Stacie Baird

We have a distributed and remote workforce that spans across over 40 states in the US between those populations. A key to creating, measuring and monitoring engagement is leveraging our Employee Wellness platform and programming. We track and create programming to recognize and honor the diversity across our teams as well as through ongoing employee feedback. Key learnings in this process include: -Providing a broad range of engagement options and channels is critical to meeting teams where they are and understanding what they need -Employees that do not engage in wellbeing/programs are likely not engaged in work performance -Mixing technology-based programs with "old school" (think walking challenge) are key

Learn by doing: One life-hack to keep learning in the ever expanding and growing space of HR is to write and contribute to content like this! Having a podcast, speaking, contributing to panel discussions, belonging to advisory associations hold me accountable to continue my work in expanding my personal knowledge around the HR space. As the senior lead for the HR team in my company I also share learnings, content and data across our team and invite others to do the same. This additional layer of accountability requires I set aside dedicated time for this research and reading practice and share.

Here are some ways to ask questions during a 1:1 if you suspect someone is experiencing burnout: During a 1:1 inquiring: What is your biggest challenge right now? (many times, people will go to a surface level project/task) Keep asking "and what else?" looking for signs and symptoms below: "I am tired": Feeling persistently tired and drained. "Somedays I struggle to focus": Difficulty focusing and staying attentive. Look for negative/pessimistic language: Feeling negative or critical toward work. Look for declining job performance: Reduced effectiveness and accomplishment. Peer feedback: Increased frustration with others. "I am not feeling so great." Sleep challenges, headaches, or GI issues.

In the spirit if continuous learning, a specific feedback loop is a critical component of process improvement. In my own experience this requires: -Learn and apply mechanisms -Support opportunities -Reducing the fear of failure inside the culture -Driving leadership behavior and expectations that also support these values -Bi-directional feedback that is frequent, predictable and non-judgmental As we embrace our feedback we can continuously integrate learnings and encourage evolution of culture towards this value system.

Understand the goals and objectives of your overall organization and your leadership by: -Asking to understand the link between departmental and overall corporate goals -Ask how you can have an impact in your role or what projects will be closest to having an impact where you could contribute -Listen during meetings for what metrics and KPIs your leader values and how they prefer to have that data packaged/communicated Seek first to understand. Listen. These are the keys to facilitating greater trusting relationships and understand what the leader values.

To quote multiple authors, collaboration and evolution of roles requires an organization (and you) to view each opportunity as: -A "tour of duty" -Hoffman: Each role is an opportunity for an individual to grow, the company to learn more about that individuals' talents and both benefit from having realistic views that we no longer are married to our employer "forevever". -"Who not How"-Sullivan & Hardy: As the world evolves (technology, financial pressures, globalization) if organization start to ask "Who" has the skills to contribute to this project vs. "How" do we prescribe getting it done, we get to collaborate with multiple cross-functional teams and expand skill sets.