promise to really go the distance and be the next leaders. And that’s what Jim Knight is all about. He’s a standout expert on workplace cultures and rockstar leaders. So we’re going to talk as well about how you can become that leader — who creates an amazing workplace culture, embodies it, and keeps it evolving, current, and sustaining for the long-term.  And hey, we love those bands that have stood the test of time and stayed relevant through the decades, am I right?

Business readiness has taken on a whole new meaning right now as we grapple with an absolutely massive upheaval facing our lives as well as our work. Even a month ago we were discussing the importance of digital workspaces and remote capabilities as a key item on the wish list. Today it’s a necessity. We need to provide a structure for our employees to do their best work no matter where they are. This is a tremendous challenge for leaders and managers: how can we maintain continuity, support and sustain productivity, and adapt, really, on a dime? What it takes is incredible innovation and ingenuity. But the good news is we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are powerful and effective ways to provide central, interconnected workspaces, maintain communications and stay secure, by shifting to digitally empowered solutions that keep us ready for nearly anything. Being business ready is on everyone’s minds, and I’m thrilled that today I’m talking to someone who knows how to help. We’re talking to Tim Minahan, the Executive Vice President, Business Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) CITRIX, about the importance of business readiness — and the best approaches to achieving it. Flexibility, adaptability — it’s like gymnastics for business. But it’s also a matter of survival. This podcast is sponsored by Citrix.

Today internal communication is transforming right before our eyes and ears. It’s getting a powerful boost from new technologies such as AI, augmented and virtual realities, and changing not only what we say but how we say it. The future of communication — even how we reach out to each other — and everyone in our organizations — is going to see rapid growth and radical improvements. In fact we’re already experiencing them today.. We’re talking to organizational communication expert Shel Holtz, a pioneer in the field who’s now the Director of Internal Communications for WEBCOR Builders in California. He’s been pushing us forward ever since we started using the intranet (you’ll find out why) and is here today to talk about how new technologies are transforming communication — and why we’re never turning back.