Marriott, a nearly 100-year-old company, has shown that even established organizations can modernize and adapt.

During the pandemic, the hospitality industry faced unprecedented challenges, including hotel closures and furloughs. Despite these hurdles, Marriott emerged stronger by prioritizing workplace flexibility and redefining leadership.

Ty Breland, EVP and CHRO, discussed the company's journey of resilience and reinvention, and the impact their culture has on business performance. Marriott has set hiring records and is ranked No. 8 among the Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For.

On job sharing and creating workplace flexibility for workers:

We listened to our associates, and what they were looking for was intraday flexibility. Many have families and commitments outside of work, and we didn’t want them to miss out on activities that are important to them.

We started to think, why can't we share some of these jobs? Why can't this be a split job between two people who are performing what used to be one job? It doesn't work everywhere, but where it could, we took advantage.

On the non-management or hourly side of the business, it was about creating your own schedule. Like many companies, most of our workforce was full-time before the pandemic. We would fill the entire schedule with full-time associates and then where we had anomalies in the schedule, we may offer it up to part-time, which might not be the most desirable shift.

We flipped that logic and really looked at people creating their own schedules and having an influx of part-time mixed with full-time associates. This led us to rethink how we managed scheduling.

What that gets you is a more engaged and committed workforce, which we’ve seen in our numbers. It also builds community, where people can bring their whole selves to work and help each another, whether it's by picking up a shift or helping with a report. It makes us a better organization and community, increasing our impact.

[Learn how culture drives business success from Marriott and other leaders of companies on the 2025 Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For List at the For All Summit™ in Las Vegas April 8-10.]

On creating new jobs, called Integrated Jobs or iJobs:

All of us travel and stay at hotels. When you walk in, you really want one person to help you with what you need at that time. A guest experience expert is not only your front desk agent, but they also can serve as a concierge or other front-of-house role you might need before heading to your room.

In the past, those responsibilities would have been divided between three or four different jobs, but the consumer appreciates having one point of contact. The associate likes the variety in their job, and they feel like they're really caring for the guest in a more authentic and complete way.

We’ve seen improvements in the customer experience, cleanliness scores, guest engagement scores, and associate engagement scores. Turnover is lower at hotels that have fully adopted iJobs. All the metrics go up, including revenue, because the associate feels closer to their role and purpose, which benefits our associates, Marriott, and our customers. It’s a win-win-win. 

On the new leadership mindset:

Having a leadership mindset is important, no matter what level you are. When you wake up each day thinking like a leader, you're curious, courageous, and connected. This mindset can go across the entire spectrum of associates in your organization.

We encourage our non-management associates to transition into management roles. They know our business extremely well. Oftentimes, it's giving them the courage and sponsorship to apply for those jobs. We've always done a great job of having individuals cross from non-management to management, but recently we've doubled down and launched a program, Elevate by Marriott International, which targets non-management associates becoming managers.

Since launching that program, we've seeing big changes in our first-level management jobs. Right now, one in every four hires for entry-level management positions come from our non-management population.

As part of this program, something that was unique was giving them all coaches. We've partnered with an external coaching firm to support these associates. Traditionally, coaching was reserved for executive levels, but we’ve turned that on its head and offer coaching to non-management associates pursuing management opportunities. This gives them the best chance to not only land one of these positions, but to thrive in them.

On advice for HR colleagues:

We have many leaders at Marriott who prioritize putting people first. But for the broader HR community, you have to have a seat at the table. Once you're there, you have to have a voice. And once you have a voice, you have to make sure you're heard.

The best way to do that is to really listen and understand the business. Once you have that firm understanding, you’re better able to apply the right HR solutions and strategies to propel the business forward.

And measure things. We're relentless in our analytics and connecting the dots.

We dive into how The Wonderful Company, one of the Fortune 100 Best Workplaces to Work For®, has transformed the rural community of Lost Hills, California, into a thriving place to work and live on this episode of the Better podcast.

Stephen Howe, EVP of human resources and chief financial officer, discusses how the company is making a positive impact on employees' lives and their communities through innovative programs and a commitment to sustainability. This includes providing free healthcare, healthy meals, and making significant investments in community infrastructure.

On supporting employee wellness:

Through all of our extensive wellness efforts since 2015, we have decreased pre-diabetes amongst our employee population by more than 50%. We've got more work to do, but it’s had a major transformative impact:

• 카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 chief medical officer, Dr. Larry Wolk, oversees five wellness clinics in each of the areas in the Central Valley where we have major operations, and a mobile health clinic to cover areas where we don't have a high concentration of people.
• We staff bilingual doctors and nurses who provide primary healthcare, mental health support, and other wellness services to our employees and their families, and we don’t charge them for those services.
• We have healthy onsite cafeterias in each of our major locations and provide healthy subsidized meals for our staff when they're at work. We also offer healthy meal kits that they can take home. We have fruit and vegetable stands for our employees as well because some parts of the Central Valley are food deserts, and that allows them to buy fresh fruits and vegetables that are subsidized so they can take them home and share with their family,
• Each of our major locations has onsite gyms so people can work out before work, during a break, or after work.

[Learn to support your entire workforce at the For All Summit™ April 8-10 in Las Vegas. Better listeners save $200!]

On the turnaround story of Lost Hills, California:

This effort was really the brainchild of our co-owner, Lynda Resnick, and she wanted to find a way to meaningfully give back, given all the success that she has had, and she decided to start with Lost Hills because over 50% of households have a Wonderful employee, and she recognized that this was a town that really was lost.

Nobody cared about Lost Hills. It was a working class, largely Spanish-speaking, dusty, small, rural town. It was rundown, but it was filled with amazing people who just needed to be given a chance and an opportunity, and Lynda wanted to help. She started by listening. She didn't go in and say, "Hey, I've got all the answers."

And that's where our research team came in, led by one of our key executives, Amy Snow. They got involved and together with Lynda, they interviewed the residents to understand what they needed, what they wanted, and what the problems were. And over the past decade, through many people's hard work, and Lynda's leadership, we have transformed that town. If you went and saw it today versus 10 years ago, it looks very different. We've invested over $90 million into Lost Hills.

On making work meaningful for hourly workers:

We have a program called WOW, our Wonderful Way of Work, and the idea is to give all employees, especially frontline employees, training and tools to solve the problems that they see and encounter at work. Senior executives like me, we only see some of the problems a company faces. They tend to be big ones. They may be cross-cutting ones across multiple groups, but we don't really see any problems within a team where candidly, most of the value is being added. 

What this does is it allows everyone to solve the problems that they find at work, and it allows us a standard way to do that and to communicate that across the company.

So we have a WOW Global Competition where all the WOW teams throughout the globe get together, and we pick the best couple of projects. Last time, we gave them a trip to Hawaii. A team from the Central Valley won, and a team from Mexico won, and they then went to Hawaii and had a great time.

A second area that gives a sense of meaning for employees is our Wonderful Giving program. As part of our place-based giving approach, Lynda and Stuart Resnick grant every full-time Wonderful employee up to $1,000 to give to a nonprofit of their choice, and they'll match an additional $1,000 if someone wants to give their own money.

On the importance of listening:

One of the things I think I've been working on in my career is focusing on listening. I'll listen to WOW presentations once a month and I'll spend an hour or so with my teams listening to their finished WOW presentations.

But if it's even better if you can just have the other person do it, and you can watch and cheer them on. If you do that successfully, you'll find that people over time will take more initiative and they'll do more on their own, and that's the way you want it as a leader.

Hybrid work offers employees flexibility, but it requires intentional effort to maintain in-person connections.

It requires care, intentionality, and lots of communication, which is the approach Edward Jones took.

Suzan McDaniel, CHRO, shared how her team creates valuable in-person connections, as well as the role well-being plays for all employees. She also shared insights around the role personas play in communication, and how leaders prepare for difficult conversations by practicing together.

On the role personas played in the transition from remote to hybrid work:

We knew that there would be a range of feelings coming back into the workplace. It's deeply personal, and we leaned into that in a really big way, and approached it with deep care, empathy, and curiosity. But also, with conviction and confidence about our decision to have hybrid activation. We have flexibility within our framework of three days. Not every week is going to be three days, and we don't have set work hours.

We have about 9,600 employees in our home office and 40,000 in the field. About 60% of our home office associates are hybrid and work within a one-hour commutable distance, and 40% are remote and work from home.

We said, "Okay. We know everyone's not going to be super excited." So, we had personas of people who were more fearful about coming into the office and how to have empathetic conversations with them, and understand what's driving their fear. Maybe you have a sick child at home, and you’re afraid of catching a cold and bringing that home. 

Some people were excited, so we had personas for those who were said, "I can't wait to come back to work." And other personas were in the middle. Some people might've sold their car or moved, for example.

[Learn to support your entire workforce at the For All Summit™ April 8-10 in Las Vegas. Better listeners save $200!]

On how leaders helped each other:

We tried to prepare our leaders as best we could through these personas, data, and practicing with each other — giving coaching and feedback on responding to questions and concerns.

We had practice sessions, coaching sessions, and leadership town halls. We have something called Decisions Unpacked, which is where we have conversations about company decisions so we can equip our leaders to engage with our associates in the right way with feeling fully confident in the information that they have.

We also engage influencers, and that's not determined by your title or role. We involve them in discussions about topics such as the benefits and implications of hybrid activation.

On improving the office experience:

We heard from our associates, "Hey, it's great that we used to do one-on-one meetings walking on the phone. Can we have walking trails?" So we have walking trails on some of our campuses, and outdoor meeting spaces.

We also know that many of our working parents often don't have time to cook dinner, so in our cafe we have healthy meals for them to take home to their families. We also know that people want to have fun. So, we have a pickleball court and in one of our locations, cornhole. So you can just take a break and be able to have a good time with your associates and your teammates.

On the importance of employee well-being:

Emotional well-being is so important and we don't talk about it enough. It's part of everyone's life, and we should make it just as common in the conversation as physical well-being.

We listen deeply to our associates and have a variety of different mechanisms that we listen from. We started to hear a theme around well-being and emotional well-being, and needing more support. So, we invested in a center of excellence that's focused on the well-being of all 54,000 of our associates.

We have well-being warriors who are in our field and our home office advocating for well-being. We've re-geared some of our incentives around our benefits around health outcomes versus just activities to help promote well-being.

I'm very proud of the work that we've done with listening to our associates around our EAP, and understanding that it wasn't hitting the mark as well as it could be. We went to an RFP, and we now have a great partnership with Headspace, who is world-class in providing counseling to not only our associates, but to their families. They also have access to a mental health professional if needed, 24/7 through chat.

There are a few other areas that the well-being center of excellence focuses on — physical, financial, and social well-being — and we're supporting our associates in those ways as well.

According to Gallup, strongly agree that their performance management system inspires employees.

In this episode of Better from Great Place To Work, we delve into the intricacies of performance reviews and goal setting with Liz Heitner, chief human resources officer at Penn Mutual.

She shared how Penn Mutual has transformed its approach, resulting in a dynamic performance success program. They've shifting from annual reviews to continuous, real-time feedback that's connected to business goals. Leaders are aligned and employees are actively involved in the process.

She also encourages the use of AI tools like ChatGPT to boost productivity and innovation, while upholding ethical guidelines and transparency.

On why performance management often doesn’t work well:

One thing some programs get wrong is this focus on a bell curve that's predicated on the fact that you have low performance, that you’re hiring people that do not fit and will not be successful. That's actually a very small percentage of most populations of most organizations. The focus really needs to shift to empowerment, enablement, and people really bringing their best. It's not something that you can just say, "Oh, yay, we've arrived. Check the box. We're done."

This is how contemporary leaders, operating in these remote, high-performing organizations need to focus their time and energy. This is the J-O-B so to speak.

A lot of these performance management programs are a check-the-box compliance exercise, a tool for delivering merit and bonus — and not thought of as the fiber of how we work and accomplish results as a company.

On how Penn Mutual made changes:

We took a test and learn approach.

Step one was goal setting, and we did a lot of training and development to support this effort. People said, "I'm not really sure how my role relates to these areas of the business. I'm really only focused on this area." And so having those integrated conversations with leadership to ensure the goals made sense down to the individual level and cascaded down was huge. And you’ll learn what people shouldn't work on. “What are the things that we no longer are going to work on that don't align with the priorities?”

We also moved our performance calendar to align with our business cycle. And rather than it being an annual event — performance management, success, or feedback — it happens in real time and we’re normalizing that for employees.

And we looked at the alignment of rewards. If you get your performance review and your rating in June, you might ask, "How does that connect with my bonus that I get in the following February?" So again, making sure that we lined up performance elements and the reward cycle in the right place was something we got a lot of credibility around.

[Learn to support your entire workforce at the For All Summit™ April 8-10 in Las Vegas. Better listeners save $200!]

On the importance of aligning leaders:

You need to get everybody focused, committed, and on the same page around what you’re trying to accomplish with your performance management system. That has been a continued focus of our leadership development and training.

At our leadership summit for the top 150-200 leaders, we made sure that we're aligned and committed to the results and priorities as a company. That was a very impactful cultural catalyst, if you will.

On professional development programs:

Organizations need to spend some time reflecting on, "What are the skills, what are the capabilities, what are the competencies that we really need to be successful?" Not today, because today's baked, but five years from now, and, "How do we really chart that course?" That’s all aligned to your business goals. I would get aligned around those goals before you develop and deliver any learning and development activities. That’s so critical.

The other piece of this is thinking about how those programs will be received by employees. If the content is not engaging or relevant, and people don't understand the “why,” it leads to low participation and retention.

Make sure you engage your employees in the design process and explain to them why you're focused on the things you're focused on.

On expanding tuition reimbursement programs:

I think everyone is aware that degreed programs are less and less relevant to equipping current talent in the workforce with the skills they need for the future. We've heard the sound bites around the shrinking half-life of a skill, and it's interesting. There's so much to be gained by degreed programs, but there's so much value we can get out of certifications and courses so we shifted tuition reimbursement program to open it up for employees so they can build skills in the areas where they see fit, where they think they're going to get value.

On setting internal AI guidelines:

If your company doesn’t have an acceptable use policy that addresses AI – whatever your stance is – that is the first place you want to start. Get on the same page from a policy standpoint around what is acceptable and what isn’t within your environment.

We're taking a thoughtful look around the benefits and risks these tools can bring to our employees, policyholders, financial professionals and other stakeholders. Where I think we landed is that this technology has incredibly impactful possibilities for productivity. The toothpaste is out of the tube. It is not going away.

Also recognize that this technology is not something that we, as an employer, are procuring and providing, it's readily available on everyone's cellphones.

"Recognition is such a powerful way to make people feel valued."

Hourly workers often miss out on meaningful work, mental health support, and training opportunities compared to salaried employees at typical workplaces. At CarMax, where most employees are hourly, Diane Cafritz, EVP, chief innovation and people officer, explains how they bridge those gaps.

Listen to this episode of the Better podcast to learn how CarMax boosts engagement by supporting its frontline workers, and get practical tips for empowering hourly employees at your organization.

On creating a sense of meaning and purpose for hourly workers:

You might not intuitively think that working at a used car dealership will give you purpose and meaning, so we know that we have to be intentional about providing that for our associates.

Everything we do is based on our four values — do the right thing, put people first, win together and go for greatness. And we weave those values into every program and all our communication so our associates know that we walk our talk.

카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 vision is to ensure an iconic experience for everyone everywhere. An iconic experience is going above and beyond, and the great thing about trying to achieve an iconic experience is everybody can contribute. So we link our associates’ work through their business objectives, through our recognition programs, and how they are contributing to an iconic experience for our customers. We celebrate when they go above and beyond for customers or associates.

We have quarterly communications meetings at all of our stores, and in those meetings, we recognize above and beyond iconic experiences. Recognition is such a powerful way to make people feel valued.

On the connection between customer service scores and employee engagement:

We ask our customers about their satisfaction with the associates they worked with. And whatever that score is so to speak, the NPS score for associate satisfaction, we bring that back to the associate and we celebrate their wins and help them improve when they are not meeting the expectations of our customers.

And it's just this lovely cycle. If we only worked on the things that were opportunities for them, meaning when they didn't meet the customer's needs, then it would be somewhat of a beat down, to be perfectly honest. So, we really focus on what you’re doing well and work on continuing those strengths.

When people are getting recognition and that one-on-one manager conversation about their performance, we think that they're more engaged because they feel more valued. And more engaged associates overall provide a much better experience for our customers.

[Learn to support your entire workforce at the For All Summit™ April 8-10 in Las Vegas. Better listeners save $200!]

On well-being support for hourly workers:

We dedicate a whole month to mental health, and one of the things we do is we take leaders who have struggled with alcoholism or depression or anxiety, and we have them tell their stories, and we videotape them. These are leaders, these are vice presidents of the company, these are people who you wouldn't necessarily assume had mental health struggles.

We showcase them in ways that they’re comfortable telling their story. They talk about how they were supported by friends, family, the company, and their colleagues. That has been wildly successful and incredibly important.

We also provide access to Headspace for all our associates and their family. And we’re piloting a program called Empathy, which is a virtual-based app that helps you go through grief. What we wanted to do was say, what's the common incredibly stressful event in people's lives and what can we do? And we believe that’s if you have a loss in your life.

Financial well-being is very critical to health, and we have tried to make it more accessible and more affordable. Those are the two things, particularly that our hourly workers tell us when we survey them: affordability and accessibility. And so for both, for instance, we have done every sort of virtual service that you can provide. Physical therapy and primary care can be virtual. We are in small and large markets, and in some of the small markets, there is no access to even basic primary care.

On supporting hourly workers with training and development:

One thing that's core to our training and development is individual development plans (IDPs). Everybody at every level of the company has an individual development plan. It takes away the stigma of an individual development plan. I know other companies use that as, “This is how to get you back on track if you've sort of fallen off of your performance.” For us, it's for our most successful and our least successful.

We also offer 10 minutes or less of video, bite-sized learnings for anybody to take advantage of depending on what they want to work on. 카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 hourly workers are incredibly busy. For them to be able to find time for development, we have to make that time for them.

And if it were classrooms where we had to fly them, it's just not practical. To get them to watch something that's entertaining, educational, and easy to digest and then work with their managers on practicing, is the best way to train and develop our associates right now.

On providing flexibility for workers:

The top two things that are important to our hourly workers are pay and flexibility. 카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 frontline associates love engaging with people. They wouldn't be working for us if they didn't. So their ask isn't to work at home, or wherever they want. Their ask is, I want to get my child off the bus. Can my hours be adjusted so I can get my child off the bus every day? Hey, right now I need to go part-time. Can I go part-time? How many hours do I need to work in order to get my full benefits? Can I go to that level?

They need to be able to switch shifts with people on a dime if they can, based on what's going on in their lives. That's what they need. So as we think about flexibility, it’s not just salaried versus hourly, but what does each individual population need.

"ERGs are fully empowered. There are things happening around the world through our ERGs that I, as the chief inclusion officer, did not dictate, and did not play a part in."

Alveda Williams, chief inclusion officer at Dow, talked about the enormous difference Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) have on policies, practices innovation, and overall business success at Dow. With 600 chapters globally, these groups have influenced policies and contributed to product innovations, such as the Pride collection sneaker with Under Armour.

She also shared why influencers and non-people managers are part of leadership, and how that fosters a culture of collaboration and inclusion. Her insights remind us that inclusion is not just a policy, but a practice requiring intentional effort and leadership at all levels.

On the benefits of employee resource groups:

So often we get stuck on the first letter. Is the focus on the” E”? My tendency is to say we're focusing on the wrong thing. We really should be focusing on that “R,” because these groups are a resource for the employees and they're a resource for companies.

It's why we've spent so much energy around them. Over the last seven years, we have quadrupled participation in our ERGs. In 2017, 15% of our employees were engaged in one of our ERGs, to today, 60% of our employees are engaged in one of the 10 ERGs. We believe in the power of ERGs to move the needle for our people and for our company.

[Learn how ERGs drive business success at the For All Summit™ April 8-10 in Las Vegas. Better listeners save $200!]

On how ERGs influence business decisions:

In terms of business outcomes, I tend to think of that really broadly. I think about policy changes, changes in our practices, and of course changes in innovation and in terms of our overall results.

We recently expanded our global parental leave policy, and we went from six weeks of parental leave to now 16 weeks of parental leave, time off for all birthing and non-birthing parents, regardless of gender. And that policy came out of our women's inclusion network.

I think about the work that we've done around expanding benefit coverage for same-sex couples, born out of our GLAD ERG.

And then there are examples around innovation. One of our key customers is Under Armour. Every June, Under Armor puts out a Pride collection sneaker and in the mid-sole of that sneaker is Dow technology. And so you take the innovation that we bring in terms of delivering the technology into the shoe, partner that up with our global GLAD LGBTQ+ ERG, and you've got a powerful product that is on display, and the proceeds of that go to an organization called Athlete Ally in support of LGBTQ athletes.

ERGs are fully empowered. There are things happening around the world through our ERGs that I, as the chief inclusion officer, did not dictate, and did not play a part in.

When they speak, we absolutely listen. When they bring the ideas, we absolutely vet them. The highest level of leadership in our company serves as the executive sponsors for these ERGs, and it speaks to the level of importance that we place on them. They are not just there waiting to be called up. They are fully empowered and activated to bring their best ideas forward.

On how ERG goals are connected to the company’s goals:

We've said ERGs have long been a place of connection and community in our company, but what are the things that we can do to help them better serve the company's direct needs?

Three years ago, we developed this concept that we call an ERG agenda each year, and it speaks to the things that are critically important for the company. ERGs are going to do the work of providing a place of connection and courage and community for their group and the allies that support them. But if you want to be a resource for the company, here are the things that we are asking you to focus on.

We don't dictate the programming, but we will say that in 2024, for example, well-being is important. And we watch what they do with that, and it can be powerful. What well-being or mental health means to somebody in the Veteran's group may look very different than what it means in the women's group.

We give them five or six sort of anchors, if you will, every year. And then we just let them go and have fun with it, and it's great to see what they can come back with.

When they speak, we absolutely listen. When they bring the ideas, we absolutely vet them. The highest level of leadership in our company serves as the executive sponsors for these ERGs, and it speaks to the level of importance that we place on them. They are not just there waiting to be called up. They are fully empowered and activated to bring their best ideas forward.

On the impact of ERGs on the employee experience:

Seven years ago, when we had 15% of our people in ERGs, we looked behind the curtains of our employee survey and what we saw is that people who were participating in our ERGs were having a significantly different and positive experience relative to those who are not.

We could see it in the data. We were literally proving out the business case around ERGs ourselves, and I mean significant — 11, 12 basis points. This year, it's about 14 basis points. That was with 15% of the people in our ERGs. We knew that if that were true, what we were seeing is higher overall employee satisfaction. That satisfaction translates to engagement, engagement translates to productivity, and productivity translates to bottom-line value.

On how Dow defines leaders:

We have a community that we call Lead, and includes everyone who is a leader of people, in addition to those leaders who are a certain career grade in our organization who do not have people. At Dow, we believe that leadership is a privilege, not a right, and so we want to make sure that we're setting up our leaders to be able to serve the community of employees that we have.

At the center of the employee experience, the data that you at Great Place To Work has shared with us, and the data that so many of our partners have shared with us, is that leaders make the difference. The data will show you that more than 70% of an employee's experience is based on their experience with leaders. And so we are tapping into that unapologetically and making sure that we start at the heart of the house, which is our leadership community, 3,000 or so of our 36,000 employees.

"Leaders forget that you can't just tell people what they should do, you also have to model it yourself. There's a little bit of, 'Do as I say, and not what I do.' It's so important to model that behavior, and show that you believe in it."

Kim Jones, managing director of talent strategy and people experience at PwC, shares insights on the importance of trust in the workplace, the role of middle managers in building a positive culture, and how PwC is using AI to create an equitable workplace on this episode of the Better podcast.

She also opens up about her personal journey to better well-being — a powerful reminder of the importance of self-care, especially in high-pressure environments.

On why leaders often overestimate the trust their employees have in them:

Sometimes leaders forget that you can't just tell people what they should do. You have to model it yourself, so there's a little bit of, "Do as I say and not what I do." It's so important to model that behavior, and show that you believe in it.

Another thing I've seen is there's lots of good listening going on across organizations — at PwC, we have a listening program and platform. But sometimes we fall into a trap of getting a lot of feedback from our employees, but then not acting on it, not showing them what we're doing with what they're telling us, and how we're using that feedback to make things better. 

On mistakes leaders make when building workplace trust:

One might be that you say you want your team to come up with a recommendation, a solution for something. But yet, all along that process of them coming to that recommendation, you're micromanaging. You're inserting your own opinion when it might be best to let them do their thing.

Micromanaging can be a bad habit that undermines feeling trusted. You need to trust people to do their work, and to do good work. Not just say that you do, but show that you do.

On how middle managers can build trust with their teams:

One of the things that we try to do at PwC is help our managers see that they are part of driving the strategy. This is not, "Sit back and let's see what the leaders do for us." You are a leader, too, and it's part of your role to create the environment that we want. 

On how My Marketplace, PwC’s internal AI platform, works:

One of the first big AI technologies that we built and rolled out is called My Marketplace, and it's similar to a talent marketplace. It matches individuals who have a profile that describes their skills with job opportunities. The platform uses AI to more efficiently and effectively do those match-ups and in a more fun, consumer oriented way,

We've had some successes already, in terms of it being easier for people to understand other things they could do within PwC. They can go into My Marketplace and see the different opportunities that are available, and express interest in those opportunities. And the system can match them up with the skills that they already possess and what a particular opportunity needs, and offer it up to them.

Learn how the best workplaces are using AI to build stronger companies and healthier workers at the For All Summit™ in Las Vegas April 8-10. 

On how AI technology makes PwC more equitable:

We have 75,000 people, and what tends to happen is, you know who you've worked with in the past and you tend to want to go back to those people bcause that's who you know. But there might be 74,500 other people that you don't know who might also be really great to work with.

And so you're using technology that is not based on who you know, but on skills needed for an opportunity. You are served up new names, new people that maybe you didn't know existed in the firm before that moment. In that way, opportunity feels very democratized, and we're thrilled about that.

On why leaders should prioritize AI:

When you say, "My current system works just fine, I don't have anything like a My Marketplace." Perhaps, but for how long will it work just fine? Next year, will you still be saying that? Five years from now, will you still be saying that? And on the day when you stop saying that, how far behind are you in now getting yourself ready for whatever the current environment is?

I would also challenge, "It feels like it's working fine," because it's all you know. What if it could work 10 times better? Just, what if? Go through the mental exercise of reimagining the way that you do things to see if you could perhaps do it much, much better. I think there's almost always an opportunity to do something better.

On the importance of work-life balance:

I learned that your body keeps the score, and your body will tell you. Even if your brain thinks you are doing fine, there can come a point where it'll be a huge surprise, but it will happen — you will stop. That happened with me and it was  scary.

And after that, I thought that was very important to be in tune with my body, and to practice self-care, well-being, much more intentionally and much more deliberately.

“You want to be able to know that you're plugging into a workplace ecosystem that is prepared to support you in at least talking through the human side of caregiving.”

This episode of Better features journalist, speaker, and podcast host Ellen McGirt. In this deeply personal conversation, we dive into the challenges of caregiving while balancing a career. She opens up about her experience as part of the sandwich generation, caring for both her family and three vulnerable adults, and the struggles caregivers face in the workplace. 

We discuss practical solutions and the importance of normalizing conversations around caregiving and grief at work. This is an issue every employer will face, as caregivers are the fastest growing employee identity group in the U.S.

On how managers can better support caregivers at work:

Flexible time off, no questions asked. A flexible schedule can change everything for people. You need a leader, manager, assigner, or someone who will help you cobble together a schedule that doesn't derail your colleagues, which of course is a burden, but gives you the flexibility to think, to schedule, to understand what your vulnerable adult needs, and of course, just pull yourself together.

I think hospice-style training would be useful for certain types of managers. You put your hand up for it and you can identify yourself as someone who has that wisdom because you’ve had the kind of training and preparation that a hospice volunteer would have. If you could self-identify, "I'm hospice trained. I'm a volunteer. If this is happening for you, let me be part of your support team," that would be really nice.

And being willing to revisit in 1:1's or regular meetings, how everybody is doing and if there's anything going in their lives where they need a little extra flexibility. The question then becomes one for the team and not just for the individual. I would've been much more likely to say, "I need a little support here," if it was a characteristic of the entire team, that we are all caring about each other. 

You want to be able to know that you're plugging into a workplace ecosystem that is prepared to support you in at least talking through the human side of caregiving.

On the impact a senior leader can have by talking about caregiving and grief:  

If a very senior person triggers this conversation in the workplace with a disclosure or concern, you're going to see new training, new conversations, new talking points, and new volunteers, and maybe even new staff positions around this.

Remember a couple of years ago when Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco, was moved by the news of the deaths by suicide of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade in a row? He asked his senior team, "Could people be suffering, and I not know it?" And he wrote a letter to the organization flagging this and asking people to reach out if they needed help.

He got flooded, and it changed the way the organization dealt with mental health.

Senior leaders should also do an audit of their employee assistance program packages and ask: "Are we providing the proper support with the proper tone that reflects our spirit in this organization?" That would be a wonderful way to get ahead of this.

On how colleagues can support coworkers who are caretakers, or members of the sandwich generation:

Kindness and compassion go a long way. If I was scrambling on something or if I was late to something, just that kind of emotional flexibility that I just was not going to be able to stick to the kinds of structures that I did before.

And if you don't have a good relationship with someone, a card is probably better. This is not the time for a person that you've had conflict with or you're not aligned with or you've had some sort of issue with to try to establish rapport. A card is good. Love that person from a distance.

“Embracing change is not a nice to do, it's a must do from a growth perspective.”

Monique Herena, chief colleague experience officer at American Express, reminds us how and why change and discomfort can be so powerful in the workplace on this episode of Better.

You'll learn strategies that help leaders navigate change and inspire their teams. You'll also hear how American Express has navigated flexible work and why it's important for everyone, including individual contributors, to model values and leadership behaviors.

How do you encourage leaders to embrace change?

Every colleague at Amex — whether you're an individual contributor or leader of others — is rated from a performance perspective on not just what you do in terms of business goals, but how you do it. 

Everything that we do from a leadership behavior perspective is about having an enterprise mindset, being collaborative, making courageous decisions, having an external perspective.

The way we instill that mindset is through a lot of support, a lot of training and tools, and an expectation that we need people to push against the status quo, push each other, have respectful debate, and ensure that we are really instilling a spirit of creative thinking, continuous learning, and bringing people along from a change perspective.

How can we do this better, more efficiently, competitively? How can we get better? How can we learn?

We would not be around for 170 years if we have not innovated time and time again.

[Attend our annual company culture conference May 7-9, 2024, to learn transform your culture from good to great.]

How do you help identify leaders who are reluctant to change?

We spend an extraordinary amount of time on strategy and talent. We talk about it monthly, we're coaching people on the daily, and we set the tone around performance and leadership behaviors. 

Are you demonstrating that change enterprise mindset? If not, how do you course correct? And if not, those people won't be here for the long term because you won't be able to perform at the level to sustain and grow at Amex. 

It’s really important to set expectations and provide support, but also show what happens when you're not rowing in the same direction. Embracing change is not a nice to do, it's a must do from a growth perspective.

American Express has adopted a flexible work model, Amex Flex. How does that model work?

It is a flexible working model comprised of three work designations: fully onsite, fully virtual, and hybrid. The majority of our colleague base is hybrid.

I think we've done a really good job of listening and learning from our colleagues and not being afraid to evolve our thinking and pivot based on what we're hearing. This ensures that we craft the right solutions for our colleagues to meet their needs, but also that we meet the needs of our business and how we support our customers day in, day out.

We recently surveyed our colleagues, and 91% said they would recommend Amex as a great place to work, and that same percentage, 91%, feel supported by their leader in making decisions about their well-being.

American Express has been on the 100 Best list for 24 years, and is the No. 1 workplace in the financial industry. What is the secret to this consistency?

It’s a wonderful thing to be on lists where your colleagues are the ones putting you on those lists because it's really through their voices and experiences that give you those sort of rankings. We have a lot of pride in that.

We really believe that it's important to continue to have a consistent investment across the most important areas of your business. For us, our most important competitive advantage is our talent, and that's not sometimes. That's all the time.

If you could go back and give your younger self some advice, what would it be?

Today as an adult, I'm known as a change leader. I'm known as a courageous change leader. But I would go back and say, even though I took a lot of risks, upon reflection, I would take even more calculated risk. I would've pushed myself to do more of that because my career path was full of surprises. I pushed myself, and many times others pushed me way outside of my comfort zone. Looking back, those were the times that I grew exponentially and more so than I realized at the time.

From a research perspective, we learn upon reflection. Looking back at times when you had a little discomfort in the belly — not sure if you can land on your feet and deliver in the way you need to — those are the times where you're really learning and growing the most. 

What book would you recommend to your peers?

I gave a copy of Adam Grant's most recent book, "Hidden Potential," to my team. I believe in the potential of everyone. I don't see our colleagues for where they are right now in this moment, but how we can invest in their growth and development over the long term.

There is a way to look at the world as a lifelong learner where no one really ever arrives. No one ever needs to be labeled as one thing or the other. We can all grow and change. 

One of the insights I loved about Adam's book is that it's discomfort and getting out of your comfort zone that unlocks hidden potential, and there's no sort of person who has a unique ability to learn in a better, more efficient, more sophisticated way than another person.

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“If you don't like taking a risk, you are taking a risk. You're taking the risk of stagnation, or the risk that your company or team will seize to be relevant over time … We need to continue to help people shift their mindsets from, 'I got this' to, 'I wonder what would happen if …'“

, Novartis professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School, and renowned for her research on psychological safety, joins the Better podcast to talk about her new book, “”— the .

Her research-backed guidance on failing well, what types of failures to avoid, and why high performing teams report more errors than lower performing teams will help your companies thrive. Teams thrive when people feel safe to speak up and take risks (even if they fail), and leaders play a crucial role in creating this culture.

On what happened when you were a PhD student at Harvard and you had a hypothesis about medical errors and teamwork:

My hypothesis was that better teams would have fewer error rates, which was a sensible hypothesis. It was a hypothesis that mirrored prior work that had been done in the aviation context.

To my great chagrin, the data seemed to be saying that better teams had higher, not lower error rates. I began to wonder that maybe the better teams aren't making more mistakes. Maybe they're more willing and able to report the mistakes they're making, or maybe they're just more able to speak up about it.

On how to encourage leaders to create an environment of psychological safety when they don't like taking risks:

If you don't like taking a risk, you are taking a risk. You're taking the risk of stagnation or the risk that your company or team will seize to be relevant over time. It won't catch up with you today or next week, but soon enough, it will.

The way I approach this is by first calling attention to the context that everybody's aware of already: your company or your team is operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world.

They know that already, but they may not be calling attention to it enough to let other people know that they know that things could go wrong. In fact, things will go wrong.

First and foremost is to paint reality in a way that makes it explicit that you need people to speak up, that you know things will go wrong, and the more transparent and the quicker we are, the better off we are.

And two, distinguish between good failures and not-so-good failures. The good failures are the ones that bring us new information in new territory. They're the necessary failures that lead to innovation.

If you can be clear about the fact that we know and expect, and even value what I call intelligent failures, then you make it easier for people to speak up about them, but also easier for people to do their best to avoid preventable failures.

To err is human, we will all make mistakes. But when we're at our best, when we're vigilant and mindful, we can prevent most of them and catch and correct the rest.

[Attend our annual company culture conference May 7-9, 2024, to learn transform your culture from good to great.]

On the three types of failures: intelligent, basic, and complex:

An intelligent failure is an undesired result in new territory where you couldn't have known in advance what would happen without experimenting. So they are in pursuit of a goal. You've taken the time to come up with a good hypothesis that you have good reason to believe it might work. And an intelligent failure is no bigger than necessary. You haven't made it larger than it needed to be.

Basic failures are single cause. Sometimes they're people not paying close enough attention. Sometimes they're overtired. Some of those basic failures are large, like when an employee accidentally checked the wrong box and wired the principal rather than the interest of a loan. That was a $900 million mistake at Citibank a couple of years back.

The third kind of failure is complex failures, and those are perfect storms. Those are failures caused not by one mistake or one factor, but by a handful of factors that come together in the wrong way or at the wrong time to lead to a failure. Any one of the factors on its own would not cause a failure. It's the unfortunate way they came together that leads to the failure.

There are many historically famous, but also every day accidents that qualify as complex failures.

On an example of a preventable failure where everyday fear, or lack of psychological safety, prevented someone from speaking up:

The Columbia shuttle tragedy of 2003 is complex failure. The shuttle reentered the earth's atmosphere and combusted, killing all of the astronauts, and of course, destroying the shuttle itself.

This was a complex failure that was a combination of some technical anomalies happening, some cultural factors coming together that made it not possible to end up catching and correcting in a timely way.

And there is an engineer at the very heart of this story who has doubts, has concerns, makes some tentative attempts to bring them up to his boss. He's kind of shut down, and then in a crucial mission management team meeting, he is present but feels unable to speak up when they start talking about this foam strike issue.

His explanation was he is just too low in the hierarchy to feel it was possible to speak up, and yet he's the one who had the most expertise. The accident investigation board concluded that it would not have been easy, but it was at least possible that a rescue attempt could have succeeded. This is a complex failure that was very much allowed by a strong sense of inability to speak up. That's the very reality of low psychological safety.

On the correlation between higher rates of agility and innovation, and trying new things, even if they fail:

If you only welcome trying new things when they work out, then they're not very new. They're kind of safe bets. And again, over the long term, that's not an innovative company. That's not a company that will likely thrive over the long term.

I think leadership is an educational activity, and this is an ongoing educational journey.

We need to continue to help people shift their mindsets from, "I got this" to "I wonder what would happen if," and shift their mindsets from the idea that we're supposed to have the answers and execute, hit our targets, and everything's supposed to be like a well-oiled machine to a mindset where it's, "Wow, we live in a volatile, uncertain world and we've got to be doing all sorts of things at all times to stay ahead of it."

It's just as important to do our part to minimize and prevent as many as preventable failures, but also to welcome the thoughtful experiments that end in failure.

Part of the answer is making those distinctions, because I think it's very hard for people to sign up for, “Let's fail all day!”

The only reason we're willing to sign up to try new things is when we are all on the same page about the kinds of experiments that might end in failure that are worth doing, and then the ones that we should try to avoid.

Get more insights

Get more strategies from our workplace culture experts at our For All™ Summit, April 8-10, 2025 in Las Vegas, NV.

Subscribe to Better wherever podcasts are available so you don't miss an episode.