Women at Work - Women Who Are Making Work Better for Women

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

When you see potential for your company to improve in some way—whether it’s to overhaul an outdated policy, round out benefits, or to make jobs more workable, how can you instigate change? Three women who saw that potential and carried it through describe what they did at their companies, the results so far, and how you can follow their lead.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash womenatwork. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Bernstein. When you see potential for your company to make jobs more workable, to bring people together in earnest, to round out benefits, how can you instigate change? Three women I interviewed during our recent Women at Work Live virtual event saw that potential and carried it through to programs and policies that are making a difference. Myra Orndorff,

a senior manager at Capital One, campaigned for more part-time tech jobs after she went part-time herself as a way to stay in the workforce while raising four kids. Becky Gunther persuaded Raymond, the advisory firm where she leads compensation and benefits, to give its employees free maternity support, elder care, and mental health counseling. Stephanie LeBlanc, who leads Google's global programming for women of color, launched an annual summit that's furthered the company's retention and professional development goals. What can we learn from their success? How can you follow their lead? They're here to tell us. Welcome, Stephanie, Myra, and Becky.

Hello. Great to be here today. Great to see you. Myra, and Becky. Hello. Great to be here today. Great to see you. Myra, let's start with you. Back in 2020, you were struggling to meet the demands of your job in analytics while raising four kids. So your boss at Capital One turned your full-time job into a part-time one. The reason you're with us today is that you campaigned

to turn that special exception into a benefit available to more employees. Today, Capital One's technology department has five teams made up of 26 employees who all work between 20 and 32 hours a week. So let's go back to the beginning. Why was it important for you to turn that special exception into more of a rule? Well, I knew that I wasn't alone. I knew that I had friends and coworkers who could relate with my need. And I was also spending time helping our tech organization with analysis on talent challenges. And so I was familiar with all the statistics about how many people in the workforce really had the appetite to cut back. So I thought, hey, if I have this need, and if this will help me stay in the workforce, we really need to build it and make it more readily available for everyone. Talk about the kinds of benefits that you've seen both personally for employees and for the

organization with this benefit. Personally, I really fell in love with the model because I felt just so grateful to be able to stay and so empowered to prioritize in a way that I probably should have been doing all along in my own career. And so as we launched the program, we have seen the associates in the program experience those same benefits. So not only do part-time employees feel higher sense of well-being and lower burnout, but they also feel more excited when they come to work and more focused

and have better productivity. These employees also have higher intent to stay with the company, which of course leaders really love to see. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I noticed that Capital One chose to make teams entirely composed of part-time employees rather than mixing together part-time and full-time. What's going on there? Why are they doing that? That idea stemmed from my own experiences of being an online. And so we had started with the whole teams of part-time roles to provide peers for mutual support and also to kind of elevate the challenges, the potential challenges that the individuals would face, make sure that those were elevated and visible to their managers and leaders. But moving forward, we definitely don't

think that part-time roles should only be in entirely part-time teams. And we're absolutely looking to expand now into freestanding roles. So it sounds as if the part-time role has become accepted and embraced and more mainstream. Is that right? Well, we're getting there. I have to be honest. I thought that once we tried this and I made a few presentations about the results that everyone everywhere would start creating tons of part-time jobs. job openings come because an individual manager of maybe a team of five has someone leave, move on to another opportunity, and they have one open headcount. And so it's hard, despite the metrics and the great business case, for that individual team, that individual manager to say, hey, let me replace this full-time position with a part-time position, because they feel like they'd be giving up capacity. And I can understand that, but I'm hoping I'm optimistic that maybe the solution

is something as simple as just starting to embrace the decimal point. If a hiring manager has given a headcount target of 5.6, then they're probably going to create a part-time position. My takeaway is to always, no matter how much you think your business case is a no-brainer, prioritize working through the use case with the people on the ground that on a day-to-day basis are going to be implementing and scaling what you're driving. I want a t-shirt that says embrace the decimal point. Okay. So just talk us through how you made this happen. Where'd you start? How'd you make the case? Okay. You know, I was terrified because I knew that I was proposing something that was just totally not done. And in some people's eyes, it's just no big deal. This is a small change.

But in other people's eyes, it's like, this is a really different way of doing business and managing a workforce. So I was emailing and giving a very brief summary of the idea and just asking for a meeting to discuss the idea. With my own leadership chain, I just shared the idea and said, are you comfortable with me spending a little bit of time developing this business case? And who else should I talk to? And what do you think I should include in the business case? And then I started cold calling executives across the company and just really trying

over and over again to share the idea. Once I found a couple of senior leaders that were willing to try it within their own teams, we didn't have a centralized budget to say, hey, here, this program will pay for all these new part-time teams. We had to have leaders that were willing to use their own labor budgets to try something new. And now we're about a year, year and a half into it and things are going really well. And we're just trying to figure out how to grow it, improve it and influence the rest of corporate America as well. Was it smooth sailing? Did you meet any resistance? Definitely not smooth sailing. I always think about this, how much emotional energy it takes

to drive change. I mean, by definition, when you're driving change, you're going to be swimming against a current. And there's so many forces that push us and pull us in so many directions. So it's hard creating momentum in the direction that you want to go. But I manage this in a couple of different ways. I try to build in recovery time for myself when I know I have like a tough meeting coming up or an event where I'm speaking and I'm nervous. After this event, I have an hour until my kids come home and I am not going to spend that hour checking emails or knocking out additional tasks. I am going to give myself some recovery time to walk, pray, process, think about future ideas. And then I also try to

play my whole movie. So our brains are so negatively biased and we have a recency bias and it's so easy to let our brains replay things that haven't gone how we wanted. And with the ups and downs of the journey, I have really found it to be helpful to think about the importance of the destination that I'm driving to, the progress that has happened. And I should find satisfaction in that and not in just those individual moments or milestones. I love that notion of playing your whole movie. Stephanie, I'd love to ask you a few questions. You helped launch Google's Summit for Women of Color, and it has become a central part of the company's retention and development strategies. So can you talk a little bit about how this has actually helped women of color and Google?

Sure. So the backstory of how this actually all got started, we had our first and largest gathering of Black women at Google in 2018. And that was the brainchild of Melanie Parker, who's our chief diversity officer, and Felicia Butterfield-Jones, who's our VP of partnership and engagement. And I likened myself to the doula that created this beautiful and meaningful space for this community to gather. And it was based on data. Our diversity annual report, that's public information. We actually just launched our 10th

edition of that. And it gives data around our hiring representation, attrition numbers across a number of demographics. And so in 2018, there was qualitative and quantitative data that said that Black women were having a disparate experience from the rest of the Google employee base. And so given that, that gave us a moment for action to bring together the community so that they can see, feel, hear one another and have this moment. And it's since grown and expanded to include women of color where we have a yearly gathering, albeit now it's virtual. We're still in that space here in 2023, but virtual gatherings for women to experience community development, a signal from the company that we are dedicated to investing in them.

You keep talking about data, and that's no surprise. This is Google after all. But what can our audience members take from this? What if they don't work at organizations with the kind of data generating and gathering muscle that Google has? What can they do? Yeah, I think one, there are so many organizations like HBR that puts out survey results, reports, various studies that give a general sense of where differing communities stand, what the state of the union is for those communities. So I think that's one body of work that can inform the way in which companies show up for their employees. And then two, employees will share how they feel and the experiences that they have if they're asked, and if they feel like what they say will be acted upon. And so what I would say to organizations is

believe them when they share their experiences, don't look for the way out or to explain it away, and really stick to a commitment to making change based on what you've heard. I'm very struck that this is an event, and a lot of organizations would regard an event as a kind of nice to have, but not an essential part of DEI strategy or talent development strategy. How did you win buy-in for this? Sure. So I think the important thing for folks to realize is that events are not meant to be a standalone or performative notion for the communities or for organizations. It has to be lock armed with the systemic change that's happening in all of the moments of the employee

cycle. So from the moment that they are recruited to career progression, and then even how they leave a company. And so if we're doing the work in all those spaces, then those events feel like an add on and an integral part of the overall investment that we're taking for employees, and not just this shiny event that that happens. I think the other piece too, is when you have an event, it shouldn't be all right, see you in 364 days, right? And so what I think we've done extremely well within this body of work is create standing leadership teams, what we call ambassadors that represent each of our offices across the US and even now global, so that they continue the connection, continue the community building on a local office basis, so that it's not just this annual event that they look forward to with silence

in between. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work.

Hey listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. So I want to turn to you now, Becky. You are with Raymond. It's a financial service firm and you chair the Women's Initiative Network Council, in addition to being the director of Total Rewards. The benefits that you won are really, really generous. It's free counseling sessions, on-call pre- and postnatal coaching, and elder care consulting.

How did you persuade the company to do this? I think similar to my co-panelists, it's back to connecting those dots for leaders between what the people in your organization or future employees will value as far as benefits go and what their families will value. But then also, what are those positive business outcomes that also are intertwined? So we also conducted benefit-specific engagement surveys to gather and listen to that employee feedback. And then we also did a lot of external benchmarking with a variety of sources. And we looked at our aggregate healthcare claims data to see how is this connected to impacting behavioral health outcomes or other comorbidities that we might be seeing. And then fortunately for us, the caregiver support platform that we ended up partnering with,

Caroloop, they actually let us do a pilot program before we even officially signed up with them. And we had one of our associates try it out for six months and share their experience. And it was such a positive experience that that connected with all this other data really sold itself, so to speak. Well, I noticed you've said we, we did this, we had a partner. How did you get people to sort of join the cause to team with you? So I am very big on collaboration, both with internal team members, whether that's fellow HR team members or other leaders throughout the organization. We have an amazing healthcare task force that I lead that we have key leaders alongside me sort of making these

final determinations on what do we think we want to focus our time and energy on from a benefits perspective. And then our external partners, you know, we have an engagement survey partner, who is just phenomenal. And then our insurance broker too, I, I feel very, very lucky that we have an amazing client service team we work with. We have a wellbeing strategist we work with. And all those partnerships, those relationships that you can build can really help you propel things forward in a meaningful way. So I would say those key relationships that you can build both internally and externally are just critical to pushing your organization forward if you're trying to drive change. So you've each had a chance to listen to your co-panelists' stories. And I wonder what you've picked up from each other that you're going to take into your next project, your next campaign? And I'll go to you first, Myra.

What did you hear from Becky or Stephanie that you thought to yourself, yeah, I'm going to do that next time? So I find encouragement to hear from Becky that she also used individual stories. So when I was presenting my business case, at times I would lead with my own personal story and the audience would be so drawn in and engaged. But at times I actually got some people saying, hey, you're making it too personal or hey, let's stick to the data. And I listened to that feedback. And I still think you do need to be very intentional about the use of stories and examples. But I don't think that I'll hesitate as much in the future to do that to really paint the picture for partners and leaders with, you know, my own story and with the stories of others,

making sure that I capture all of those stories. So many people have come and volunteered, part-time program participants will send me testimonials. It's such a blessing to have firsthand, you know, knowledge and visibility into the impact of the program and really featuring those stories alongside just the numbers because it really helps people get their minds around the benefits and the reality much more quickly. Stephanie, what about you? What did you hear? Yeah, well, first I want to second the importance of the qualitative and quantitative data being integrated. Because what we often hear is you hear the story and then you're like, well, what does the data say?

And then you hear the data and then people will say, okay, well, give me more. I need to understand the people behind the data. And so I love the fact of being intentional about the storytelling, being able to have both to quiet the critics or depending on whatever their area of interest is to bring both to really give this holistic and visual view of what the challenges are, what the opportunities that you're looking to go after. I think for me, what Myra said that resonated with me the most was around frontline managers and leadership and bridging that gap. I think without a doubt, when we talk

about these topics around parenting, caregiving, women's issues, DEI, I think from high level leadership, right, we get their buy-in. They are totally sold in on whatever programs or initiatives that would most benefit the community. I think the tension that we then experience is then the frontline manager who has the one headcount for a limited number of resources already on their team. How do they embrace a program or initiative like the one that Meyer was talking about where it's not a full-time employee. And so the imperative that I bring from that is that we need to invest in our managers so that they can meet the needs of their direct reports and that there can be way making for them to be as supportive

as they would like to be for these programs and initiatives that, you know, can negatively impact or just cause strain that may already exist on their teams. And what about you, Becky? Something Stephanie said really resonated with me, and that was, you know, it's great if you can get that buy-in and implement that benefit or that event, but then what? How do you continue connecting those dots behind, say, the event? What impact does that have on everything else? It's not just this great party you threw. How you connect all the pieces together is so critical. Okay. You know, as I listened to your stories, one thing hits me and that is you each put yourselves out there. And I wonder if you thought about the social capital you needed to win these programs, to win these benefits and how you think about amassing and spending social capital today. Does anyone want to jump in on that one first? Go ahead, Stephanie. People want to help. And especially if they can see the

passion and the engagement that you have and what the outcomes and the benefits are, they're willing to use their social capital often to make you know, make connections, get meetings on calendars with certain folks or add their name as a supporter or an ally in this. And so that's the way in which I've used social capital and just sharing my story and talking through what the benefits are, again, on the qualitative and quantitative front, and getting people caught up in a good way to also be invested in moving a thing forward. Anyone else? Myra, you were going to jump in, weren't you? Yeah. So I was just going to offer that I have really tried to make sure to be familiar and maintain a familiarity of the needs of the leaders and partners that I

was trying to work with. So, you know, we talk about the business case, like it's a singular thing, but I've redone this business case made, you know, 50 versions of it, adjusting for the audience and then adjusting over time because everybody's priorities are constantly shifting. So I think when you're delivering somebody a solution to their own need, it doesn't feel like you're spending social capital. But when you are asking for someone to, you know, maybe lend their name or their voice to your cause, I think that it really helps if you make it clear why you are asking for them to lend their voice because they are uniquely positioned. There are specific reasons. Maybe there's some benefits to them that you can highlight as well, but people really appreciate it when you just

express intentionality and thoughtfulness about how you are asking for them to spend their time. by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Now I really would love to turn to the audience questions because there's some really good ones here. And I'm going to start with one that's for you, Myra. It goes like this. I'm in a situation where I would love to create a role that doesn't exist now that would totally rock the status quo. What did that conversation process look like for you? And what obstacles were you able to overcome? That process looked like initially me thinking of what's in it for my boss. And then I also outlined, you know, hey, how is this going

to impact the people that I work with? And then I proposed a trial period. So, you know, it's me always trying to think of how can I make this the easiest possible for them to say yes. And so I said, let me just use my vacation time for this for a little while so we don't even have to make any system changes and just see if it's going to work and then we'll both you know we'll regroup and see if we think it's working well and make a decision about more long term after that point so that's a recommendation that I have for everybody consider a trial period it's a little easier to say yes to yeah much easier to say yes to. Yeah, much easier to say yes to. So interesting question from Ellen in our audience, and I'll direct it at you, Becky, first. Have you gotten any pushback

on your initiatives as businesses are trying to get back to normal or facing tough economic times ahead? Are the original business cases still just as strong or have you had to adjust them? For the benefits that we've recently implemented, I honestly don't think they're necessarily impacted by economic conditions because if I've done my job well from the get-go, connecting those dots between what associates value, what their families value, and then, you know, that business case of what positive outcomes this is going to provide to our business, I think the cost of that benefit, it's going to end up being somewhat of a wash, whether that's because you can retain people or you can attract talent, you know, we're always

going to have a need for attracting and retaining great talent. That's not going to go away, even if, you know, there's a recession. But I will say, I think it was Myra who pointed this out is, you know, you might have to tweak and change along the way in terms of, you know, evaluating whether or not that benefit is still a fit for your organization today as it was last year or two years ago. So I think it's important that you're continuing to measure the impacts of that benefit. And is it something your people still value? Because we're in a world of rapid change right now. And their needs might change also. Yeah. And that point you make about talent retention, it is so expensive to churn. Churn is so expensive, it slows things down.

Stephanie, do you have any thoughts about whether or not you need to adjust the program you fought so hard for as we face tough economic times? Yeah, I think the answer is no. We still need to stay the course. I think there's some creativity in play in terms of what it looks like, again, hybrid versus virtual versus in person. But in this economic moment, we need to retain the talent that we have. And so this is one of those important levers to do this. I consistently hear folks talking about the first summits that we had back in 2018 and 2019.

We offered headshots in one of the events, and it's to this day still the headshots that you see in folks' profiles, both internally and externally. And so the lasting effects that these types of events have on folks wanting to stay within the company, to continue to have those moments, to have a space specifically for them, here's the truth, right? Many historically excluded folks don't get to feel seen, heard, or valued within their core working group, whether that's with their manager or with their team. But if organizations and companies can create those spaces, whether that's through ERGs, with the community groups, or events, this is a lever where folks can still have moments of true authenticity, where they may not feel like

they can have it within their core working space. And so having that balance is incredibly important to retaining high value talent that has been historically excluded. And now a question for you, Myra, also from our audience. How did you balance pushing for your cause when advocating for this enormous change you won while not coming across as too pushy? Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, that's a tough one. I, by nature, am not pushy. So I was told even, I think, when I was five years old by my father that I was

a diplomat. I'm an extrovert. I really converse with people, connect with people. And then I rely on that. I rely on those connections to navigate the agenda that I have. So I think really investing in relationships in the midst of pushing for the change that you want, not ever steamrolling, being cautious not to be disparaging of existing processes. You can easily misstep when you're trying to illuminate the problem so that you can propose your solution. So you have to be very intentional and cautious there. And then my own personal story is personal, but the data is not. And so that well-rounded story builds a little bit of protection for you that, hey, the data is saying this and this is needed. So I think all those things kind of work to combine to hopefully

not be seen as pushy. Yeah. And, you know, again, we're hitting on this idea that you need the data to strengthen your argument, but the personal story brings the data to life. That's what makes it kind of irresistible. Here's a question I'm going to throw at both Becky and Stephanie. How can you share ways to keep track of the rapid change and keep assessing needs as they change? Is it all about employee engagement surveys and focus groups and town halls? Is there more to it? Do you need to balance approaches? Talk about that.

And why don't you start, Becky? Sure. I do think the engagement survey is a good place to start, you know, when you can listen to your associates and listen to those ever-changing needs. But one thing we're doing more of now, instead of just focusing on an annual engagement survey or even, you know, a couple surveys a year, we're starting to do more of these short pulse surveys. So you can have a very short list of questions. We hear a lot, I think, and especially as the pandemic went on, that people were getting over-surveyed. But I think if you're keeping it very pointed to information that you're looking to glean from those employees. And then, as Stephanie had mentioned before, that they can see that you're listening and taking action on that.

It is a key way to understand whether or not something is still a benefit that is valued and that you're placing your budget dollars wisely. And then I know for us, we look a lot at our aggregate claims data, because we can tie together both that feedback from our associates, but then also what is it looking like from a health outcome standpoint, you know, a lot of these work life benefits, they're not just nice to haves from managing stress, and maybe not feeling that burnout, but they have health impacts. And we can tie those two together and determine where we want to set our priorities going forward. What about you, Stephanie? Yeah, I think what I'd add there, because we too do pulse and then the sort of bigger moment surveys, creating pathways for feedback, bi-directional pathways for feedback. So top down,

but also bottoms up. And we do that through the 17 plus employee resource groups that we have at Google. So not only do we have these snapshots, but we have a pathway for issues or opportunities to be raised to leadership. And then the other major point here is that even in moments when we get to parity or reach our goals, it's not enough to say, and we're done and move on to the next one, because we need to ensure that that parity is consistent and maintaining over the span of time. And then also what we're seeing now too is the definition or what we have traditionally defined as minority or underserved or historically excluded. All of these things are changing or expanding rather. And so there are more communities now that are feeling excluded, that are being targeted. And so the way for us to think about is that we always need to have

our head on a swivel to see spaces and places where folks are not feeling included or not having a sense of belonging and who they look like. It's not the typical, oh, just women. It's not, oh, it's race and we need to support the Black communities. The folks who are being marginalized is growing. And so we need to remove what that avatar has traditionally looked like and make sure we're meeting the needs of all of those communities. Stephanie, Myra, and Becky, I am so grateful to you for taking the time and sharing your stories and insight with us. Thanks for having us.

Thanks so much. That's our show.'m amy bernstein for more ideas about how to make a difference listen to our season eight episode how to push for policy changes at your company in it amy g and i speak with two experienced change makers they explain the strategizing relationship building and risk management that are the foundations for any successful proposal. And because sustaining a grassroots initiative requires motivating a bunch of volunteers, they also share tried and true ways to keep everyone invested in the cause aligned and on track. Women at Work's editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Tina Tobey-Mack, Rob Eckhart,

Erica Truxler, Ian Fox, and Hannah Bates. Robin Moore composed the theme music. Get in touch by emailing womenatwork at hbr.org.