Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podcast Index | TuneIn | RSS
Join industry professionals as they connect on what is working for their team and the challenges they face keeping mental health a top priority during Covid-19.
Announcer 0:00
Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcast for talent acquisition and talent management. Listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent. We’re glad you’re here.
Shannon Pritchett 0:17
Welcome, everyone to our December, CXR connects last one of the year, which I’m hoping 2021 is more prosperous for all of us, today is going to be a little bit of a different conversation, the focus is going to be wellness in the workplace. But I don’t have a lot prepared. Normally with CXR Connects, we give a lot of interesting data and statistics from our own research. This week, I’ll be adding in others research, you know, much larger organizations than ourselves that specialize in this sort of field. But most importantly, I really want to hear from us. And I thought we can make this more of a communal conversation, as opposed to simply just having set facilitators. I think this year has been crazy for all of us. And what I want to challenge everyone on the call to do is to share and ask questions. A lot of you are joining this call, I know because you’re hoping to get ideas. And some of you might already be doing a lot of good things with your teams that I’m hoping you can really share with other people, such as what are you doing to keep employees engaged, are just check on their mental health? Or what is your organization doing? Do they offer any employee assistance programs, etc, I think we can all learn from one another on today’s call, and I’m excited to get started in doing so. Alright, so I have a few slides. Before we get started. Just want to remind everyone that we have tons of great resources on our website, we have a really robust exchange into the site today, you might notice a little bit of a fun gamification system we’ve added to the site. That’s all I’m gonna say, I hope you go out and start playing with our exchanges. And then you will definitely notice it. Also, our benchmarking reports, we just added a robust report around sourcing that we’ve been working quite hard towards. So I would love it if you guys can take a look at that. And our 2021 calendar is getting posted on the web. So you can check out all the upcoming events we have in 2021. And recording of this and all of our other CXR Connects webcast as well as all of our meetings are made available in our CXR library. Alright, so I mentioned some of the exchanges, as always, we like to remind you to we can carry the conversation over in our exchange, there are so many different types of exchange that you can join. In fact, we have 25. Chris, I think the best one for this conversation would be for us to go into the CXR member and alumni. And perhaps we can post some resources in that after this call. So we don’t have any exchanges dedicated towards wellness, but that doesn’t mean that all these other great exchanges that we have are made are off limits. But I’d like to keep this conversation going in our alumni exchange. All right, so before we dive in, I want to start with a little bit of a fun exercise. So Barb brought this attention, exercise to my attention, and it came from Bernie Brown. And it was one of the Barb Can you put a little bit more context into what she does with this.
Barb Ruess 3:32
Yeah, she Yeah, so I was reading something from her actually listened to a podcast, I’ve read a couple of her books and, and of course in touch with what she was talking about. Like a lot of it’s the whole zoom fatigue and how you know, you’ll start things out and you’re waiting forever to get there. You’re like how you do it. And everybody says, Oh, I’m fine. And she was like, I quickly realized that we weren’t really answer that question, honestly. So now she said she starts all of her team meetings with this question. It’s what two words describe how you are feeling today. And she said, that makes a huge difference. lets you know, if there’s somebody need to follow up with sometimes it starts a different conversation makes people feel not quite so alone. She gave an example. We know when she when she brought up the question. She said, you know, for example, today, I am feeling overwhelmed, but happy and you know, so they don’t have to be like, you know, both. So the same. It’s really just a way to describe yourself two words, two words on how you’re feeling today. So as soon as I read it, I told Shannon, I’m like, I think this is actually pretty insightful and pretty simple. And then she was like, hey, fun. Let’s open up the meeting with it. So Shannon?
Shannon Pritchett 4:42
Yeah, no, let’s do that. Um, so we if you participated in our CXR meetings this year that we’ve gone virtual with, we always start with a little bit of a check in networking session amongst each other with coffee. This time, you can bring a beverage of your choice. Like for instance, I have my tea right here. We just all are going to get to know each other by describing what words describe us today. And please feel free to be honest, if you’re overwhelmed if you’re sad, if you’re happy, let us know there is no right or wrong answer. We just want to start this exercise in hopes that you might carry it over with your teams, if you like it as well.
Barb Ruess 5:19
Yeah, so I’ll give you guys five minutes, I just threw you on the small breakout room so you could get some conversation started.
Shannon Pritchett 5:27
Thanks Barb
Barb Ruess 5:28
You bet.
Shannon Pritchett 5:29
I hope everyone enjoyed that exercise, I will say, at least, I think for me in what I did a lot of research in is that I think a lot of us are overwhelmed not only with the whole pandemic and our changing schedules, but I think the majority of us have seen a huge increase in work. And that’s exactly what the research that I want to share with you for showed. And so here are some interesting statistics and some takeaways that I wanted to briefly share. And I have some notes I jotted down as well. And also then I want to get into a group discussion for the remainder of this call. First off, I took a look at the Mental Health Index report. And I can include a link in the chat as soon as I stop presenting, what they do is every month, they’re about two months behind. So next month, November will come out. So this are the results from October is they measure the mental health amongst the workforce. And I thought this was rather interesting. Obviously, April was the most pressing time for a lot of people in the workforce. But October isn’t that much better. And so basically, bottom line is work has become more difficult for all of us. A lot of the stress and triggers that they talked about has a lot to do with the upper management level, and also amongst diverse individuals. And so this takes a look at everything. And here are some of the statistics i thought was interesting.
According to employees, 80% believe that their employers are handling their health and safety well, which I thought was interesting, because I saw another article quoted MetLife in this actually, I believe it was a study from Gartner that quoted MetLife, that 41% said that employers are falling short. So there’s a little bit of disconnect with these two different surveys. But you can kind of see that there’s some room of improvement still 43% relate their stress to workload. That same 43% said that they need some sort of mental health support. The biggest challenge right now was in terms of financial health, and financial state sustainability. 37% are experiencing some sort of burnout, especially at the end of the work day, and 32% find it very difficult to find motivation to complete their work.
Melissa Thompson, Nielsen 8:10
Just a question for you. Do you think that some of this is because most of the people that are working from home full time now are not used to working from home and thus, they’re not turning it off? So they’re working more than they would if they went into an office and left an office? Whereas unlike this room is the office and when it’s not office time? Oh, come in here.
Shannon Pritchett 8:34
I think I think a lot of it Melissa has to do according to the article. And I probably read about 15 different reports to prepare for this call. A lot of it has to do with kids at home, the change in schedules and the fact that they lost their social connections amongst their colleagues. And I think for me, I’m so when I hear you, Melissa, cuz when I leave my office, I’ve been working for him for 10 years, I’m done. But at the same point, I’m used to traveling, I’m used to being able to have a drink and stay up late with Gerry and Chris and Barb, and all the fun stuff that we used to do on the road. And I didn’t realize how important that was until I took it away. And I think when I saw the 32% lack motivation, that’s really where my mind went as well is you’re working from home, you’re away from your colleagues and those that laziness factor that has kind of taken a little bit. And it is more hard, I think for myself to find the motivation. Me being a new mom and hearing my son just down the hall.
Chris Hoyt 9:42
Yeah, I just chime in real quick to this to Melissa’s point. I think one of the things I first learned when I moved from, you know being corporate to full time at home was the loss of and this is obviously this is years ago but was the loss of my commute time to decompress before my family Time, right? So you had work, and then maybe a 30 minute drive to just kind of process or listen to an audible book or do whatever. And by the time you walk in the door at home, you’ve kind of decompressed. And what we’re hearing in a couple of these conversations most is that people who have lost that are working right until the time they step out of their room, or out of off their kitchen table, or whatever. And that’s impacting their home satisfaction levels and mental state and relationships because that decompression is gone and I think that’s a big contributor to a lot of that to Shannon, you might be getting into that. Sorry, I may have jumped ahead. But that was a big one for me to adjust to. And that I think a lot of we’re just immediately forced to work from home and lose that may not realize that’s that’s a player.
Shannon Pritchett 10:44
Yeah, absolutely. Chris, I couldn’t agree with that more. And I want for you to recommendations, I also want to go over. According to a McKinsey study, the hardest groups impacted amongst the pandemic so far has been women, we’re actually gonna be talking about this a lot further. And we put some headlines out there, other women in talent meeting, also working parents of LGBTQ plus community, and people of color. And the three biggest areas that they’re struggling right now is mental health, household responsibilities and workload increases. For the LGBTQ Plus, they have a fear of isolation, being that they don’t have that sense of camaraderie amongst the workforce. So that’s really impacted that community. And up to 75% have actually said, Now, this is the report I gave you was numbers from October, but 75%, since the pandemic have started, have been burned out at some point or another. And also, this i thought was interesting. JLL and I want to talk to this, if your if Bill is on from Lockheed 74% support a four day work week. And that’s one of the things I want to get into next. Um, some of the recommendations, this is why I want to put the slide there that the study said I kind of collaborated right here was to talk about burnout with your employees to mention it and talk about you know, that it is very real, it happens to all of us. And the more you talk about it, the more you communicate, you know, that helps subside that and bring attention to them so they can be more aware of when they are getting close to it. Also, flexibility at work is a strategy that has been most helpful to productivity and reduction in burnout. Ironically, the majority of people surveyed felt the biggest benefit from working at home has been flexibility. And also reinforce the need to reach out to professional support. Offer resources, if you have an employee assistant program, remind employees a financial consult consultation programs. And also, this was rather interesting. There’s several articles out there that are talking about how much people are investing in financial training and resources for their employees, which I thought was a rather interesting recommendation. So I want to come together now. We have about 35 minutes left on this call. And I don’t see Bill on so I will start with Lockheed Martin. I talked to Bill about this yesterday and a couple of their employees. They did a pilot with a four day workweek. And it worked really, really well. And starting in 2021, they are doing a four day workweek, which means 10 hour work days, and they’ll be off every Friday, which is good for us and mental note, no weekends on those days. However, they are offering Fridays, you do have the option to work. For example, if you want to use Friday to catch up. If you didn’t get enough work done during the week, for some reason, if you want to maintain a five hour work week, or if you simply you know want to use that day, replace it with another one. However, there aren’t going to have any like major meetings or any company wide initiatives are recognized that day as a work week. So I guess that’s just kind of thinking of it as a Saturday or Sunday. So that was something that Lockheed Martin is implementing in 2021. I thought that was a rather interesting idea.
Gerry Crispin 14:19
Is anyone else doing anything like that? LYn?
Lynn Milewski, Marsh & McLennan 14:24
Oh, yeah, we instituted a no meeting Friday. And it was kind of with that same idea that you can take a breath, work on whatever you need to take care of your meetings. And it’s been very popular.
Melissa Thompson, Nielsen 14:38
So at Nielsen, they put in what we call a take back time challenge. And so what you do is you pick a day every week or you block two hours, and you actually call it your take back time. And that’s time where you don’t respond. You don’t take any meetings. Most of the rest of HR is doing Tuesday. I don’t know what The magic is a Tuesday, the talent acquisition team is taking Friday afternoons and the recruiters are really using it to catch up on, you know, candidate experience things and get prepared for the next week. But that’s kind of one of the things we’re doing.
Shannon Pritchett 15:14
Melissa, do they just block off the time in their calendar?
Melissa Thompson, Nielsen 15:17
Yeah. Yeah. And you make it public so that other people know, this is your take back time, don’t invite me to a meeting during this time, I’ll just decline.
Gerry Crispin 15:26
I started unretired on Monday, some time ago. But I haven’t been able to do it as much as I like.
Shannon Pritchett 15:39
Good try Gerry
Chris Hoyt 15:40
Not for lack of his support system, can we just say that’s not for lack of a support system
Melissa Thompson, Nielsen 15:44
Right
Shannon Pritchett 15:48
Yeah, so um, I would love to hear from everyone on this call. Um, you know, first off, feel free to ask as many questions as you want. During this, and also, um, I would like us to all share what everyone is doing with their teams, or what their company is doing to basically increase wellness in the workplace, whether that be physical or mental health.
Melissa Thompson, Nielsen 16:11
So when Shannon and I connected earlier this week, I sent her the thrive global quiz that they partnered with Salesforce to create, and it gives you a score around things like rest and reflection. And so one of the reasons why I’m exhausted and tired is I’m just not sleeping well. I’ll have a night where I get eight hours of sleep, and then I’ll get four hours in 10 minutes, and I can’t go back to sleep. So my whole team took the thrive challenge. And now we’re challenging each other to start things that will that are little micro steps to improve, whether it’s sleep or working out or eating or focus at work. And this challenge actually includes information on how you can think about those micro steps. So that’s something that we’re doing Nielsen, on my team.
Shannon Pritchett 17:04
I’m going to share that link to like this quiz. Alright, I think in the chat,
Chris Hoyt 17:16
is it I wonder if anybody’s do it? So I made a joke about it in the beginning, because we have a thread and one of the exchanges about you know, what are you doing to, you know, try to keep your sanity from a physical and mental space. And we’ve been talking about working out right, and some people have said, they’re on their peloton, and Grant and I are going to be tunnel brothers here pretty soon. We’re excited about that yet, Grant. But I’m just wondering, like, Is anybody else sort of doing a similar challenge, like most of it, where they issue some sort of a wellness challenge? So not just around sleep or cook, but just like, like, where your your colleagues and teams are keeping each other accountable, not just where you’re tasking them to take better care of themselves? Anybody got a program like that?
Jennifer Hasvold, Dell 17:59
Yeah. Dell actually has been doing steps challenges. And we’ve been we’ve been doing it within our teams and being and then you can also do your step challenges are, you know, your numbers and your stats are going against other teams within Dell? So making it kind of a fun, competitive, you know, thing for us to be doing right now?
Chris Hoyt 18:21
Is it? Jennifer? Is it a formally introduced thing? Or is it something that just kind of organically took off with with your colleagues?
Jennifer Hasvold, Dell 18:28
Yeah, it’s actually a formal program that we do every year. But obviously, this year doing it for more virtually. Meg, is there another? I know you’re in a couple of them? Is there there’s a formal program, but then also, there’s another group to write that? Yeah. And a form themselves?
Megan Evangelista, Dell 18:44
Yeah. So there’s, as part of our wellness site, actually, we all have different team member profiles, and you can challenge team members like, hey, colleague, I want to, I want to challenge you to step off this week. Or it could be as short as a one day step off. So if you know you, you’ve got a day where you’re going to be back to back meetings and need that friendly nudge to get up and take a take a lap in between calls. That’s a really great way to do it. And then we also have some just organic team member, and kind of challenges where, you know, if you have a smart device, you can certainly you know, take a screenshot and send that but we also go by the honor system. So if you say that you took four laps around the parking lot or something like that, you can still participate and be counted that way.
Gerry Crispin 19:32
Well, Karissa, you said you said I had something
Karissa, Edward Jones 19:35
Oh, yeah, Edward Jones does the same thing. I wonder if it’s a similar system. But we go I don’t know if you’ve heard of virgin pulse if that’s what you use, but that’s the software system we use. It’s the same concept, but we have challenges and you actually can win money towards your premium your medical premium. And so or just money towards gift cards. I just want a $40 amazon prime gift card so there’s no incentives, you know, more than just, you know, collaborating with your team, which is great. But there’s also little prizes, which is really fun. So they’ll do, you know, steps just like you guys said. And they’ll even do things like health wise, like, are you counting, you’ll have different apps that you can connect to the software. I don’t know if you’ve heard of My Fitness Pal, where you count your calories and you look watch after what you’re eating, but incorporates not only mental well being, also your healthy eating and your physical well being. They have yoga sessions and meditations on there. It’s really nice. I love it. And the more you participate, the more you get prizes. So cool.
Grant Clough, AARP 20:41
Yeah, we actually Chris have implemented a fitness and health employee resource group as well. Yeah.
Shannon Pritchett 20:52
Great, what kind of resources are they offering? This is just a, you know, are they just sharing resources to the employees? Are they also?
Grant Clough, AARP 20:59
Yeah. Yeah, good question. So it’s a it’s a typical employee resource group. So an opt in group of people who you know, much like, we also have went for women in the workforce, we’re crew, we have, you know, any one of those, but we have one specifically for people who need and what kind of peer support within fitness. But we also have one of those apps kind of private label that you can connect with. And we have challenges and, and, you know, health and recipes and those kind of things. And then when the pandemic started, we, we have a fitness facility on site. And obviously, people can’t use that right now. So we added, we’ve paid basically, for everybody to get a premium version of volte, which is another one of those apps that allows you to, which gives you workout and will track your it’s kind of like, I used it, I didn’t like it, to be honest with you. But there are some there are several other ones like that to where you could download it, it would teach you Tell you what, you know, use AI to tell you how much to live when to what, what exercises to do that kind of thing. So
Marc Cochran, Trane Technologies 22:02
Got a question just for folks like so our team, a lot of the people have always been remote. So this level of engagement with them is very different than what historically they just have been working from home. And so how is How are y’all balancing? Like all of what we might be feeling as far as kind of the overwhelming and just this is very different with like, I’ve been doing this for about a decade now. And I’m not that. So like, how does that kind of mixed message resonate? Or like, Where Do y’all see that?
Megan Evangelista, Dell 22:37
That’s such a good question. So that’s how we are at Edward Jones, too. And I’ve been working remote since working remote was the thing to do. But we’ll have captains who will go out and it’ll be like little support groups. So if anyone has questions or need support, or you know how to do this, and this or how do you time manage, we as team captains are there to support them. And that’s what we do.
Gerry Crispin 23:04
I really like that idea. Because none of us really get coached on how to be remote, let alone How to be face to face. And all of that probably makes really good sense. As you as you develop, coming into a professional environment. And so to tap into some of the folks in your company, who have been remote and been through a few of those landmines and things to do things not to do things to watch out for for yourself and how to how to do work around would be I think, an extraordinary support system within your organization that devote that develops a little bit more community among the folks that don’t have those those access to that.
Karissa, Edward Jones 23:56
Mm hmm.
Dan Black, Ernst and Young 23:58
Yeah, Chris, I find it why, you know, a lot of mighty mighty a team has been like, like me, like you are used to being remote or more used to a remote or virtual setup. But a lot of the benefits a lot of what he Why did was convert existing benefits into ones that are more remote friendly, so that we’re reaping the benefit, like so we always had, you know, gym membership, but now it’s also a virtual gym membership. We always had, like, you know, challenges or fitness challenges. Now we have an app where you can reach out and just challenge one group to another versus just, you know, a random, everyone joined this national challenge type of thing. So I find it’s gotten more virtual and remote friendly than it used to be. I mean, because, like so many other things because of COVID. But I think it was a long time, you know, kind of coming or in the making anyway, so, so that’s, that’s been a real a real benefit. And then we’ve invested in some other newer things like, you know, apps and resources around sleep, mental wellness, meditation, some others so and then the last thing I just think, you know, Shannon We have asked me about, there’s one thing that we’re tapping into the EY population. So we have a more than I would have imagined yoga instructors, and sure Sherpas, and I mean, like a roll bacon’s like it’s unbeliev peloton captains that I don’t know where they’re finding the time to do this. So kudos to them for coming out and saying they can make this work with their EY work. But but we’re actually featuring them, you know, in different venues. So, one one practice has a once a week, where it’s a guest, trainer, you know, whatever, meditation leader, etc. And they’re almost all EY people, like fully trained and licensed and all that good. So that’s kind of neat.
Karissa, Edward Jones 25:39
Wow. Yeah.
Shannon Pritchett 25:41
Yeah. Neat.
Lori Sullivan, Gartner 25:43
Dan, I was gonna add to that we did Gartner have had something similar with meditation sessions, there was actually one at noon today, yoga sessions. And on a smaller scale, Eric and I have taken our team of 10, which are mostly 20 somethings who are used to that social engagement in an office, you know, some have worked from home, some are in an office. And we’ve spent more time on just team building sessions, like one was share your favorite Amazon purchase. Now, everyone was sharing all the fun things that they’ve purchased during COVID. Eric’s on the call Eric, what are other things like recipe sharing, just opportunities for the team to come together and say, Gosh, I’m happy today, or Gosh, I’m really sad today. And share and talk to one another. And I think that’s supported mental health.
Shannon Pritchett 26:40
I’m curious to um, you know, is anyone doing anything or their company is doing something to help with childcare, or the facts that, you know, even those of us who are remote are been working remote now have kids at home, because they’re remote too, I’m just curious to hear how that changed, dynamics have taken place.
Grant Clough, AARP 27:03
And we um, we already had some existing caregiving benefits, we may get two weeks of paid giving caregiving leave every single year. We also already have paid child backup child care, which he gets 200 hours of, it’s like $2 an hour for copay. childcare, we actually extended that from not only just backup childcare, to backup care, just in general. So if you have a, you know, an older individual that you’re caregiving for, or someone who isn’t necessarily, by your definition, a child, we really kind of extended that to to, you know, grandchild, whoever, whoever might be able to utilize that.
Dan Black, Ernst and Young 27:50
We Yeah, similar like the child can we extended some more childcare and and, you know, we had a lot of emergency care, we had some regular care that we added, but another thing, which was really great, there’s a organization called girls with impact. And it’s, it’s a, it’s a, what they do is they foster entrepreneurship in girls, typically High School and below and with a focus on grammar school on things like being a business person, how to start a business, what that looks like, etc. And so we offer that we subsidize that and offer that to all of our EY employees, you know, the normal cost of like a five week virtual session would be x. Now it was like half that price. And we offered it to any of our EY friends and any of their connection. So actually a couple people in my in my town that took advantage of it. And it was good for everyone because they got more signups than they normally would. But it was something to give, at least my daughter went through it. And she had twice a week she had two hour sessions with like real business owners and entrepreneurs that have it. She was so wowed by it. And it was one one less than two less hours on video games, which was
Chris Hoyt 28:51
Dan what was that called?
Dan Black, Ernst and Young 28:52
Girls with impact? Yeah, it was really great.
Lynn Milewski, Marsh & McLennan 29:00
Shannon, I’d like to share a little bit about what Marshall McLennan was doing in with the initial kickoff of all this COVID stuff and working remotely. One of the things we wanted to do is get people comfortable with being on a video call. And so we sent out a very quick you know, learning of here’s the tips and tricks on how to use zoom and all that sort of thing. One of the rules that we instated was don’t apologize for your children interrupting you know, we all bought it you know, we all got into this, you know, in voluntarily So don’t ever apologize for your kids and and pets and I have one who bugs me all the time on meetings. Um, the other thing that I that we did that I think was really impactful is we made a video where one of our marketing ladies did interviews of people and they were all remote, but she did interviews of people at all different levels in the in the corporation and all different countries and she started With How are you? And then each of them went into a little explanation what was going on? How did it impact them? You know, I’m going crazy because of my kids or whatever it was. And, and it was a really compelling video because you got kind of caught up in the emotions of other people saying, well, I’ve lost friends, you know, and things like that. And so, that video, by the time she, you know, wrapped it up, we’re all, you know, doing a little that, but she said, that’s what, how are you is supposed to evoke from you. And then the other thing we did to kind of help everybody get familiar with zooms again, was we had a talent show. And we invited people to come and perform. So we had guys doing magic tricks, we had another guy who played the cello. For us, we had a pianist play, we had little kids doing magic tricks, we kind of opened it up. And we let the TA folks invite people in their businesses to that they represent so that the business has got to see some of this too. So our guided meditation turned into a company wide thing that the yoga is really funny because you’d look at yoga, and you’d look on the screen, and you’d see all these little kids in the background doing the yoga with their moms or dads. And so that was that was really cool as well.
Shannon Pritchett 31:18
I love that
Kelly Raulino, Davita 31:21
is Shannon and group at DaVita. I think the thing that made me really proud of we have a disproportionate number of our teammates, actually our caregivers and our frontline workers. And so everything kind of like the leadership thought about was how how to make it equitable across the organization. And I think the thing that really stood out for me was they gave everyone free premium access to Headspace in the app and, and talks about using it. And then we’ve been having, since the beginning of pandemic, weekly all company calls in really normalized talking about mental mental health and the resources like both the resources that both DaVita is giving and like what they could get in their communities, and encouraging teammates to share their stories. And then our CEO and other senior leaders, re encouraging like to talk about it. And I think it’s really changed the dynamic and just sharing that, you know, in addition to work, like life is so different, and it’s okay to say you’re not okay. It’s been, it’s been super cool. And then I highly recommend the Headspace app to
Grant Clough, AARP 32:31
Oh, earlier in the year before the before the pandemic, actually started meditation was one of the things I identified that would be potentially helpful for me. And with my team, what I started doing was, even back when when we had conference meetings and conference rooms, which seems like forever ago, what I would do is actually add, you know, personal reflection or quiet time at the last item on the agenda. And then whatever balance we had, at the end of the meeting, I would actually go ahead and drop headspace guided meditation on and whoever wanted to stay would be able to just stay, we would turn the lights off and actually end our meetings with that it was nice, because I found that by doing that, we were actually making time, we were scheduling and making time and people tended not to run over on the meetings because a lot of people got really excited about doing that.
Shannon Pritchett 33:23
Yeah, that’s I like that. That’s my favorite part about yoga classes at the end of it when you get that downtime. A little napping.
Chris Hoyt 33:33
I love the Headspace app. I’ve used it for years. It’s wonderful.
Shannon Pritchett 33:42
So I have a question for the group too. Because I hear this from everyone, including some of you on this call. How do you respond to the question? and Melissa has kind of already answered it. But how do you respond to the question that, you know, I just can’t do one more zoom meeting or just can’t do one more video meeting? You know, what is your response to your employees when they come to you with that?
Melissa Thompson, Nielsen 34:07
Yeah, we’ve started doing some walking meetings.
Shannon Pritchett 34:10
Oh,
Melissa Thompson, Nielsen 34:11
Yeah let’s just both go for a walk. So
Marc Cochran, Trane Technologies 34:16
that’s something that we used to do. And I just put my finger on why that stopped as soon as people went into their houses, right. So they get a much less comfortable chair and just can’t walk outside anymore. Like I that’s such a great idea just to go back to that because we used to do walking meetings on campus and walk outside and we had a nice campus with trees and by the lake and so it’s just a very nice place to go. Yeah, here it just seems like I can’t get away from my desk.
Karissa, Edward Jones 34:48
Something that I’ll do with team members is I’ll say like no video on the call or yes video so that you can mentally prepare yourself either way. If if that’s going to be part of the conversation and then also, actually taking five minutes off of the meeting time. So doing 25 minutes instead of 30, or maybe, you know, 15 minutes instead of a full hour. I think mentally for a lot of us, there’s such a big difference between a 60 minute time commitment and maybe a 50 or 55 minutes. So I think that’s, that’s been really helpful, especially when you’re feeling that I just can’t go on kind of kind of feeling.
Chris Hoyt 35:26
I love that. I don’t think I’ve heard of anybody doing that, where they just notate, whether it’s video, no video, but I think magnets really smart.
Dan Black, Ernst and Young 35:36
Also, one person I worked with, that I don’t work with regularly, but I was called me and a bunch of their regular teammates to a meeting, it was an hour, and then said, this is one of those meetings, you get an hour back. So scheduling a meeting for his team, and then says, No, I thought you I’m sure you have enough to do. I did this to book an hour where you can do whatever the heck you want right now, whether that’s answering emails or going for a walk. I was like what that was, I thought that was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you can’t do it all the time. But especially that first time that you do it, and I thought now I have to be careful in a global role, because some people will stay up till midnight. My America’s team, it’s it’s a it’s a godsend.
Chris Hoyt 36:18
Thanks for giving me 11pm to midnight.
Shannon Pritchett 36:26
Oh, man,
Melissa Thompson, Nielsen 36:27
I wonder if we’re gonna have time to see Dan sweater light up before you know the call is over.
Gerry Crispin 36:32
You gonna light up Dan?
Dan Black, Ernst and Young 36:36
Okay, so it has to drop early. Let me get this going here. that’s R2D2 at its finest. There you go. Yeah, it’s pretty Yeah. Okay.
Melissa Thompson, Nielsen 36:48
That’s awesome.
Chris Hoyt 36:51
I know we are coming up. And Shannon is going to wrap us up here in a couple of minutes. But is there nobody shared anything terribly proprietary? Is there any objection to us making this particular connects call open to the general public? You know, normally we keep these locked up in their security membership. But is there any is anybody have any feelings one way or the other about us opening this up? So that, you know, we can kind of share to the broader audience of what what companies and folks are doing to help their employees stay healthy?
Melissa Thompson, Nielsen 37:21
I’m trying to think what did I say?
Chris Hoyt 37:24
We’ll edit out anything. Anything terrible, Melissa.
Melissa Thompson, Nielsen 37:28
Okay thanks Hey, Gerry that’s a great hat.
Gerry Crispin 37:35
I just wanted Dan to feel more comfortable.
Shannon Pritchett 37:41
I like how Gerry has ads for everything. Oh, there we go.
Dan Black, Ernst and Young 37:50
Not to be done. You know, they’re finally decent this year.
Shannon Pritchett 37:56
You know, it’s 2020 when the Bills and the Browns are having a good year.
Dan Black, Ernst and Young 37:59
Seriously, and I can’t go and I can’t go see him.
Shannon Pritchett 38:02
Yeah, right. No, we should definitely have made it more festive for this call. Absolutely love it. Yay, Kelly’s got with you. I think you have the same little Christmas tree hat that’s so good. Well, I’m just want to check and see if there’s anything else or any questions that you have, or you know, any statements that you want to echo from some of your employees, such as zoom fatigue, or anything else that you want to present back to the call.
Marc Cochran, Trane Technologies 38:40
I think for us, just the biggest one that we really didn’t touch on today, but just it’s such a impactful thing is the virtual school at home, you know, depending upon whether you’re a few days a week, fully virtual, you know, it just it really is, it’s a challenge in really establishing flow throughout the day, and then kind of getting back on track. As soon as you’re done with that to then actually start your workday whenever that may be at 11 o’clock in the morning or two or, you know, at different times in there. And so I know for us just personally, like we’re just we’re exhausted. By the time we finished doing that. And then we’re just getting started to go into, you know, project work and zoom calls and stuff like that. So haven’t solved that one. It’s still a it’s still just kind of a big weighty thing that we’re working through. I know that’s for a lot of our teams. Yeah,
Grant Clough, AARP 39:28
I say that add on to that, too. I mean, my group has been very, very fortunate, myself included, we’ve had like a rash of brand new babies throughout the pandemic. And so there are some people who are transitioning, sort of some other responsibilities through this as well, too. And, you know, I don’t think there’s a playbook necessarily for us, and I have a baby home from daycare right now, right. But I had a direct report who had a baby back in May, and so I was able to kind of learn some things from him. But we were also able because of the pandemic to do some things like bring an attempt to take care of day to day work, allow him to extend his parental leave a little bit by finding project work that we wanted to get done anyway, so that he can work that kind of in an asynchronous way around his, um, you know, whatever it is that he was doing, if you could find four hours in the moment, I give him something that he could do, and he can shocks that didn’t require him to be there. And we were able to really kind of extend parental leave by doing that. So I think that was, you know, there’s been some benefits as well.
Shannon Pritchett 40:30
It’s amazing Southwest Airlines, I know they’re not a member, but they did the same thing with my husband. And we had our baby, March 13. Right when the pandemic began, officially. So they were able to he was able to take extended leave which transition into, into paid time off. So that was very, very helpful for especially financially because we spent 43 days in the NICU, and that was not cheap. So
Chris Hoyt 41:00
Good stuff.
Shannon Pritchett 41:02
Great stuff. Well, I just want to remind everyone that we do have a meeting next week, we have our expertise tomorrow with Frieda Polly, we’re talking about the new sec guidelines. Next one, which is unofficially our last CSR get together of the year. And then we are kicking it off, right in 2021, with our women and talent meeting, where we’re going to be focusing on the gender recession, and also looking at why and how a women are leaving the rate of the workforce that they are right now. And so you can start signing up for those 2021 meetings. And of course, play around the exchanges and so you guys can notice a little bit of a new addition we added I appreciate everyone on this call. Thank you so much for making it such a great year and thank you so much for adding to the overall wellness of this webinar. Well thank you so much again, I’ll talk to you guys soon.
Chris Hoyt 41:54
Thanks everybody.
Lynn Milewski, Marsh & McLennan 41:54
Thanks Team.
Announcer 41:57
Thanks for listening to the CXR channel please subscribe to CXR on your favorite podcast resource and leave us a review while you’re at it. Learn more about CXR at our website CXR.works facebook.com and twitter.com /careerxroads and on Instagram @careerxroads. We’ll catch you next time.
