In this episode, we are joined by Vern Howard, CEO of Hallo to call BS on Diversity Recruiting. An industry where billions are spent each year, the results are still disappointing and lackluster. Many companies continue to lack diversity in all ranks and we have even seen a decline in diversity at the highest levels of organizations across all industries and sizes.  

Vern Howard is the CEO at Hallo, a diversity recruiting platform that helps connect college students across the country with leading companies like Apple and Google. He joins us to discuss what is wrong with diversity in the workplace today, how companies can avoid diversity washing, and how they can start right now! We will also talk about diversity training and things you should stop doing and things you can start doing so your company is not just a check the box type of organization.

Knee jerk benchmarking in HR systems and decisions has created a race towards the mediocre for most startups. Considering we're supposed to be the innovators there's an awful lot of cheating off of someone else's homework going on and most conclusions reached from a benchmarking exercise fail to remember that the information you're benchmarking against comes from a different set of circumstances, conditions and even just different human beings than the one in front of you. Plus just because it's normal doesn't make it smart or a good idea. 

My hope is that HR leaders and company leaders, in general, are able to shift how they look out into the ecosystem from a benchmarking exercise to an inspirational exercise. But if you're going out to the world and asking it do define for you how you should run your own organization you're risking your success.

Jonathan Basker has spent his career becoming an expert in how humans operate and cooperate inside of early-stage companies. His early career focused on cultivating talent and culture at companies like Etsy, Barkbox, Handy, InVision and betaworks where he was one of the first people to hold a Talent Partner-type role within the venture and developed the Hacker in Residence program - one of the original models for the VC studio ecosystem. He’s studied humans in myriad cultures; learning lessons along the way which are applicable to startups and individuals alike. These days he splits his time between supporting emerging leaders as an executive coach, supporting companies through organizational change and growth, and running around the hills and streams of the Catskills with a fly rod and a bow and arrow. He’s quite passionate about all 3 pursuits.

We often say that culture is not free food or ping pong tables, but something that employees experience every day they work with your company. Since the proliferation of startup culture, perks have been perpetuated as a way for companies to attract talent. Free food, ping pong tables, and arcade machines are just some of the most popular ones. If you ever watched an episode of Silicon Valley on HBO, you’d see the comedic side of perks in full force. 

Perks are not just ping pong, free snacks, and happy hours. In this episode, we called BS on Company Perks and are joined by Karen Weeks, VP of Ordergroove. Karen has a contrarian viewpoint on perks and believes that perks should represent your specific culture and values and ultimately should support and motivate your organization. We dive deeper into how your company can think differently about the perks you offer your team.

Bio

Karen D. Weeks is a strategic partner whose drive is to help companies build and scale their culture to meet their business goals and help people find their career passions.  Her passion is around talent development, organizational effectiveness, individual career development, and helping teams through change.  Currently, Karen is the VP of People at Ordergroove and was named one of the 2020 Notable Women in Talent by Crain’s New York Business. Karen is also a career coach, a speaker, the published author of “Setting the Stage: A Guide to Preparing for Any Feedback Conversation” and the host of the new podcast “Getting off the Hamster Wheel”. Karen’s academic credentials include an MS from Villanova University and a BA from Elon University. She lives in NYC with her husband and furry babies.

Christine Tao, co-Founder & CEO, and Lori Mazan, co-Founder, President/Chief Coaching Officer of Sounding Board, Inc. join Anthony Onesto and New Yawk HR to discuss how, since their last appearance on the show, HR and Leadership Development have taken on new meaning due to COVID-19 and the country’s reckoning with diversity and equality.

Christine Tao - Co-Founder & CEO, Sounding Board

Christine Tao is the co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board, a Silicon Valley startup redefining how organizations are developing their leaders. Her extraordinarily rapid career growth to executive management in the media, mobile, and tech sectors of Silicon Valley became her inspiration for founding Sounding Board. 

Lori Mazan - Co-Founder & President/Chief Coaching Officer, Sounding Board

Lori Mazan is the Co-Founder and Chief Coaching Officer of Sounding Board, the preeminent global leadership development enterprise platform changing the face of leadership development through innovative technology for leaders at all levels of an organization.

Many companies are discovering the hard way that people really aren’t going to be as productive working at home as they would be in the office. At least, they won’t if you think that all it takes is making meetings virtual and installing spy software to monitor your employees. In this episode, we call bullshit on the magical thinking that’s hampering WFH productivity and provide some actionable tips for how to empower your team to be effective remote employees. We will talk in detail about the key elements required for creating successful WFH: investments in technology and in using what you have effectively, giving employees the freedom, trust, and job control that they should have had already, and actively ensuring that employees are not living an always-on lifestyle.

Orin Davis earned the first doctorate in positive psychology and is a self-actualization engineer who enables people to do and be their best. He consults for companies worldwide on hiring strategies, culture, innovation, diversity/equity/inclusion, and employee well-being, and coaches people at all levels on building self-knowledge and developing personal growth trajectories. Dr. Davis also serves as an adjunct professor of business, psychology, entrepreneurship, and creativity, and gives workshops and lectures globally about human capital, creativity and innovation, and positive psychology. He is a startup advisor who helps early-stage companies enhance their value propositions, pitches, culture, and human capital.

We have gone from "do we close the office", to "we are working from home" and now we are in the phase of "do we return to the office and how". The good news is that this is the phase we are now talking about, the bad news is that this phase may be the most complex for Human Resource leaders and teams. How do we maintain employee privacy when we need to know if someone is sick with Covid, could infect other team members, and trace them appropriately. 

We tawk with Ciara Lakhani, the Chief People Officer at Dashlane about how companies can maintain employee privacy during the current Covid19 situation. Ciara, her team, and Dashlane have open-sourced some of their return to work thoughts, procedures, and ideas, so we are excited to chat with her. 

Ciara currently serves as the Chief People Officer at Dashlane, an app out to fix the UX of the internet by filling out your passwords and payment information online. Pre-COVID-19 times you’d usually find her at one of the Dashlane offices in Paris, New York or Lisbon. Now she’s isolating at home in downtown Manhattan. Prior to Dashlane she was the Head of People & Culture at Compass while it scaled from 84 to over 400 employees. While she had her first People start-up role in 2003, she did spend 6 years with large global teams at GE in between. Ciara studied Psychology at SUNY Geneseo and has a MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Coronavirus has taken its toll on companies around the globe. The best description we have heard is a Marvel reference to Thanos’ snap. Within a blink of an eye, companies are failing, freezing hiring, and layoff millions of staff. In fact, we are hitting record numbers of unemployment claims. It’s a VERY hard time for everyone. But, during these times, we should lead more with our hearts than with our employee manuals and HR processes. 

Layoffs are happening via voicemails on a Sunday, without similar care, these same companies took to onboard these folks, and with zero empathy. We are here to call BS and provide ways companies can make hard decisions in a way that is authentic, transparent, and filled with lots of care and empathy. 

LaToya Lyn

LaToya Lyn is an HR leader with a deep passion for people within the workplace. She has a dual master's in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior from Brooklyn College, and her professional experience spans from executive coaching to driving organizational changes and culture transformations for technology companies globally. She's contributed to the world of cognitive neuroscience, including adult learning theories and animal research. LaToya is also a 4x National DisruptHR presenter, ThinkHuman reoccurring contributor, and a recent Harvard University and MIT executive education.

Christine Tao, co-Founder & CEO, and Lori Mazan, co-Founder, President/Chief Coaching Officer of Sounding Board, Inc. join Anthony to discuss how learning is changing in this new world of work and the impact that digital transformation and change management has on companies today. Sounding Board’s data-driven, tech-based coaching platform is truly the ‘future of work.’

Christine Tao - Co-Founder & CEO, Sounding Board

Christine Tao is the co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board, a Silicon Valley startup redefining how organizations are developing their leaders. Her extraordinarily rapid career growth to executive management in the media, mobile and tech sectors of Silicon Valley became her inspiration for founding Sounding Board. 

Lori Mazan - Co-Founder & President/Chief Coaching Officer, Sounding Board

Lori Mazan is the Co-Founder and Chief Coaching Officer of Sounding Board, the preeminent global leadership development enterprise platform changing the face of leadership development through innovative technology for leaders at all levels of an organization.

Workplace giving matters, but most approaches are dated. Today, an estimated $4.8 billion is already donated annually through employee giving programs in North America, mostly through big companies. Big companies have embraced CSR but smaller companies have fallen behind on this trend. While only 20% of S&P 500 companies published CSR reports in 2011, this figure reached over 80% by 2016. But giving programs have a median participation rate of only 9%. Moreover, small and medium-sized businesses -- with 61% of the American workforce -- lack internal CSR teams to run effective programs. This represents an incredible amount of money, time, and goodwill “left on the table.” 

Matt Amalfitano joins the show to help us call BS on the startup philanthropy programs. Matt is the CEO/Executive Director of RaisedBy.Us, a nonprofit workplace social good program. RaisedBy.Us provides workplace philanthropy programming -- employee volunteering, giving, and community events -- to high growth and next-generation employers like Casper, Squarespace, Shutterstock, and Bonobos. Previously, he was a Vice President on the Cross-Asset Sales team at Goldman Sachs. Matt graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, where he was Student Body President.

Research is showing that the next generation of employees prefers experiences to traditional rewards and recognition. Instead of getting a bag of SWAG or some random bottle of champagne, employees are expecting something different. Yet, we continue to provide the SWAG bag or that bottle of champagne on anniversaries or birthdays - a gift that seems to be about ease than personalization. Shouldn't we think of a more personalized and customized gift? 

In this episode, we call BS on recognition and rewards with Kevin Yip. Kevin is the Co-Founder and COO of Blueboard, an experiential recognition, and rewards company. Kevin started his career as a professional bean counter at PwC and quickly realized the corporate world wasn't for him. Soon after leaving, Kevin started Blueboard with his childhood best friend and has been on the emotional rollercoaster called entrepreneurship ever since.