HR professionals: Workplace flexibility: Finding the right formula for your business

Is workplace flexibility the most powerful recruiting tool?

Transcription:

Stephanie Schomer (00:08):

Stephanie Schomer. I am the editor-in-chief of Employee Benefit News. I am joined today by the lovely Jeri Hawthorne, VP of HR at Aflac. Super excited to talk today about this topic that continues to be timely despite two and a half years of this, but workplace flexibility and finding the right formula for your business. Jeri, before we dive in, I would love if you could just kind of speak a little bit about Aflac, what you guys are facing. You have obviously a huge employee base, both salaried and hourly, which we'll get into later, but what have been some of the challenges of finding the rhythm of this, and how did you guys start making those decisions and having those conversations back in 2020, and how have they evolved?

Jeri Hawthorne (00:49):

Yeah, so I'll give a little context about Aflac because I think a lot of folks think they know who we are, but maybe don't. So Aflac we're headquartered in Columbus, Georgia. We're the largest supplemental insurance company in the U.S. What you may not know is that actually about 70% of our revenue actually comes out of our Japanese subsidiary. So, while we're headquartered here in Georgia, we are primarily a Japanese organization. So not even, I wouldn't even call us global. I would call us by national, in all honesty. So we have about 7,000 of our employees there at about 6,000 in Columbus, Georgia. The Columbus Georgia part is important because Columbus, Georgia is about an hour and a half south of Atlanta. Our headquarters has been there since the very beginning, and we were founded by a family, the Amos Brothers, three brothers. Our current CEO is the son of one of those brothers. So, even though we're a publicly traded Fortune 200 company, we're very much of a family company at heart as it relates to Covid and hybrid work. Hybrid work, pre Covid, about 75% of our employees, of those 6,000 employees were based in our headquarters in Columbus, Georgia. So we were an employer of choice in the local area, probably the best employer in the local area. And the people who worked on site viewed Aflac as an extension of their family. So very long, 10 years they came to work partially because they like to see the people that were there because they'd been working with them for so long. So pandemic hits, and we are exiting people, and the first thing we had was, I don't wanna go home. I've never worked from home. I miss Susie, who I used to sit by for the last 18 years, and now I don't have her sitting down the hall for me anymore. So it was the, well, nope, you can't come on site. To the point where we actually had to lock the campus down and close off badge access, because we were like, you cannot come on site. Stay home. Please stay home. We want you to be safe and healthy. So, once we got people comfortable, we had a first phase where we actually had a contingent of employees who left some of those longer tenured folks who really only were coming to work for the social aspect, decided that it was no longer for them. They didn't wanna work from home. So they left. And then a couple years later, we have a population of employees who are very comfortable working from home. And we start saying in probably we forecasted that we were going to be bringing people back. The first time was May, 2020. The second time was October, 2020. The third time was spring 2021. And then we finally said, okay, by the end of March, 2022, we will have our configuration so you'll know if you're hybrid, if you're remote, if you're on site. So, we had all of our leaders work with our employee base to determine what their work configuration would be, what the equipment needs would be, et cetera. And we started to very actively engage folks from a communication perspective about bringing them back to their new work configuration, whatever that configuration would be. So, the other thing that happened during the pandemic was that we had a voluntary separation program. So, we had about 10% of our workforce voluntarily resign and separate from the company, a lot of those long tenured folks I mentioned. So we hired about 1200 people during the pandemic who had never worked for Aflac before. Well, pre pandemic, you had 75% of your folks sitting in Columbus. As we roll out of the pandemic and start saying, okay, who's coming back? We now have more than half of our population that are outside of the greater Columbus area or outside of an area where an Aflac office is. So, we pivoted in how we hired, which was a great opportunity from a talent acquisition perspective as we started to bring people back. That was where I would say there, it became a little bit of the executive leadership saying, well, we're bringing people back because the buildings still seem pretty empty. And us saying, yes, here we are. This is us. And them saying, well, but we said we were bringing people back. And we said, yes, we did. Our workforce configuration changed. We now have 58% of our employees remote, whereas before it was less than 10%. And by the way, 21% and additional 21% are hybrid. So only 21% of our employees are actually on site full-time and outta 6,000 folks, which is literally, we pivoted, completely flipped. So we've got a lot of space and not a lot of people. I'm going to pause here.

Stephanie Schomer (06:12):

No, I think I'm curious about before the leadership team started asking those questions, aside from just simple geography, how did you decide who would be fully remote? Who would be hybrid? And how did you take employee feedback into that decision in those parameters?

Jeri Hawthorne (06:28):

So, during the pandemic, we actively surveyed our employees every couple of months. So pulse surveys and the topics of the survey evolved as the pandemic evolved. It was everything from do you have the appropriate setup at home in the beginning in which your wellness, all the way to when the vaccinations were coming out, how do you feel about that? If the company had vaccine clinics, would you participate? And then as we started to consider our return plan, we started to solicit input from our employees about what would you prefer? What if you have a choice, what's your preference? So that was a key input. We asked them what they wanted to do. In some instances that probably set expectations that we couldn't fulfill, but we asked them nonetheless. And as a result of that, myself and my HR colleagues went to leadership and said, look, here's what we're hearing. And so we came up with, we called them employee personas. If you're an onsite employee, it means this. If you're a remote employee, it means that the fun little more nuanced one of course is hybrid, which is what is hybrid? Is that once a month? Is that once a quarter? What does hybrid mean? Do I get a computer at home? Do I get an office? Because another thing at Aflac, because we had been an on-site location, we had a very rigid protocol around, if you're this level, you get this size space. If you're this level, you get this size cube. So it became the, well, if I'm hybrid and I'm this level, do I have an office plus two computers? Plus, plus plus? So we had to get pretty granular in what that guidance would be for our employees. So it was a combination of listening to our employees creating the guidelines, but then we basically said to leaders, okay, now we're going to give you the autonomy based on your team, their performance, if they're meeting your expectations, what you wanna do and what you've been messaging to them throughout the kind of return process, so to speak.

Stephanie Schomer (08:38):

How has that panned out? I know when we've spoken before, you're like, well, we're still figuring it out, which I appreciate the candor, but I imagine that at an organization of your size, to have departments making those decisions in a silo maybe can create some interoffice jealousy.

Jeri Hawthorne (08:54):

Yes, That's exactly what happened. So, that's exactly what happened. So it's a a journey. We're not there. We had different pockets. So we had some leaders who were very comfortable and they took the autonomy, thank you for trusting me with this decision. I have these four employees who are very, very effective remote. I'm fine with them staying that way. These two actually prefer being hybrid. We're great. And they just took accountability and responsibility and they drove it, and they had a pretty good normal bumps, but it was pretty good. Then we had a group of leaders who just sort of said, I don't know what to do. It was almost paralysis in that it was that, well, I'm waiting for the leaders on high to come out with the exact guidance for me to follow so that I can say, Stephanie, you're doing this because this piece of paper or this portal says that's needed for your role. And that's where the bumps hit, because that inaction and that paralysis led to it being not entirely employee driven, because sometimes leaders over them did supersede, but more employee driven than I think it probably should have been. And in those instances, those were also probably the leaders in most instances who were not the best at managing remote employees, and probably not the best leaders, quite frankly. But if you look at the bell curve, but they were struggling with what to do. So their teams were having performance issues. They weren't sure how to handle it. And now, by the way, there's this noise because you really sort of had the haves and the have nots. They would get to a point of desperation, I haven't heard from Stephanie in four weeks. I'm going to make her work on site. Well, have you reached out to Stephanie? Well, no, but her Skittle has been gray because we had the management by Skittles. Did you all have that?

Stephanie Schomer (11:11):

I don't know that term. I am making a guess, but talk us through it.

Jeri Hawthorne (11:14):

So management by Skittle it, it's something that the HR team sort of coined because we all switched over to Microsoft teams during the pandemic. And as on teams, you have the ability to say, green, I'm available yellow, I'm busy, but you can reach out to me. Red do not disturb. And gray is if you're offline. So this was rolled out. And so we had a lot of leaders, some I say a lot, I say that very loosely. Some leaders who would use the Skittle as an indicator of productivity, Stephanie's Skittle was green all day. Well, was she shopping? Do you know what I mean? What was she working just because the skittle was green? What does that mean? And Susie's Skittle was gray. She's gotta get in the office. Well, what are their jobs? Is hers gray? Because she's maybe doing some heads down work and reading, or maybe if she's a salesperson or other out of the outdoing things in person. So, the leaders who sort of managed by managed Skittle those were the teams that where we heard the most noise and seemed to have the most challenge.

Stephanie Schomer (12:29):

So how do you and your HR colleagues start to create guidance to solve for that? Because I mean, I'm sure you guys have heard the rise of sales of the mouse Jiggler, like people have gone to great lengths to keep their skittle green, and so poor Susie getting the heat for probably maybe working very hard, not maybe the best way to judge. So where do you start to move forward and find a better way?

Jeri Hawthorne (12:53):

Yeah, I mean, we gave leaders a lot of guide. So in our call center, it's easy that, I hate to say it like that, but it is because it's how many calls? What's all metrics driven? They track call volume, they track length of calls. It's normal call center management. So that area is actually the most straightforward. But we centered with our leaders around productivity. And in some ways, it really goes back to foundational general management. But I think that we had a population of leaders that because they had always been onsite and together, struggled with what that meant in this different kind of environment. So we tried to level set to say, you need to go back to what's the productivity? What are the outputs you're looking for? What are the deadlines and deliverables? Are they meeting those? Is the work the quality that you expect?Are they available if you need to reach out to them? And if they're not, are they getting back to you in a reasonable amount of time? How responsive are they? So we went very almost foundational with the management 1 0 1 of how you should engage employees who are in that environment. And we've had better success. Some are better than others, of course, as in any organization, but we're still working our way through it. The biggest bump hurdle now is the onsite folks are perceived to get the more opportunities. And so how do you ensure that they're not being treated in if they're performing better, I'm certainly okay with that, but how do we ensure that they're evaluating performance for roles equally in these different configurations? If someone's only on site once a quarter, if someone's on site twice a week, or someone's on site every day, eight to five, how do we ensure that they're thinking about it through a consistent lens? And you can talk to them and you, it's very easy on paper. So if you go into Harvard Management, it says, here's hybrid leadership, here's what you need to do. That's easy to read that and to talk about it. When leaders go to apply that, it's always messy. It's just because people are messy and situations are messy. And a lot of these folks have long relationships and they give, well, her daughter was sick the last week, so I gave a little bit of flexibility, and I'm trying to balance being understanding of the fact that especially towards the beginning of the return of everyone, that was when kids were still at home. It was summer break. The other structures that normally existed were not in place. And so we had pushed our leaders to be flexible in understanding. And that flexibility and understanding kind of resulted in them saying, well, but you told me to be flexible in understanding, and this person's doing a great job, but I can see them every day and they're here, and this person seems to be doing okay, and I'm trying to be flexible in understanding with them, but I'm not going to promote them because they're not doing as good of a job as this person. And so how do you bridge that and work with them? And it's a case by case basis in all honesty.

Stephanie Schomer (16:26):

And it's a totally new lesson in communication for every member of the That's right. Organization. It's challenging. To shift gears a little bit, I wanted to ask you about what the impact of workplace flexibility has been on recruiting and hiring for you guys. Obviously, we're all still working through this internally, but in terms of your recruiting efforts, what does it look like and how important is it to an employee in end of 2022?

Jeri Hawthorne (16:52):

It's hugely important. So I mean, that's, and it's not in all candor. This is my point of view. My point of view is that it's not the, I'm a hundred percent remote. I'm a hundred percent on site. My perspective is can people manage their lives while they're working? And when I think about workplace flexibility, that's what I think is the magic of it. That can I go to the doctor if I need to go to the doctor? Can I go get a hair, go get my haircut if I need to get my hair cut and then finish my work later in the day? And I think that we package it as hybrid and or remote, but it's really truly that. How are they flexible? So we categorize it so people can feel like they know but at the end of the day, I think it's really, can they have flexibility? So our hiring, we hire 1200 people, a lot of whom are outside of the greater Columbus area and not near an Aflac office. So it opened up our talent pool significantly. And I would say that we really elevated our talent very, very much across the organization because of that, because we had a bigger pool. The struggle now is we've set the expectation that people can be fully remote. We've hired them fully remote and, and I talked about this. I have senior executives who are saying, but when are they coming together? Do they know that if they get to a certain level, we might make them come on site? And my response is, well, they're a consultant level. It's probably not going to make them do that for five years. And luck can happen. And so we'll get there. But it's people looking for sort of absolutes in an environment where they just don't exist right now. And trying to put boxes around things that really are almost impossible to put boxes around in kind of the clear black line, hard black line around the box. It's much grayer than I think people prefer. When

Stephanie Schomer (19:07):

When you talk about the flexibility, I think obviously that goes very hand in hand with the overall employee wellbeing and even mental health and just feeling like you have that space to take care of yourself. When you talk to leadership, for their sake, they do want people to be in that desk or in that box. They surely they see that this has a good impact on wellbeing. How do you have those conversations and reframe those conversations to help maybe resistant leadership, see the benefit and see it through the lens of productivity, however you guys are measuring that.

Jeri Hawthorne (19:39):

So what we've tried to say to them is that, again, FaceTime doesn't mean, it doesn't mean that you're working hard. It means that you're FaceTime now. Can you solve problems more quickly if you get three people in a room as opposed to on the screens, likely. And so what we've tried to say to leaders, to our senior leaders in particular, is it's more about them being together and solving problems. And so if they can do that by being together once a quarter, if they can do that by saying, okay, you have a flexible schedule, but we'd like for everybody to be in the office for these four hours on a Wednesday this block of time, so that, because that's our innovation thinking, working together time then that's okay. So we've tried to push them to say, think about it much more through the lens of what are the problems that are being solved? Are they getting solved? And does it need to be done by people coming into the office on a regular schedule every day? Or can we accommodate it through more creative solutions?

Stephanie Schomer (20:52):

What are the nuances of creating flexible policies and keeping them transparent, and also keeping the policies themselves flexible when it comes to your salaried workers versus hourly workers? Yeah.

Jeri Hawthorne (21:02):

Yeah. I mean, salaried workers have always had more flexibility just because that's the sort of nature, the nature of that type of role. It's much more based on output, usually your professional services. It's interesting though. So we created our policies around here's what it means to be hybrid. Here's what it means to be remote. Here's what it means to be on site. You get this phone, this equipment. And for our hourly workers, I actually think that the leadership in that part of the organization, in some ways, again, it's because it's more measurable from a productivity, because it's most of our operations and our call center. And so how many claims have you processed? How many calls have you taken? It's actually easier for them, I think, because it's that if you, and I agree that you are physically on site three days a week and working from home two days a week, I can tell if you're actually working those two days a week because you have productivity numbers that you have to meet. So for that population, it's actually been a bit easier. And the populations, my actuaries as an example, they're really struggling with not having people together which is really interesting because some of the senior leaders don't even live in Columbus. But we had this whole conversation during the pandemic because we had a couple of really qualified people who wanted to move to Florida from Georgia. And they said, well, if they move, and what's going to happen when we come back to the office? And I said, they will work. I mean, they'll do the same thing that they're doing now. And they said, but what if everybody comes back to the office? And I said, if you make the decision to say we'll support you to go to Florida, then they're remote workers henceforth, and they'll come to the office for a meeting or anything that you would need them to, by the way, the company will pay for that. I don't know if people had that, but we had the whole conversation of the, well, they wanna move to Oregon. And so I told them they can, but they have to pay for their travel if they do. Nope. Nope. If you let them go, they're a remote worker, and if you make them come to the office, we are paying for that. So it's like you have to think through. And the other thing, I'm like, and it's hard to find actuaries, right? It's hard to find really good actuaries. And so I'm sort of like, okay, would you really let these two was a, it's a couple. Would you really let these two really, really good actuaries leave the organization probably near the same time of each other because they've moved to Florida, and even though you've been working with them for years and the quality of their work, and you're telling me they're good employees, you'd let them leave because you think they should be physically sitting in the office here when they haven't been, by the way for two years, and they've been very successful, that I just sort of struggle with that logic.

Stephanie Schomer (24:01):

We just have a couple minutes left. Sorry, I did No, no, no. I'm not trying to rush you. I just wanted to ask we were speaking before the panel about where family fits into all of this, and we touched a little bit on mental health and wellbeing, but even today, and there will certainly be more in the days to come, we are talking a lot about caregiving at this conference. It's such a hot topic right now. Yeah. What are you hearing from your workers with families? How does this just make them feel more supported holistically?

Jeri Hawthorne (24:28):

Yeah, I mean, Aflac has a philosophy from our founders and our CEO that if you care for your employees, they care for the customer. So it's a very employee-centric organization. And that the engagement level and satisfaction and overall wellness of our employees drives business decisions at a higher level than I've seen in other organizations. So, it's something that is part and parcel to our culture anyway. From a benefits perspective, I think most companies, we've seen an uptick in the access of our mental wellness benefits. So the number of claims have gone up significantly relative to where they used to be. So, we know that people are using those benefits to a larger degree during the height of the pandemic, when people were fully remote, we ask leaders to do proactive outreach to employees because we had this mantra that you're working remote, but you're not isolated. We didn't want people to feel isolated but we're still seeing it. The pandemic. I have a friend who's a psychologist, and she said that if you think about Maslov's hierarchy of needs, the pandemic sort of took us back to the bottom of the pyramid. It was about, am I safe? Am I comfortable? And there's sort of a build back up, and it's taking some folks longer, quite honestly, to recover from that. So we've tried to actively engage our employees throughout. We offer wellness an array of wellness benefits. We offer wellness fairs. We have chaplains onsite. It's an organization called Corporate Chaplains of America. I've suggested to them that they may wanna change their name from chaplains because there's a, I had it, quite honestly, a reaction to the, huh, that's interesting. We have chaplains walking around talking to our employees, but they're basically counselors. They're just faith-based counselors. The access to that group and usage of that group has gone up significantly. They're doing a lot of virtual counseling sessions with individuals and or teams. So, it's something that we focus on and talk about quite a bit as an organization. We also have tried to say to employees and to leaders, bring your folks back in small bits. If they don't wanna come back, have a luncheon, take people out to dinner. Because what we've found with the more hesitant folks and the folks who are saying they feel isolated once they come back and start to have a little bit of engagement, they actually quite enjoy it. And it makes them want to be onsite and around folks more. And there's a positive outcome as a result of that.

Stephanie Schomer (27:24):

I think there was a study that we covered recently that said for employees who are back in the office, even those that have been forced back, 90% are like, this is fine. This is good. That's it. Which we were kind of joking. Somebody on our team was like, that's lying. Yeah. But I think it is true, and being here today is just been so wonderful. I met so many of my colleagues that I've never seen in person before, and that is nice. And so it's interesting to kind of find the balance.

Jeri Hawthorne (27:48):

That's right. That's exactly right.

Stephanie Schomer (27:50):

I think we can squeeze in maybe one question if anyone has one. Sure.

(Audience Member) (27:54):

Was wondering for the employees that you had allowed to move did you change the compensation or have you done a national structure?

Jeri Hawthorne (28:03):

We've always had a national structure, so no, we didn't change their compensation. It was you're paid at market competitive for the role. So wherever you go, that's up to you. Yeah.

Stephanie Schomer (28:14):

Cool. I think we'll wrap up, but Jeri, thank you so much for being here. This was really, really wonderful. Thank you all. Appreciate it. Thank you.