Adapting to Change: Strategies for Driving Employee Engagement During Times of Uncertainty

In today’s fast-changing world, keeping employees engaged and motivated can feel like an uphill battle. With companies experiencing everything from a volatile economy, budget changes, and layoffs to the rise of remote/hybrid work, navigating the era of AI, and more — change has been the only constant. And as an HR or L&D leader, you know how important it is to keep your team focused and driven, especially when everything around them is shifting.

This webinar will give you the tools and strategies you need to keep your employees inspired and productive, no matter what comes your way.

You will learn:

  • How to spot and solve the unique engagement issues that pop up during times of change
  • Practical tips on keeping your team’s spirits high and their productivity levels up, even when things get tough
  • Techniques to build a resilient team that adapts positively to change and remains motivated

 

Watch now and empower your team to thrive in today’s ever-changing workplace!

Rea Rotholz: Welcome. Welcome. Thank you for joining today's webinar on adapting to change. Strategies for driving employee engagement during times of uncertainty. Hopefully you're in the right place. If not, we'd love for you to stay. Anyway we will be talking about very practical tips that you can take away on how to maintain employee engagement, how to address employees during times of change.

We all in this webinar feel very passionate about this. So hoping you walk away. With some good nuggets, a few housekeeping things. So first live transcription is enabled for this webinar, like all of our webinars. If you need to use this feature, click on the show captions at the bottom of your zoom window at any time.

We want to make sure you can hear us and understand us before everyone asks, this webinar will be recorded. Don't worry. You will receive the recording. We promise you can share the recording with your colleagues. If you know someone who couldn't attend live, they will get the recording. So no worries there.

That's always our number one question we get in the chat. And finally the chat and the Q and a. This is meant to be a productive, casual conversation. Obviously we're up here, Kwesi, and Liza to chat, but we want to hear from you, right? You all are in the HR space or the L and D space, or you work at organizations.

So feel free to learn from each other, chat in your thoughts and ideas. And if you have a specific Q and a, that you want us to answer, Go ahead and put that in the Q and a box. We will make sure to check that Q and a regularly, but feel free to leverage the chat as well. All right. With that, we will go ahead and do our introductions.

My name is Rea Rotholz. I lead the learning solutions team at home. We'll do a little intro of what home is for those of you that might not be aware, been with the organization, leading the learning solutions team for almost three years now. And prior to joining home, I led learning and development at Dow Jones, which is the parent company, Wall Street Journal.

So a lot of my in house L and D experience and navigating change comes from my experience there. But really looking forward to learning from our fellow panelists. with us today as well. Liza is running a little bit late, but she will be here shortly. So I'm gonna do her intro. She is the co founder and CEO of Gable, which powers in person collaboration at hybrid and remote companies.

They're awesome. Liza has used her product management background to approach the challenge of balancing the benefits of flexibility with the impact of in person collaboration to improve company outcomes, hiring retention, employee engagement, etcetera. And before Gable. Liza was a senior group product manager at Microsoft and she also received her MBA from Stanford.

Very impressive. So she'll be joining us shortly. And then I'm here with Kwesi, who's here and I will let you do your own introduction, Kwesi. 

Kwesi Thomas: Good afternoon or evening or morning to everyone depending on where you are. My name is Kwesi Thomas. I am a strategic advisor to Guusto. My background, I've been in HR for about 20 some odd years.

I won't date myself, but for a little while. And have led rewards or HR at various companies. I was at BlackBerry for a while, Nortel before that, but BlackBerry. Then Shopify for the last, six years or so I've been on my own independently consulting and advising companies, especially companies going through growth or downsizing.

So I met Guusto about three years ago and I've been helping them through their growth for a while and then, and continue to work with them through. Building and helping people build their culture, which I think has been a lot of fun. 

Rea Rotholz: That's awesome. And it looks like Liza is here. Wow. That was quick.

You weren't that late. Welcome. I did your fabulous intro for you, but if you want to take just A couple seconds to introduce yourself. I read what I had written, but go ahead. If you'd like to say, I'll mostly 

Liza Mash Levin: introduce the company. So I'm Liza. Thank you everyone for joining. I'm dialing in from the Bay Area.

I live in Mino Valley originally from Israel. If you try to place the accent and I'm the CEO and co founder of Gable. What we do, we are the operating system for hybrid and remote teams. The way that we do it is. also with combining several products into one really helping workplace and people leaders make hybrid and remote work.

We have a marketplace of co working spaces on our platform to enable employees to work and collaborate, but also help workplace and people leaders to increase collaboration and engagement within their own offices. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here. 

Rea Rotholz: Yes, wonderful. We're so happy to have you.

And I'd love to share just briefly a little bit about home as well. So, we are the live skills development platform that enables companies to deliver live instructor led classes at scale. So we have over a hundred classes all related to leadership, power skills, collaboration, communication, et cetera.

In our course catalog. Everything we do is collaborative, peer oriented, social oriented. We know that before you have to, for example, have a difficult conversation with a colleague, you should be able to practice it and have a framework to do it. So, we're really passionate about the live learning landscape.

We have a platform that automates all of our live classes, so With the click of a button, you can set up a program, have invites sent to your learners, and then they join these live classes. We are dedicated to transforming employee performance, retention, engagement, and so we will certainly talk today about how to maintain engagement, retention, etc.

During times of change, and of course, learning is just one aspect of that. So, that's a little bit about home. I don't know if you want to do an intro as well. 

Kwesi Thomas: Sure. So Guusto is a primarily a recognition platform that helps you manage and perform recognition throughout your organization. We are laser focused on helping the frontline in particular, which is often a forgotten group as we've gone more digital, more and more digital.

So we definitely focus on helping. bridge the gap for recognition for people who are at their desk and recognition for people who are out, not at their desk, out on the manufacturing floor, in the hospital, on the floor, or out on the road. And so we blend my team, we blend a lot of our traditional ways of communication as well as some of the digital ways to make sure that we can help you build a culture of recognition no matter where your employees are physically located, whether they're at a desk or not at a desk.

Rea Rotholz: Awesome. Thank you. And then Liza, anything you want to add to your intro on Gable? 

Liza Mash Levin: No, I would say just one of our latest features and icons. And we'll talk about this more and more of that. But one of the challenges that we see with people in workplace leaders is everything right to helping with organizing events and offsets.

So this is one of the latest features that we've added and the rest. Thank you. 

Rea Rotholz: That's awesome. Yeah, event orchestration, super important and also very time consuming. So you're supporting that now okay, now that you know who we are, let's get into the meat of it. For those of you that join, we've had quite a few people join after my intro, put your questions in the q& a, put your comments in the chat.

This is meant to be a community experience so we can all learn from each other. So please feel free to So we asked, what are some of the things top of mind for you in the chat? And I think some of these were covered by you all. So some of the common changes that we are facing at our organizations, the economy.

Someone also mentioned the U. S. elections for those who are U. S. based. Budget reductions, cost cutting, Layoffs, right? We've seen in the news over the past couple years. Leadership changes. Many of you mentioned that in the chat already. Remote hybrid return to office mandates. I know, Rabelin, you mentioned return to office on how that impacts connections.

And then, of course, technological advancements. Everywhere I turn, I'm seeing AI. AI AI. I don't know if that's just me or if you all are seeing that too. But of course, there's huge implications for that as well. So would love to hear from you all. We're going to do a poll. What is impacting your organization the most right now?

And you can select all that apply, but what's top of mind for you? At your organization, go ahead and Select what you're thinking.

I'll do my little, my music. What do you think is going to be most prevalent, Kwesi or Liza? Any guesses?

Kwesi Thomas: Volatile economy or leadership changes. 

Liza Mash Levin: Maybe budget 

Rea Rotholz: changes. Yeah. All right. We'll see. Okay. Give it a couple more seconds. 

Kwesi Thomas: Hey, I want to change my vote to budget changes. 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah, budget change is a big one for sure. We'll see. And people are putting in the chat too. I love it. Okay, let's see. Oh, you were right.

You switched at the last minute, Kwesi. Budget changes, number one. 54 percent of you. Over half of you are experiencing budget changes or cuts or layoffs in some way, shape or form at your organization. That is a huge number of us dealing with this. And I think, of course, it's related to the economy, right?

Or it might be related to leadership changes, which are, number two and three on this list. We will certainly touch on all of these themes. But good for us to see that we are all in this together and it's important to learn from each other and lean, lean on each other. So stay tuned. Super excited that we're here to talk about this today.

I also see some great additions in the chat. So again, please feel free to, to continue to chat in your thoughts. Okay, moving on. So why does change has such a significant impact on employees? Well, we know that. Change initiatives fail often. There's a lot of change happening at once. So change fatigue.

And some of these stats just show really the impact. And you all know it's important, which is why you're here. So we have another poll. To hear from you all. What do you think are some of the things that make employees resistant to change? So for any of you that have change management experience, what are your thoughts?

Or if you've just been in an organization with a lot of change, you've experienced it yourself. What are some of the things that you have felt as an employee at your organization? And let's see some of. What makes us resistant to change? Okay. Any guesses here? Panelists?

I think maybe fear of the unknown. Yeah, I'm thinking 

Kwesi Thomas: builds and gets larger over time. I think, a lot of times the roots, the fear of the unknown for individually, 

Liza Mash Levin: I don't want to like the awareness pieces. It's a very big one. Why? Why things are changing? 

Rea Rotholz: All right, let's see. All right, Liza, you are two for two here, I'm guessing the top one.

I love it. Lack of awareness around the reason for the change. Absolutely. And we're going to talk about, some of the ways to combat these problems. Resistance items, right? So fear of the unknown, lack of awareness, mistrust. Not so many people who are worried about their job role. Although I think it's baked in there.

The fear of the unknown of like how this might not impact my role in a big way, but it impacts me in some way. Right. If I'm at the organization. So we'll talk about that as well. I also love some of the comments, lack of control on how it will affect you from Samina. Darian, lack of awareness can lead to distrust.

Totally. These things are all interrelated. So with that, I know we have some additional stats. Perfect. So here we, we answered our perspective and then here's what the research shows as well. So I think we were. Pretty aligned on a lot of this mistrust, lack of awareness, fear of the unknown, et cetera.

So, you can leverage these stats as you prepare for any change initiatives you might be leading at your organization.

So Kwesi, I know you're taking us through this slide. Some of the ROI. 

Kwesi Thomas: Yeah. So I won't drain the slide, but the ROI of getting good at change really has to do with, from my perspective, with getting. faster at going through the valley of change and getting back up to the peak of growing again. And so getting good at change helps you go through those changes quickly, more efficiently, and get you back into the growth period that you want to.

And I think I was in a presentation a while ago where someone was showing that curve of people getting good at, sorry, going through change and the faster you can make that curve go and it goes further and further up into the right. And so, the stats, I won't drain them, but all the research says getting good at change is good for The bottom line of the company, the hourly revenue of the company, the change initiative rate is faster, and we see breakthrough performance on the other end of change once we get good at it.

So this is a hopefully what we're going to get through a lot of today and talk about today, but I think the ROI of getting a change is evident in all the research we've seen. 

Rea Rotholz: A hundred percent. It is extremely important that we as organizations can excel at change because what, what's the phrase?

The only constant is change, right? Yeah, absolutely. 

Kwesi Thomas: Both death and taxes, but we'll go with change. 

Rea Rotholz: Right. I 

Kwesi Thomas: love it. 

Rea Rotholz: Okay, perfect. So, we now that we know why we're here, why we care about this topic, some of the research, what it shows around navigating change Let's get into today's conversation.

And again, we want to hear from you, put a question in the chat or to me, put a question in the Q and a leverage the chat. Our first question is around company culture. So one of the things we know to be true is your ability to. So the ability for companies to handle change really depends on, the infrastructure put in place in the culture and people's sense of belonging leadership, all of that great stuff.

So crazy. I'm hoping you can start us off here. And then, of course, Liza and I will chime in. What makes a company culture strong enough to handle these big changes that are happening in organizations today? 

Kwesi Thomas: Interesting enough, I think what makes company culture strong, what we strive for are probably some of the biggest challenges for us to make the company strong and resilient and change.

Oftentimes we are looking to build cultures that have a sense of belonging, belonging. Contribution, a community, and trusted leadership. And when change happens, it rattles those things, right? It rattles, do I feel like I belong still? Am I contributing? Do I trust the leadership still? All of those things get rattled.

And so I think building a culture that's strong and resilient when change happens has to do with how we implement those things. Do we implement them in a way that can sort of An unrealistic expectation of what happens with challenges when we're going into the challenges. Are we Still holding those principles.

Sure. We're still communicating as transparently as we can Are we still trying to treat people going through a, let's just say it's a workforce reduction. Are we treating them the way that our culture and values still hold true, even as they go through that process? Are we are we still making sure that we have a team that feels like they're going to belong and wanted after?

And so I think building a culture that is ready for change or is resilient during change has to hold it through to those things through the change. And the other one I would say is how you treat. Issues that are smaller throughout your culture. How do you treat challenges as they come up or, projects that fail or things that didn't go right in the company.

How do you treat those in the, in smaller situations that we can trust what happens in the largest situations. And so those are the areas I think, um, are, and building a culture are important to build it, resilient to change. I unfortunately, I've been in some very big change companies at Nortel, there was 90, 000 people, 98, 000 people when I was there.

And I left when there were 3, 000 people and Blackberry, there were close to 20, 000. I left when there were just under 1, 500. So I've seen some pretty epic people exiting. And I think for me, the cultures had a very hard time going through it. I learned through failures. So I had a very hard time because we had such we didn't think about how, what we were doing.

We didn't have everything. We were, we didn't have, we were building the culture for a day where we had to restrain ourselves. And so when you start slashing things through the culture, people didn't know how to handle it. We didn't know how to respond. We clammed up and didn't communicate as much.

And so, I've had situations after that where I've said, okay, let's not repeat those mistakes. And those have been much more successful in going through change than being, than those larger situations that were pretty intense, to be fair. 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah, it sounds like that kind of reduction from 9 do you say 98 to 3, 000?

That is wild, frankly that would impact even if you had a really strong culture. I can't imagine that not shaking the culture but you mentioned a few things that I thought were really interesting. One being, how are we continuing to live our values? I actually think values are really underutilized strategic tool in an organization because often they're like nice words, like, on a website, and we don't really talk about them, but there is an opportunity if you do really intentionally embed them in your culture and your ways of working and your recognition and all of that stuff, then you can lean on them to explain decision making, right?

You can say we are In this terrible situation in your case with these reductions, but we're doing it because we're customer centric, right? And here's why this is going to allow us to be more customer centric and you can lean on those values, but only if you've already integrated them. Because I don't want it to feel inauthentic, bringing up values at a time of change, right?

They need to already be woven in. But I think they are certainly a tool that can be leveraged during times of change when done well. 

Kwesi Thomas: Yeah, I completely agree with you. I took it for granted that if you're building a strong culture, you probably have to live your values. And that's probably for granted, but you're absolutely bang on, I think.

Values have to, they have to come to life before you try to invoke them when you're going through a change. Yeah, 

Liza Mash Levin: I just want to add that I totally agree. I think it's a really good call out. I think those values should be known for every person in the company. That makes sense. It's really embedded.

Like, we're an early stage startup. We can only talk about ourselves, but Also what I see across companies that we work with that if you have this is like embedded in so many ways, it's in swag. It's in like employees, day to day work like they see live and breathe it.

And also, that in my opinion, also helps with making decisions, right? Like, is this aligned? With our values or not. And this is how we act. And I think this is also how you can rationale a lot of things, if that makes sense. And it's I saw this question, in the Q& A about talking about, when you're younger, how do you do it?

And I think you need to be intentional in building this, in that aspect, one, the values. And it actually works. Maybe the last point to add is that even one of the poll question about, fear of like change or transparency. I think this is also a really big thing. It's just being extremely transparent for everything that you do and explain the why, whether it's a good thing or bad thing, at least it makes sense and it's out there.

So that would mean, would be my last point is the transparency piece. 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah, I love that. And Katie, I see the question in the Q& A. Thank you for putting it. You asked what advice would you give a startup company going through a lot of change and growth? And I'm sure Liza, as the CEO and co founder of her company, has had to deal with this.

A lot. Yeah. So I heard from you, transparency is really important, right? You elaborate even just a little bit more while we're on the topic about to work? 

Liza Mash Levin: Yeah. Yeah. And it's a really, it's a, we can have spent all the time. I'm definitely not going to, I'm going to talk only about that.

But I think that The biggest things that we've seen is like at the beginning, you like you hire specific people and that there is like similarity. They don't look the same or anything like that, but there is like traits. There are traits that they all share and they're, almost a common mission.

And you see all of this very clearly. And then it's almost the fundamental of building. These are the values of the companies. And this is how we make decisions with this. And like we, it's, And it's always evolving as the company evolves. That's also something to note. What got you to point A might not necessarily get you to point B and that's fine.

As long as one, you explain you're transparent about that, that I would say is a really important thing on why we're doing what we're doing, why we're changing what we're changing. I think that is probably the biggest key that I see is. Being very transparent and homestly also vulnerable, right?

Like I'm a person it's hard. Everything is hard. Like we're all going through a lot of things. And I think that's also brings people together. 

Rea Rotholz: People want to be able to relate to their senior leader. Like you are human too. I think there's a balance between you don't want to. instill uncertainty or panic, right?

At the senior level you have a lot of power over how people are going to react, right? So you don't want to seem panicked or anything like that, but you do want to be transparent. I'm hearing in here's why and here's the impact and here's the vision, right? The positive story as to why this change is happening right now.

So it's going to be hard, right? It's going to be hard for everyone, including me, but here's the why and here's the positive vision at the end of it, right? And certainly always easier said. That done, right? Perfect. So talked a bit about company culture. So what the next question is around. What do we actually do when we start to notice that our team members or our employees or colleagues are?

I don't even care anymore. It's just too much. I'm disengaging, I'm quiet quitting, whatever you want to call it. We know this happens all the time where people just feel overwhelmed and they're like, I'm over it, frankly. What, I'm curious, like, what are some of the signs that will tell us that this is happening and what are some of the things that maybe we could do early to address this?

Liza, I don't know if you want to start first. 

Liza Mash Levin: Sure, I'm happy to. So I think there are a few things. One, there is a change of, it depends also how senior the person in the company is, how long have they been in the company. I would say they're very interesting. in different pieces, if that makes sense. I think especially if you're either a leadership position, disengagement is pretty clear.

I can pretty quickly understand that, but when majority of employees, they're, especially right now when companies are Remote distributed hybrid being hired in a hybrid or remote settings is especially hard to begin with in a sense of how they feel connected to the company. We talked about company values and company culture.

How do you feel this when you're remote and you don't know anyone and the team doesn't know sit close to you. You don't have this water cooler chats and so on and so forth, right? Clearly, what we're doing, we see the understanding of benefits of remote, but I think these are the biggest challenges. So few things to I would say, both in terms of doing but detecting is understand is when you onboard new employees.

We see one of the great things that companies are doing is either having a buddy system. Having extreme documentation and flows also do orientation days. We've seen how a lot another thing that we see is really intentional gathering of employees, even that whether they're remote or in your offices have helped a lot.

They're actually studies that show the improvement of engagement over a course of six months after you've done. And on site or collaboration. So the effect of what you're doing are lasting, or even compounding, if that makes sense. So it's really important to create those meaningful moments to bring people together, because this is how they will continue to feel Engaged and connected to the company.

So that would be probably my number one. Advice is making sure that you have programs around bringing people together intentionally. And the reason that I'm saying intentionally, it shouldn't just be a happy hour, something like that. Usually what we've seen in both our companies that we work with, but also studies that people work best and get the best out of it is if there is a common goal you're working towards.

So to combine this both with, a project or something or an offsite that has a tangible outcome along with happy hours and things like that is really powerful. And again, the effects are compounding. So we see companies doing either quarterly events or monthly or. Yearly or every six months, but those are candidates that should be part of your playbook as people leaders to make sure employees are engaged.

I would say yeah, it was here. 

Rea Rotholz: I couldn't agree more. I think the in person is amazing when you can do it. Also want to acknowledge. Sometimes it's just not a possibility for organizations or teams. And certainly there are ways to, come together. Virtually. I know at home we've done quite a few just fun experiences, whether it's a virtual escape room or we did recently a painting class where everyone got paint.

Those are things that are fun, but they actually serve a really important perf. Purpose, which is breaking down the barrier that happens when you're just on zoom. I think zoom can sometimes dehumanize people and Being just on email or slack or whatever your chat is You become less of a human you become more of just like someone you're working with and you can misinterpret written communication, you can end up being short with people.

I see this happen all the time, just as a people manager at my organization. And so breaking down that facade of like hiding behind a zoom or hiding behind an email or a slack, like we remember that we're all humans. And we remember that we all are in it to win it. We're all here for the company mission, the values we're choosing to be here.

And we all want the same goal for our customers. And sometimes you just need to be reminded of that, right? Because we misinterpreted one slack and then we thought they were pissy. And then we, suddenly aren't talking to them as much anymore. This happens all the time in remote workplaces. So I love the idea of you need to intentionally spend the time together as humans.

First, not just behind the screen. Kwesi, I don't know if you had anything you wanted to add or your thoughts here as well. 

Kwesi Thomas: No I totally agree. I think the only thing I would add is that, As you see individuals, or as you see team members who are disconnecting, encourage your lead, like their managers, to talk to them.

Like, a lot of times they just need, they need to be heard. They need to voice what they're concerned about or what they're going through so that someone can address it or just hear it. And so, in addition to doing the team was random together. I've seen real success with people who are just.

Early in the change or early in the disc people are disconnecting talking to them. So I think should encourage our leaders to do that as well. And our managers. 

Rea Rotholz: I love that. One of the things that I've seen many of our customers start doing more of, which I had never really experienced so much previously is stay interviews.

So I know a lot of companies do employee engagement surveys and that kind of thing, and you get great information from those, like don't want to knock it by any means, but there is something to be said about having an intentional conversation about what's going on, like person to this point, right?

And understanding the current state, whether you're a successful high performer who's loving the job or someone who may be Isn't so successful or isn't so engaged. It's valuable to learn from both perspectives. And I completely agree, being proactive in this. So it's not too, oftentimes we wait till it's too late, right?

Someone is really disengaged or unhappy, and then suddenly we're like no. What can we do? And it's like, we got to this point for a reason. So yes. Love that. Did you want to add something? Okay. Awesome. Okay. So going along with the theme of how do we be proactive oftentimes the change that's happening to us in an organization is not our decision.

Sometimes it is if you're the CEO. But for many of us, I'm sure it's not necessarily right. It feels like the change is happening to you or you're part of the change initiative. And you're in charge of maybe communicating or working with managers often as the HR function that tends to be where we sit.

We have to help with navigating the change, right? So we'd love to hear and feel free to chime in. I'm loving the chats coming in. What are some of the tips like tactical things that we can all be doing to help our employees navigate these changes? Would love to hear from any of you, if you have an experience where this worked really well, you did something that was really productive and I'll start us off with recapping what's already been said, frankly, right?

Liza mentioned, you got to say the why. You gotta paint the vision, right? Being transparent when possible. Being transparent when you can't be transparent. Saying, I don't know. If you don't know, right? All these things that really make us human, that we talked about already, I think is really important here.

Curious, Quazy, do you have any additional thoughts on how we can combat change fatigue when there's a lot happening and we're navigating this change? 

Kwesi Thomas: Trying to, sorry, putting my thoughts together. I was going somewhere else and then how we navigate change fatigue and navigate change fatigue. I think, one, as leaders or as the function as folks often helping coordinate, we have to plan. So we're not, and I think plan for not just the current page in front of us, but what's happening next or the two options that will happen next.

So that we aren't reacting and constantly feels like, nothing is solid. We're always changing what's underneath. So that even if we've got a couple of principles or a couple, a directional, when you don't want to use our values that we're going through in the change and as things change, we can still hold true to those.

Those principles as we're going through change. So, um, example for if we've committed to communicating on a certain frequency, we're going to do that. If we're committed to we've said about something about a program that we're not going to change, that should be the last option. We're not going to change it.

Let's just try to keep the, I would say the ground solid under people as the change happens. Of course, there are situations that you can't control, but as much as possible. The other area I was, I wanted to just talk about a bit, oftentimes we start removing programs really easily.

And most of the programs we remove are the ones that managers actually have in their tool belt. Most of our managers have a tool belt of things that they can control and They can't control lots of times, they can't do comp, they can't change benefits, they can't change retirement, they can't change long term incentive.

So the things that are in their tool belt, learning and development, time away from work, recognition, those things are the things we tend to change really quickly, because they're the easiest programs to stop, or to stop funding, or to Those are the ones that you're taking away from your managers who actually need more tools during the change.

And so where possible to help, I would try to stay away from changing those programs. During during times of uncertainty. So the managers have those tools to use to help the team through it. I answered a lot there. I'm sorry. 

Rea Rotholz: All great stuff. Yeah. Liza, do you 

Liza Mash Levin: want to add 

Rea Rotholz: on? 

Liza Mash Levin: Yeah, I just want to add one thing on maybe the opposite side in the sense of we hear a lot of leaders that say we Because there are so many changes.

We want to take it like we will refer from doing yet another change unless we are absolutely certain or have high probability of certainty because those big transitions. And if any one of the things that we surveyed 8000 employees on the board. Return to work policies. Some had over five different return to work policies that were done in the or just thinking about the amount of change, and that's definitely not no easy or healthy in that sense.

And part of the things we see is right now that You really need to make sure that what you're doing has a positive impact. That's one or it's better to wait if that makes sense. And the second piece would be if you are doing a change very clear, again, we're talking about very clear communications and timelines and why.

We're doing that change 

Rea Rotholz: 100%. One of the things that I'm sure you all have heard before is like you have to communicate something seven times for it to sink in or for people to really understand it. I think we often forget that as organizations like we have a town hall we announced something and then we assume that managers understand it and they're going to go champion it with their teams and we're like, Oh, we did it, we communicated.

We did it. And that's just so not the reality at organizations, right? Like, yes, you need to do that, have that town hall with the leadership, explain the why. But then you also need to very intentionally arm your people managers, right? They're the people that are at the front lines of this change that are going to make and break the engagement of their teams.

Because if you have a people manager, and I'm sure you've seen this before, who says, well, I'm telling you this because I have to, I had no say in this change. And I just, this is what's happening. And I have to tell you, and I don't like it either. We get that a lot culturally, right? Where you try and bond with like a common enemy and like the leaders are the common enemy.

I've certainly seen this in bigger organizations for sure. What that does is it further disengages. It further separates the frontline employees from leadership, and it festers that mistrust that you all mentioned. is at the forefront of these changes versus if you are able to get your people managers on board, you bring them on the journey.

They understand the why deeply, they understand their role and the importance in the change. They're trained to be effective people managers. They build trust with their teams, right? We talked about a strong culture. Needing to have a strong culture in advance while also needing to have strong relationships at the organization.

Then you have champions of the change who can work with the frontline employees and help build that buy in. So I think being intentional about how you're supporting those middle managers during times of change can be game changing for organizations when they're navigating change. And I think often there's this forgotten middle.

Right at organizations. So yeah, go ahead. 

Kwesi Thomas: That like bold asterisks underline. I think for me, that's the biggest game changer in terms of navigating change is really getting the, your managers who are in front of your employees. on board with that change. Like that can't be understated. Overstated enough.

Oftentimes it's also the hardest, most time consuming piece of this work. And so we minimize it and minimize it into a smaller town hall for managers or FAQ we send out because that's easier. This one, if we can spend more time getting managers on board, we would see outstretched results in the team.

Of almost for anything else that we could do, I think. 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah, and we got a question from Catherine just digging deeper. How do you support the middle level managers who are sometimes the biggest resistors to change often? They're overloaded. They have so much work and they have to manage their teams. Certainly understand that.

But like, what are some additional things we could do to support middle level managers? I think. For me, and I'll start and then Liza and Kwesi obviously want to hear from you too. I am a middle manager, so I feel like I experience this and I'm sure many of you do too. I think often it's, you don't want to be blindsided and you don't want to be told what to do.

No one wants to be told what to do, right, without being bought into it. So part of it is going back to the why, going back to how this is going to impact that individual and their teams and the positive framing of it. And then there's a little bit of like instilling confidence and empowering those managers to ensure that they're able to navigate change in a way that makes sense for them.

So part of this is, are your managers Prepared before the change comes to be an awesome people manager. Do they have the tools in their toolkit where again, they have trusting relationships, they know how to have good one on ones, they know how to have real talk with their employees. They know how to generate by like, these are all skills that should exist.

So how do you make sure that you're being noticed before any big changes happening if possible, but then are they supported by their managers? Right? So are your people managers able to go to their manager and have this conversation and be coached on how to talk to their direct reports and ask for feedback on, hey, if I say something in this way, what are your thoughts, manager?

Right. So it's really a compounding impact as you think about the levels in your organization. But again, being very intentional with how you roll that out. I think it's really important. Kwesi or Liza, do you have anything you want to add to the middle manager? How we prep them?

Liza Mash Levin: Just echo what you said. I think just making sure that you empower the middle managers to go to their manager. I think it's really good. And one of the comments that I liked on the chat is just include them in the conversation. Really and empowering aspect is truly the way to go through this through and through.

So make middle managers part of the solution versus the problem. That would probably be my only. 

Rea Rotholz: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So we, we got a question, another Q and a. So again, we're at like 15 minute mark. So feel free to put your Q and a's in now so we can weave them in. I really like this question.

How to balance the needs of human beings with Margin pressure and ever increasing demands for higher productivity and operational efficiency. Budget cuts, rifts was the number one thing you all said. 54 percent of you said that this is a really prevalent change in your organization. And whenever I hear budget cuts, I hear do more with less.

Right? And figure it out. So how do we balance the needs of humans who are maybe burning out with the needs of the business? What are some strategies that you all have seen? Do either of you have any thoughts to start us off? And again, feel free to chat in too, if you at your organization have thoughts, we'd love to hear.

Kwesi Thomas: And this is a real question of what and how. The, as HR leaders, we get into the conversation about having to manage the margin pressures and the demands and the efficiency. And I understand that as a pressure and a conversation as part of the leadership, figuring out what to do, but then how you go about doing that is about people and how you treat the humans that are impacted.

Right. And so if you are, reducing the workforce or changing roles or doing whatever you need to achieve the company's objectives that you've decided on the what. Then how you go about it and how you treat people, how you communicate with them, how you treat them during exits, how you treat the people, all of that, how is this other side of the balance that I think is not unrelated, but as managed, you can manage to treat people while still in the, how you do things.

And I think for me, that's the balance of those two things of, trying to treat people as human or knowing that they're human beings and also achieving the company's goals. And I think I've talked about some of those larger reductions I was part of, et cetera. And I've done some smaller ones, but same of scope or help pull some offices.

And I think for me, that's a tenant. I take into it. What having, especially if we're talking, workforce reductions, we've made the decision now we're going to treat people well. And that's I think the key to that part, that, that question.

Rea Rotholz: Yeah, absolutely. It's really hard. Like, it's really hard. I think one of the things that we have to always remember to do, and we teach this. And one of our classes, including our coaching class is the power of acknowledging and validating people's feelings like we're not robots. We are human beings.

It's okay to be emotional about things at work. It is. We don't have to put up a facade all the time. Like we are humans first who go to work, right? And so understanding that there's going to be reactions. It is normal, right? There's going to be reactions and we should create a safe space with our teams and this it goes back to middle managers, right?

Who are that frontline leader for those teams? Create the safe space to allow people to be authentic in their reactions, especially when a change is new, especially if it's a layoff and people are losing their friends and colleagues. And there's a lot of uncertainty about what it means for their job.

Like With any big change, you have to hold space for that change curve. You have to allow employees to feel the anger and the denial and all those things. It is psychologically normal. And I think often when companies rush through and they're like no, we don't have any time. We got to go, guns a blazing and we got to keep productivity up and all this stuff.

And you're focusing on that. You're losing the human aspect versus acknowledging. I know this is extremely hard for you. And frankly, if you need to take the rest of the day off, I respect that. I'm thinking about like a massive layoff, right? You have to think about what your employee needs as human first, for sure.

Anything you want to add, Liza? 

Liza Mash Levin: No, totally echo. Yeah, totally echo. Perfect. 

Rea Rotholz: So didn't want to go like so negative there. I felt like let's like bring it up a notch. So not all change is, is negative. By the way, there's plenty of really positive changes that happen in organizations. I think about exciting mergers.

Leadership changes is sometimes really exciting when you have someone new on the executive team. Like there's lots of positive changes. I'm curious, to hear from you all. Any like programs or change initiatives that you've seen that gotten employees excited things that worked really well in terms of a change initiative.

And we can get inspired with some ideas here that are a bit more positive. Crazy. Do you want to start us off on anything? You've seen get employees excited during times of change. 

Kwesi Thomas: Well, I wrote my answer to the negative of that question, but all right, okay, 

Rea Rotholz: you can do the negative. No, 

Kwesi Thomas: that's totally fine.

I was like, yeah, I completely hear you. So you're going all the, but I know in positive change, especially when you're, growth, new leaders, it is important because that is still uncertainty for employees. And so what's coming. And I think some of the tenants we've talked about throughout the conversation still hold true.

Staying at your values, communicating, and making sure employees understand what the changes and where you're going. But I think, in terms of programs I've seen getting out and talking, let's talk new leaders, getting them out to talk to people and meeting people and getting people to hear their perspective, see them as a human, understand where they're coming from is, I think a great program.

I think it's under, a lot of times we bring in new leaders or new managers, And they go straight into the work. No, give them some time to get in there and meet the people they're going to work with and talk about where they've come from, their backgrounds, et cetera. As opposed to to get them. And I've seen that as a program Shopify there for awhile, the first week as an employee, you didn't have any, you weren't expected to show up to the job part.

You were in training and meeting people, etc. And you didn't have to, like, you didn't jump into meetings and any of the work itself was a week later. And so that I saw work really well because it gave people time to understand this new person, this new change. Um, that I think is one that jumps to mind that, that happens in a positive.

The other one for me, as I don't know if a lot of you do town halls or how it's all hands meetings, if you can build in 15, 20 minutes for people to share new things. a new part of the product, a new program that they're about to roll out and share those, not just like, let the team share the excitement of the new thing they worked on or the new project they're about to complete with the rest of the company, like breeding that excitement of accomplishing something and a new change that's coming.

Rea Rotholz: I love that. And I'm actually really surprised you didn't touch further on recognition. 

Kwesi Thomas: I tried, 

Rea Rotholz: but well, one of the things and I'll share because I adore this and we do this at home. My organization internally is in our all hands. We shout out people based on our values. So if there's a big change, and we're all a part of it, certainly people are going to get shouted out for that change.

And then we tie it back to they're being shouted out for camaraderie or customer centricity, and it just keeps those values alive. But I think recognition and gratitude being humans first, right? It goes a long way when people are acknowledged for the hard work that they're doing, right? And during times of change, I think that acknowledgement of small winds and people's involvement and all of that stuff helps us create this.

We're all in this together. Mentality right that we need at these organizations during times of change. So absolutely recognition, gratitude, all that stuff can be really powerful. 

Kwesi Thomas: Yeah, I appreciate it that I didn't have to the shameless plug, but you're 

Liza Mash Levin: right. It's 

Kwesi Thomas: completely true. 

Liza Mash Levin: By the way, we do the same and our company, I think it's.

It's just really great. Just take a moment. I would say this is really powerful. We actually one of the things that really focuses is to give shout outs mostly to ICs. Less than, a VP or, there is a valid balance, but just to make sure every person counts on their work is visible.

I think it's really important. The last thing to add, I would say is that one of the things that we've seen work is also almost measuring managers. We've seen several companies, measured managers on how they bring their team together, like basically giving them a budget and making sure that they are bringing their team to help them collaborate and work together.

So this is one of the things that we've seen, which I think is a really great point, right, is that you're not just spending on the execution of the team. If you really are measured on how do you make sure that you Bring the company values and feel connected and all of that and produce it to the rest of the team.

So I actually really like that that option. I would say. 

Rea Rotholz: I love that. Put your money where your mouth is. If you're saying it's important for managers to foster collaboration on their teams, but then you don't support them in any way. Right? You're, that is a true, a cultural symbol of that importance, right, for the organization.

And it doesn't, I love the idea of having a budget. Of course, if that's not possible for your organization, there are still ways to celebrate when a lot of teams are doing that, right? You can shout out a manager. Hey, they brought together their team in this way and look at how close they are, things like that.

But I love that. Time check. We have a couple of minutes. I always like to end these webinars just quickly with our key takeaways as panelists. And of course, if you have a key takeaway participants would love to put it in the chat so we can hear from you. And then we have just one quick intro conclusionary slide.

with some next steps from us, your panelists. So any key takeaways? Do any of you want to kick us off? 

Kwesi Thomas: I'll jump in. The big one for me, we touched on a few times was really that middle, that manager level and spending enough time with the manager level. On your changes and you said it I think, it was really powerful.

It's one line that you'd said, Maria, which was, it's, you can't do it when you're during the change. You have to have that, build that muscle with your managers and good one on ones and good habits, building the right trust so he gets the change. Your managers are not just well equipped, but they're well trusted and know how to handle those conversations.

So I think that's the part that gets under, underlooked, but it's huge. 

Rea Rotholz: Appreciate that 

Liza Mash Levin: agree. Totally agree. I think maybe just to add on. This is I actually really like, the point of Quincy in terms of what programs you need to have to make sure that those are fundamental.

You don't take away like, in general, everything right to the change is really hard and we're all experiences, but some are core fundamentals that we as company leaders have to have in place that. No, no matter what, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna move unless you really have to, and I think it's a really good call out for everyone and to advocate for that.

Right. 

Rea Rotholz: I love that. Yeah. What is set in stone? Like, what are we committed to as an organization that we're not? That we're going to keep in place no matter what I think mine And Liza you touched on this and it's just so so true. It's just the importance of explaining the why And painting the vision even if it is a negative change there is a reason why and it's for the Betterment of the organization, right?

It's always for the betterment of the organization, otherwise you wouldn't be doing it. But sometimes it's hard to make that connection, especially as an IC or frontline leader. So just that why piece and really making sure everyone is really clear on that. That is really important. That's that would be my key take away.

One minute left. We have some next steps for all of you participants here. Join home for our next webinar with our CEO Tom Griffiths. And an advisor at Stripe. This is for any of you working at those scaling organizations. So a lot of growth happening. Would love to see you there. Kwesi, you have an executive pitch kit.

Kwesi Thomas: Yeah, often with recognition programs, the getting, getting executive buy in is hard. Explaining the ROI to your CFO and managing through that conversation. So we have a pitch kit which helps you through that conversation. Some slides to help you. Then ROI calculator to help you with the pesky CFOs who don't want to, who you get budget buy in from.

Thanks a lot. 

Rea Rotholz: Love that. And Liza. 

Liza Mash Levin: Thank you. And we we just released basically a step by step guide to how help bring teams together at a coordinating space, also in your offices really robust plan that you can help that you can distribute for your managers or even yourselves.

Rea Rotholz: Perfect. I will definitely be checking out all of that. I would like to give a big thank you to Kwesi and Liza for joining me today as panelists on today's webinar. And a big shout out to all of you participants for joining today. It has been such a pleasure. Thank you for your questions and your chats.

It's always fun. Hope to see you on the next webinar. And with that, have a wonderful rest of your day and wonderful rest of your week. Thank you all so much.

Meet The speakers

Hone Webinar Speaker Kwesi Thomas

Kwesi Thomas

HR advisor
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Hone Webinar Speaker Liza Mash Levin

Liza Mash Levin

CEO and co-founder at Gable
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Webinar_Dec5-ReaRotholz

Rea Rotholz

Senior Director of Learning Solutions at Hone
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