Replies posted by russlaraway | XM Community

Replies posted by russlaraway

10 Replies

LaurenK
Qualtrics Employee
LaurenKQualtrics Employee
posted in Announcements

💬  Q&A Featuring Russ Laraway, Chief People Officer | Q&A

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/27392#Comment_27392Hi there - I don't believe in silver bullets or hail mary's. It's the day to day, on-the-ground operating practices that help ensure a company can continue to deliver and abide by its cultural tenets despite the world going bonkers all around it. We recently ran our quarterly engagement program, and we found the following:we achieved the highest employee engagement measurement in our company's historywe achieved the highest manager effectiveness score in our company's historywe achieved the lowest "intent to leave" score in our company's historyAll of this was through a pandemic. All of this was - and remains - in the face of massive uncertainty. I'd say I am surprised, but I am pretty sure I won my team's pool in which we predicted the changes we thought we'd see in this most recent engagement study (given the pandemic). I spent a lot of time asking myself... why? The conclusion I reached is that there were t

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russlaraway
Qualtrics Employee
3 years ago
LaurenK
Qualtrics Employee
LaurenKQualtrics Employee
posted in Announcements

💬  Q&A Featuring Russ Laraway, Chief People Officer | Q&A

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/27405#Comment_27405¡Bienvenidos, Isabel! Gracias por la pregunta. One of the most important things a manager or teammate does is to give folks feedback to help them succeed. There are two kinds of feedback:Praise - to help people know what to do more ofCriticism - to help people know what to do betterBoth kinds of feedback can be given around both behaviors and work products. I think that you're right - not being able to be face to face can take away some advantages - when we're in person, it's easier to convey empathy, personal care, sincerity, and humility when you have body language available to help you communicate those things. But I want to be super clear - the most important thing here is that the message gets delivered, even if sub-optimally. We've done some research here to learn which leadership behaviors most affect employee engagement and lead to better team results. One of the Core 5 - or top 5 leadership behaviors w

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russlaraway
Qualtrics Employee
3 years ago
LaurenK
Qualtrics Employee
LaurenKQualtrics Employee
posted in Announcements

💬  Q&A Featuring Russ Laraway, Chief People Officer | Q&A

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/27280#Comment_27280Ben!I think there are probably two major areas that are affected when starting a new manager or anyone new on the team. First, they will need to feel connected to the team and second, they will need utmost clarity on their direction as well as provide clarity on their teams' direction. Feeling connectedFeeling connected while remote AND new can be really hard. I think you and the other managers have to lean in very hard with the commonly cited options. Zoom happy hours, 1:1 calls, virtual office hours, Peloton rides, Slack. I probably would even be more prescriptive about their 1:1 cadence with their new team members - an hour with each report every week, non negotiable. If they are second line, I would probably suggest they do an "inventory skip level" meeting mostly to inform their context on the state of the org.Direction and ExpectationsI think you know, Ben, I like a 4 part Direction framework - Purpose

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russlaraway
Qualtrics Employee
3 years ago
LaurenK
Qualtrics Employee
LaurenKQualtrics Employee
posted in Announcements

💬  Q&A Featuring Russ Laraway, Chief People Officer | Q&A

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/27151#Comment_27151Hey Adam - my favorite topic. A criticism I have of this 30+ year old industry is that in some contexts it absolutely does prioritize confidentiality over our ability to listen and take action. This gnaws at me approximately daily. Our products allow you to set certain confidentiality thresholds. Here at the Q, if one of our managers has fewer than 5 responses she will not get a dashboard, and for open ended comments, we allow those to be seen when someone has 20 people in their hierarchy. Anyway, for us, this has meant that, until very recently, about 30% of our managers could not get a dashboard because they didn’t get enough responses. (Our response rate is 87-92% generally, so this is more of a span of control reality for us). This is incredibly frustrating for them, and since we put the manager at the center of our EX strategy, it’s a massive gap for us. Those managers, put another way, are flying blind

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russlaraway
Qualtrics Employee
3 years ago
LaurenK
Qualtrics Employee
LaurenKQualtrics Employee
posted in Announcements

💬  Q&A Featuring Russ Laraway, Chief People Officer | Q&A

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/27137#Comment_27137Hey Ana - all good. One thing we’ve discovered is that even though many of us find ourselves in a very similar context, the variables that affect our ability to be productive or our mental well being vary greatly. One person might have a home office, but might have 3 toddlers at home. Another person might have a studio apartment and no partner. A third might have a partner, and he’s also working from home, and they are tag-teaming taking care of an infant. You end up with a near-infinite number of permutations and combinations. On the COVID front, I’ve tended to try to simplify the problem - if risk is defined as the probability of infection * the magnitude of what happens if you’re infected, you can see pretty quickly that your best defense is to reduce your probability. The ways to do this are well documented, but it seems like current guidelines are to 1) avoid crowds or aggregations of people 2) wash yo

21
russlaraway
Qualtrics Employee
3 years ago
LaurenK
Qualtrics Employee
LaurenKQualtrics Employee
posted in Announcements

💬  Q&A Featuring Russ Laraway, Chief People Officer | Q&A

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/27123#Comment_27123Hi Ana! Any chance you can rewrite / restate the question? It’s not clear to me what you are asking. :(. Sorry!

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russlaraway
Qualtrics Employee
3 years ago
LaurenK
Qualtrics Employee
LaurenKQualtrics Employee
posted in Announcements

💬  Q&A Featuring Russ Laraway, Chief People Officer | Q&A

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/27121#Comment_27121Hi Ana!Thank you for the question!I think because there is such a strong relationship between employee engagement and business results that the place I would start is with employee engagement. https://www.qualtrics.com/employee-experience/ - you can start here simply by requesting or watching a demo, and we can help get you moving. Once you start to understand employee engagement and the various drivers of engagement, you will likely notice that one of the more explanatory drivers is manager quality. That’s my 1-2 punch! Engagement first, and then manager quality as the (likely) key driver.

21
russlaraway
Qualtrics Employee
3 years ago
LaurenK
Qualtrics Employee
LaurenKQualtrics Employee
posted in Announcements

💬  Q&A Featuring Russ Laraway, Chief People Officer | Q&A

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/27019#Comment_27019Hi there - what a great question! We do quite a bit, and we have plans to do quite a bit more. Some things:Specific Diversity Goals - we have company level goals for increasing representation for underrepresented groups. We have these goals for broad company-wide representation, mid-level representation, and senior level representations. My opinion is that the act of setting goals and measuring progress is the key idea that separate companies taking this seriously and those that aren't. Specific Inclusion Goals - We measure fairness, inclusion, respect, and equity 4x per year and have company level goals to close the experience gap between the majority group and underrepresented groups within Qualtrics.Q-Groups - we have a number of employee resource groups (ERGs), or Q-Groups, built around attracting, developing, and retaining the underrepresented - They are: MosaiQ, Women's Leadership Development (WLD), Q-Pr

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russlaraway
Qualtrics Employee
3 years ago
LaurenK
Qualtrics Employee
LaurenKQualtrics Employee
posted in Announcements

💬  Q&A Featuring Russ Laraway, Chief People Officer | Q&A

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/26991#Comment_26991I think working out is key (I'm more of a PM workout guy), but I think there are a couple other things that really help:Stay in your routine - for you, Ben, this means continuing to wake up early enough to wake up the roostersGet dressed for work - wears your jeans and your oxford with rolled up sleeves. Resist the temptation to show up to Zooms in your skivvies. Have a place to go, even if it's small or imperfect - I've seen some suboptimal work from home setups. It's a real challenge. If you can go somewhere, do that. Our CMO works out of his sprinter van. Prioritize - remember that prioritization is an exercise in subtraction, not an exercise in addition. Determine the very small number of things to do that actually MATTER. GET OFF ZOOM sometimes - switch some of your 1:1s to phone and go outside and walk when local regulations permit.End your day - for real. Create a hard stop - and this is one reason why

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russlaraway
Qualtrics Employee
3 years ago
LaurenK
Qualtrics Employee
LaurenKQualtrics Employee
posted in Announcements

💬  Q&A Featuring Russ Laraway, Chief People Officer | Q&A

https://www.qualtrics.com/community/discussion/comment/26912#Comment_26912Benbabooey, aka The Wiz - That is Middle Lou. If this is the kind of question I'm going to get for the next week or so, it's gonna be a great time!

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russlaraway
Qualtrics Employee
3 years ago

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