Next Practices Weekly

By i4cpBusiness Management

Next Practices Weekly episodes

October 05, 2023PNC Bank’s Strategies for Accessibility and Early Career Success
The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11am ET / 8am PT. On this week's call, i4cp VP of Research Lorrie Lykins and VP of Executive Search, facilitated a conversation with special guest Joshua Stewart, SVP, Head of Talent Acquisition & Outreach at PNC Bank. Here are some highlights from the call:
PNC Bank has a long history dating back to its founding in 1845. They are headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but operates in 27 states plus Washington, DC, with over 2,500 branches.

Stewart has been at PNC Bank for over 20 years, starting as a financial sales consultant before shifting into HR roles later in his career.

Stewart shared about PNC's PartnerUp program that helps attract, retain, and develop early-career employees. The program's mission statement reads: "PartnerUp empowers high school graduates to enter, and thrive in, a job market that's in need of their skills. When employers partner with schools to provide committed guidance, real-world opportunities and ongoing assistance, students will take the first step on a road that leads to a proud, flourishing and secure future -- for themselves and the Communities they call home."

The PartnerUp program was first piloted in 2017 following an external inflection point study that showed the region would fall significantly short of skilled workers in the coming years. Full launch came in 2018 in the Pittsburgh, PA area. It then expanded to Cleveland, OH in 2021, and a further expansion in Birmingham, AL has since been announced.

The program now involves 65+ schools, 18 employers (including PNC Bank), and multiple community partners.

The program especially targets students who are not necessarily focusing on college as their next step after graduation. PartnerUp is a recruiting initiative that builds connection between career-bound high school seniors looking for an alternative to the "college for all" mentality and employers with career opportunities. Some key highlights:

Industries included in this initiative include healthcare, trade organizations, the service industry, financial services, and many others.
Links to resources shared on the call:
Upcoming i4cp virtual events

i4cp's Next Practices Now conference

Information on i4cp Membership

HRE’S HR Technology Conference & Exposition (October 2023)

i4cp’s Next Practices Now Conference (March 2024)

i4cp brief: Is HR Already Behind in the AI Revolution

i4cp report (members only): Is HR Already Behind in the AI Revolution
46 min
October 02, 2023 Fostering Employee Financial Wellness with Delta's VP of Total Rewards
Delta Air Lines, North America's most on-time airline, understands that employee wellness transcends traditional healthcare. In this Next Practices Weekly episode,
Kelley Elliott, Vice President of Total Rewards delves into Delta's three-fold strategy for enhancing employee well-being: addressing financial stressors, strategic partnerships with Operation Hope and Fidelity Investments, and empowering eligible employees to optimize their benefits.
In lock-step with our research, financial stressors can significantly affect an employee's overall wellness. Delta also recognizes this challenge and is taking proactive steps to alleviate it. By seamlessly integrating financial wellness initiatives into its corporate culture, the company creates an environment where employees can thrive without the weight of financial concerns. This commitment underscores Delta's dedication to holistic well-being.
Delta's transformative partnerships with Operation Hope and Fidelity Investments reinforce its employee wellness mission. Operation Hope, a respected non-profit, specializes in financial inclusion and education. Delta's collaboration empowers its workforce with financial knowledge and resources, equipping them for a more secure future.
Additionally, the partnership with Fidelity Investments bolsters Delta's commitment. It offers tailored investment and retirement planning solutions, enabling employees to take charge of their financial destiny.
Delta further facilitates a path for eligible employees to maximize their benefits. It streamlines the benefits enrollment process, making it accessible and user-friendly. Comprehensive support and guidance ensure that employees make informed choices aligned with their financial goals.
Delta's commitment extends to personalized benefits packages, recognizing the uniqueness of each employee's financial situation. By tailoring benefits offerings, Delta empowers its employees to select options that align with their specific needs, empowering them to maximize their financial well-being.
Listen to the full episode to delve deeper into Delta's innovative strategies for enhancing employee well-being.
55 min
September 20, 2023Encouraging Inclusive & Accountable Leadership with Oshkosh’s Head of D&I
The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11 a.m. ET / 8 a.m. PT. On this week's episode, i4cp's Eric Davis and Nina Holtsberry, along with Jacqui Robertson, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Cleveland Clinic, facilitated a conversation with special guest Darcy Pierson, Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leader at Oshkosh. Here are some highlights from the call:
Oshkosh is an industrial vehicle manufacturing company that designs and builds specialty trucks, military vehicles, truck bodies, airport fire apparatus, and access equipment. They are headquartered in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Pierson shared that when it comes to creating DEI goals at Oshkosh, a key principle was to "make it their own," and not necessarily follow what other organizations are doing. One way they did this was to focus at the top-leader level, knowing that diverse leaders more often hire diverse employees.

One key practice for Pierson is determining where there are pockets of resistance to the organization's DEI goals.

Pierson cited research from both McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group that found that organizations with both gender-diverse and racial/ethnically-diverse workers will outperform those that do not.

Pierson noted that Oshkosh they believe that DEI needs to be embedded into everyday talent processes. An example she shared is that for talent acquisition require that 75% of the time a woman and a BIPOC candidate must be part of the candidate slate.

Pierson cited i4cp's Leadership Redefined study which found that a key next practice was having leaders that consistently establish productive relationships with individuals from under-represented groups.

Other key behaviors that support that practice included:

Pierson advised that organizations need to get consensus and agreement on where the organization wants to goal regarding all DEI goals -- where do they want to be in the future?

Pierson is most proud of Oshkosh's EBRGs (Employee Business Resource Groups). They were negatively impacted by COVID, but have rebounded very strongly and having a very strong impact on the company.
Links to resources shared on the call:
Upcoming i4cp virtual events

i4cp's Next Practices Now conference

Information on i4cp Membership

HRE’S HR Technology Conference & Exposition (October 2023)

i4cp’s Next Practices Now Conference (March 2024)
54 min
September 12, 2023How GE Appliances' HR Team Supports Innovation & Putting Customers First
The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11am ET / 8am PT. On this week's call, i4cp Senior Research Analyst Tom Stone and Membership Director Colleen Hunter facilitated a conversation with special guest Rocki Rockingham, CHRO at GE Appliances. Here are some highlights from the call:
GE Appliances is an American home appliance manufacturer based in Louisville, Kentucky. It has been majority owned by Chinese multinational home appliances company Haier since 2016. They have around 16,500 employees, while Haier overall has just over 100,000 employees globally.

GE Appliances by the numbers: Each year they build 2,500 units per hour, deliver an appliance every 13.8 seconds, procure 3 billion parts, and manage 16 million calls through their call center.

At GE Appliances, a simply philosophy, adapted from their Chinese parent company Haier, guides their ambition as a company. They recognize that their main challenge is to lead change… or allow others to change them. As a result, they have adopted the Chinese Rendanheyi Management Model which has three main components:

The entrepreneurial spirit is seen in their creation of over a dozen "micro-enterprises" with GE Appliances, such as Clothes Care, Refrigeration, Filtration, Small Appliances, and so on. These are in turn supported by "platforms" such as technology, supply chain, finance, marketing, human resources, and so on.

Key behaviors show up in four ways:

HR at GE Appliances has three purpose components:

HR at GE Appliances is using AI, including generative AI, in a safe, sandbox environment. They have teams that are exploring various use cases to eliminate the most mundane tasks in talent acquisition, onboarding, and other talent management areas.
Links to resources shared on the call:
Upcoming i4cp virtual events

i4cp's Next Practices Now conference

Information on i4cp Membership

HRE’S HR Technology Conference & Exposition (October 2023)

i4cp’s Next Practices Now Conference (March 2024)
54 min
September 05, 2023Taking Your Employee Experience To The Next Level, With Delaware North’s Head Of Talent
The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11am ET / 8am PT. On this week's call, i4cp Senior Research Analyst Tom Stone and Membership Director Jenelle Buatti facilitated a conversation with special guest Mike Eby, Vice President of Talent at Delaware North. Here are some highlights from the call:
Delaware North is a global food service and hospitality company headquartered in Buffalo, New York. The company operates in the lodging, sporting, airport, gambling, and entertainment industries (see brief video at 7:10 in the session recording).

Since Delaware North supports large venues and events, the COVID-19 pandemic hit their business particularly hard. Going into early 2020 the company had around 40,000 employees, but then during the peak of lockdowns/etc. they employed just under 1,000. Those employees were busy planning the return to work and the relaunch of all of their events and venues as the various national, state, and local governments allowed re-openings.

Key to do this was a having a lot of transparency and strong communication with all employees. The key was timing: staffing needed to occur slightly ahead of when governments allowed events and venues to open up again. Many employees were happy to return because they love their location and the hospitality industry, but also because of the way they were treated by Delaware North during the furlough/etc. period.

One of early decisions made to support employee well-being was to expand their EAP--which had previously only been available to a subset of employees--to all employees, including all hourly, seasonal, etc.. They have since further expanded the EAP this time by broadening what is offered, such as adding more learning opportunities in areas like financial planning 101, how to save for retirement, how to interpret and manage benefits, crisis management, etc.

The organization's EVP, Employee Value Proposition, is a critical focus at Delaware North (see brief video at 23:15 in the session recording). In developing and socializing the EVP, they focused internally first, and only later on the external employee brand. The EVP has three primary components:

In the past, Delaware North's employee listening approach was very ad hoc--if they had 200 different properties, they very well might have 200 different approaches to employee listening. This changed as the need arose during the pandemic to consistently hear the voice of all employees. They launched a new platform to capture information from employees, and instituted lifecycle listening--meaning key moments such as interview candidates, 60 and 90 days after joining, exit interviews, etc. They also now engagement surveys on a rolling basis, every 8-9 months, due to the seasonality of their business. The platform they use is Qualtrics.
Links to resources shared on the call:
Upcoming i4cp virtual events

i4cp's Next Practices Now conference

Information on i4cp Membership

i4cp's The Productivity Predicament report (members only)

i4cp’s The Productivity Predicament brief (publicly available)

i4cp's whitepaper: Supercharge Your Employee Listening Strategy

HRE’S HR Technology Conference & Exposition (October 2023)

i4cp’s Next Practices Now Conference (March 2024)

This event is approved for certification credits.
57 min
August 28, 2023The 7 Habits of Healthy Cultures with Katheryn Brekken, PhD, Senior Research Analyst at i4cp
The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11 a.m. ET / 8 a.m. PT. On this week's call, i4cp Senior Research Analyst Tom Stone hosted his colleague Katheryn Brekken, PhD, also a Senior Research Analyst at i4cp, who presented key findings at the intersection of two recent i4cp studies on culture fitness and generative AI. Here are some highlights from the call:
Download the slides above or view the recording to see the many research findings that were shared.

Participant Poll #1: How has your organization’s culture changed over the past year?

Participant Poll #2: How is change generally viewed in your organization?

Participant Poll #3: In which of the following ways do you personally use generative AI at work?
Links to resources shared on the call:
Upcoming i4cp virtual events

i4cp's Next Practices Now conference

Information on i4cp Membership

Past i4cp NPW events

HRE’S HR Technology Conference & Exposition (October 2023)

i4cp’s Learning & Development Survey (open through early September, 2023)

i4cp's study Culture Fitness (members only): Healthy Habits of High-Performance Organizations

i4cp’s Culture Fitness Brief (for everyone)

i4cp’s Toolkit: How to hold Leaders accountable for employee experience (members only)

Article: "How Generative AI Will Forever Change the Role of Instructional Designers"

i4cp’s NPW: Generative AI: What HR leaders should be doing now (on-demand recording)
57 min
August 24, 2023Aligning Your People & Culture Initiatives to Your Business Strategy
The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11am ET / 8am PT. On this week's call, i4cp Senior Research Analyst Tom Stone facilitated a conversation with special guest Debbie Shotwell, Chief People and Culture Officer at Stack Overflow. Here are some highlights from the call:
Shotwell has over 20 years of experience as an HR leader at organizations including Peoplesoft, Taleo, Pacific Pulmonary Services, Good Technology, BigCommerce, Saba Software, and now Stack Overflow. She also currently serves on the advisory board of Best and Brightest Companies to Work For, WorkTribe Dynamics, and Agile Literacy.

Over the last several years, she and her team have helped Stack Overflow integrate with technology investor Prosus; nearly double in size; become more data-driven in their approach to people; significantly improve the talent acquisition team and processes; accelerate and formalize diversity, equity, and inclusion with a written strategic plan; and roll out a company-wide L&D strategy.

Stack Overflow's overall vision is to become the most valuable destination for the world's current and next generation of technologists. To support that vision, the people team's vision is to fuel Stack Overflow's growth by making it a coveted and long-term career destination and great place to work. The people team's vision is built on four principles:

Stack Overflow was already close to 50/50 remote vs. onsite workers prior to the pandemic. Of course they went 100% remote in 2020, and since then they have emphasized flexibility in the where of work while carefully considering their best approach for the longer term. After listening to employees, they recently decided on fully remote going forward--doing so in a way that preserves their strong culture while garnering the obvious cost savings. For instance, they are very focused on how they onboard new employees, including having new employees meet the CEO. Shotwell also holds monthly meetings for organizational culture-building purposes. And they provide funding for employees to use WeWork or similar arrangements if they are not well setup for working from home.

Shotwell noted that the "when" of work is also flexible for employees at Stack Overflow. What matters is goals and outcomes being achieved, not working set hours each day.

Shotwell noted that when asked a few years ago what was missing in the employee value proposition at Stack Overflow, employees indicated more was needed in the area of learning and development, career journeys, etc. So that has been a focus area since, with her team developing a "learning and growth" strategy with four aspects: skills-based development; career paths and learning paths; robust employee enablement tools; and multiple learning modalities.

Employees, who Shotwell noted are affectionately known as "Stackers," have access to a MyAcademy portal, which provides self-paced learning resources from popular vendors such as LinkedIn Learning, Skillsoft, GetAbstract, Udemy, Coursera, Harvard, and more. Their skills are also used to recommend courses and learning paths.

Each month, half-days are dedicated to employee skills development, with a rotation through three types: self-directed learning, team/department level training, and company-sponsored learning events such as a thought leader, guest speaker, or topic with broad learning need.
After one year, the results have been very positive: the company has grown by almost 50% (~550 employees now), they have an 81% FY23 engagement score (up 4% from FY22), and an 81% L&D score (up 7% from FY22).

At Stack Overflow, a key part of their DEIB initiatives is the role of their nine Employee Resource Groups. One special ERG is their broad Allyship ERG, which focuses on allyship across all identity groups and has over 150 members. The ERGs at Stack Overflow use Slack channels for ongoing discussion between live meetings.
54 min
August 16, 2023Generative AI What HR Leaders Should Be Doing Now
The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11 AM ET / 8 AM PT. On this week's call, i4cp Senior Research Analyst Tom Stone hosted i4p colleague Judy Albers, Director of Research Enablement, for a discussion of AI and especially generative AI and its impact on, and importance for, the HR field. Here are some highlights from the call:
An informal chat-based polling of call participants not surprisingly found most indicated they were at most experimenting with generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or others, with very few indicating much experience, expertise, or work use cases yet.

Albers walked through definitions with examples of three types of AI: Machine Learning (e.g., Netflix recommendations), Deep Learning (e.g., Self-driving cars), and Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT). Download the slides above for the definitions of each.

Tactically, we can expect generative AI to provide significant productivity gains in many areas of knowledge work, in part through the automation of mundane tasks. This could also lead eventually to a reduction in worker burnout and an increase in worker engagement.

Organizations will vary, however, in how they balance the gains they could see from the standard three elements of productivity: time, cost, and quality. Some will focus on cost savings by having fewer employees in certain roles, but others will seek more benefit from production happening faster, and/or the quality of goods and services produced being increased. Some organizations will see all three benefits, striking some degree of balance in reducing costs, increasing speed, and improving quality.

Some of these benefits will arise from more strategic uses of AI, that is those that impact harder-to-solve problems. Albers gave examples such as the use of AI to improve internal mobility driven by skills data, enabling more data-driven decisions, and better handling of intractable culture issues or compliance issues.

Albers shared ample advice for what Chief People Officers need to be doing now, both in their role as head of HR and in their role as people advisor to the C-Suite. Download the slides above for the details.

She also shared similar recommendations for HRBPs and HR professionals who work in each Center of Excellence within HR (again, see the slides for details).

Albers review six primary risks of using AI:

A recent i4cp survey of over 1,500 HR professionals found that it is still early days for HR when it comes to using generative AI:

In addition, 52% said they have no or low confidence in HR's readiness to contribute to AI strategy; 32% said their leaders are not communicating about AI; and 29% said HR is not involved in the governance of AI or advanced automation decisions.

Further, the same survey found the following usage rates by functional area for the 22% who indicated they are at least experimenting with generative AI:

Albers shared lists of the most common uses of AI across TA, L&D, Total Rewards, DEIBJ, People Analytics, and Employee Experience. (See the slides for details.)

Albers suggested several ways for HR professionals to get started with generative AI, including signing up for ChatGPT at openAI.com; exploring the available Chrome (or other browsers) extensions for AI; following key trailblazers in the field; and taking a course from providers such as LinkedIn Learning, Google, Udemy, Coursera, Skillsoft, etc.
57 min
August 09, 2023Talent Acquisition Transformation At Wells Fargo
The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11am ET / 8am PT. On this week's call, i4cp VP of Research and Managing Editor Lorrie Lykins, and i4cp Senior Research Analyst Tom Stone, facilitated a conversation with special guest Joanna Clark, Senior Vice President, Talent Acquisition Strategy and Transformation at Wells Fargo. Here are some highlights from the call:
TA at Wells Fargo had been decentralized for a long time, but is now on a journey that focuses on centralization, process simplification, strategic consultation capabilities, and data-driven insights and decisions. This is a multi-year transformation of the TA function.

At Wells Fargo they have spent time over the past couple of years refining their capacity management model. Every month the TA leaders get together to judge current and future capacity across the different parts of the business. The formalizing of this process (vs. chat, email, phone) has really made a difference.

Related to this has been some attention to their high-volume TA process. There has been a change in recent years given the emergence of gig work (Uber, etc.) and the expectations of candidates for a quick, simple hiring process for certain roles. This includes considering greater automation, but also the experience for the candidates for high-volume roles. Interestingly, some changes they might implement here could carry over to non-high volume TA processes.

In terms of TA technology at Wells Fargo, they have consolidated onto Workday as their Applicant Tracking System (ATS), and also use Beamery CRM.

Clark noted that in TA at Wells Fargo, in partnership with the L&D function, they are looking at how to take a more skills-centric approach to their talent processes, because increasingly there just aren't enough candidates that have exactly all that is included in a given job description.

Wells Fargo has always had a strong, if informal, culture of internal mobility, with historically over 50% of hires being internal. More recently, with higher goals for mobility, there is an increased focus to formalize a process in partnership with the talent management team.

Wells Fargo is using AI and RPA to help better leverage data across their various platforms. Doing so has greatly increased the usefulness of their data for HR and business leaders. Clark noted that generative AI is currently be evaluated, especially for business use cases to help eliminate repetitive work and also to bring to life their policies and procedures to make them more usable.

Clark emphasized how important mentorships are in the TA space. More and more organizations are offering cross-company mentoring for recruiters, and she is a big advocate for this.

What does Clark look for in TA professionals to join her team? People who can think outside of their day job, can see the bigger picture, and think about transformational change.
Links to resources shared on the call:
Upcoming i4cp virtual events

i4cp's Next Practices Now conference

Information on i4cp Membership

i4cp's The Productivity Predicament report (members only)

i4cp’s The Productivity Predicament brief (publicly available)

HR is Using Generative AI (AI Toolkit Excerpt for non-members)

I4cp's Guidebook on Talent Mobility and Internal Talent Marketplaces (members only)
56 min
August 03, 2023Employee Recognition and Innovation at HPE
The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11am ET / 8am PT. On this week's call, i4cp Membership Director Jenelle Buatti, and i4cp Senior Research Analyst Tom Stone, facilitated a conversation with special guests Samanntha Dubridge, Vice President of Global Benefits, Culture & People Experience and Cile Lucas, Global Culture & Team Member Experience Lead at HPE, the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company. Here are some highlights from the call:
HPE is a global edge-to-cloud company that delivers solutions as a service that help organizations connect, protect, analyze, and act on all their data and applications. HPE was formed in 2015 after a split from HP Inc. HPE has about $30B in revenue, around 60,000 global team members, produces around 1,000 patents annually, and recently was #32 on Fortune's 100 Best employers.

HPE's four core beliefs help to shape their culture, with each having three related behaviors:

Similar, HPE has a "Four E's" of How We Lead:

They shared how HPE integrates culture into the daily lives of their team members:

They also shared their holistic approach to team member wellbeing, which they provide tools and resources across four pillars: Physical health, Financial well-being, Mental and emotional health, Community well-being. Three campaigns that they shared were:

One of two innovation-focused initiatives that they shared about was called "The Innovation Quest." The purpose is to reinforce the role of innovation in HPE transformation, to fuel the spirit of innovation as part of their culture, and to create potential for game-changing outcomes. The Innovation Quest is an annual global contest inviting team members to submit their boldest and most innovative ideas to accelerate our transformation. It includes executive sponsorship and finalist judging at EC level, and has had 1,600 ideas submitted in first 3 years. All ideas are referred to the business for consideration, with winners participating in a development forum and securing resources to implement.

The other innovation-focused initiative is called "Escape the Red Tape." It is a global team member contest for ideas to remove inefficiency and drive productivity/engagement. Ideas are submitted under three categories: "Fix it", "Accelerate it", or "Eliminate it". They've seen over 650 entries narrowed down to 22 finalists, with winners in each category selected by the CEO and executive team, with support and project team then provided. Celebration for all winners reinforces HPE's commitment and spirit of innovation.

They also shared what the key areas of focus are for their HR team -- the initiatives that are helping HPE to sustain high engagement and low attrition, while helping to attract talent and accelerate business transformation: culture and innovation; Hybrid work environment; Team member wellbeing; and Team norms and future of work.
Links to resources shared on the call:
Upcoming i4cp virtual events

i4cp's Next Practices Now conference

Information on i4cp Membership

i4cp's The Productivity Predicament report (members only)

i4cp’s The Productivity Predicament brief (publicly available)

i4cp’s Next Practices in Holistic Well-Being (report)
54 min

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What are the people strategies that will power your organization for the years ahead? i4cp is a member-based HR research company devoted to connecting HR leaders and providing them with innovative…

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Next Practices Weekly episodes

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