Edward Jones’ Suzan McDaniel on Creating Social Connections in a Hybrid World

Roula Amire
2024-12-04T11:03:25-05:00
Podcast
Great Place To Work

Hybrid work offers employees flexibility, but it requires intentional effort to maintain in-person connections.

It requires care, intentionality, and lots of communication, which is the approach Edward Jones took.

Suzan McDaniel, CHRO, shared how her team creates valuable in-person connections, as well as the role well-being plays for all employees. She also shared insights around the role personas play in communication, and how leaders prepare for difficult conversations by practicing together.

On the role personas played in the transition from remote to hybrid work:

We knew that there would be a range of feelings coming back into the workplace. It's deeply personal, and we leaned into that in a really big way, and approached it with deep care, empathy, and curiosity. But also, with conviction and confidence about our decision to have hybrid activation. We have flexibility within our framework of three days. Not every week is going to be three days, and we don't have set work hours.

We have about 9,600 employees in our home office and 40,000 in the field. About 60% of our home office associates are hybrid and work within a one-hour commutable distance, and 40% are remote and work from home.

We said, "Okay. We know everyone's not going to be super excited." So, we had personas of people who were more fearful about coming into the office and how to have empathetic conversations with them, and understand what's driving their fear. Maybe you have a sick child at home, and you’re afraid of catching a cold and bringing that home.

Some people were excited, so we had personas for those who were said, "I can't wait to come back to work." And other personas were in the middle. Some people might've sold their car or moved, for example.

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On how leaders helped each other:

We tried to prepare our leaders as best we could through these personas, data, and practicing with each other — giving coaching and feedback on responding to questions and concerns.

We had practice sessions, coaching sessions, and leadership town halls. We have something called Decisions Unpacked, which is where we have conversations about company decisions so we can equip our leaders to engage with our associates in the right way with feeling fully confident in the information that they have.

We also engage influencers, and that's not determined by your title or role. We involve them in discussions about topics such as the benefits and implications of hybrid activation.

On improving the office experience:

We heard from our associates, "Hey, it's great that we used to do one-on-one meetings walking on the phone. Can we have walking trails?" So we have walking trails on some of our campuses, and outdoor meeting spaces.

We also know that many of our working parents often don't have time to cook dinner, so in our cafe we have healthy meals for them to take home to their families. We also know that people want to have fun. So, we have a pickleball court and in one of our locations, cornhole. So you can just take a break and be able to have a good time with your associates and your teammates.

On the importance of employee well-being:

Emotional well-being is so important and we don't talk about it enough. It's part of everyone's life, and we should make it just as common in the conversation as physical well-being.

We listen deeply to our associates and have a variety of different mechanisms that we listen from. We started to hear a theme around well-being and emotional well-being, and needing more support. So, we invested in a center of excellence that's focused on the well-being of all 54,000 of our associates.

We have well-being warriors who are in our field and our home office advocating for well-being. We've re-geared some of our incentives around our benefits around health outcomes versus just activities to help promote well-being.

I'm very proud of the work that we've done with listening to our associates around our EAP, and understanding that it wasn't hitting the mark as well as it could be. We went to an RFP, and we now have a great partnership with Headspace, who is world-class in providing counseling to not only our associates, but to their families. They also have access to a mental health professional if needed, 24/7 through chat.

There are a few other areas that the well-being center of excellence focuses on — physical, financial, and social well-being — and we're supporting our associates in those ways as well.