Women Who Are Making Work Better for Women

AMY BERNSTEIN: You’re listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I’m Amy Bernstein. When you see potential for your company to make jobs more workable, to bring people together in earnest, to round out benefits, how can you instigate change? Three women I interviewed during our recent Women at Work live virtual event saw that potential and carried it through to programs and policies that are making a difference. Myra Orndoff, a senior manager at Capital One, campaigned for more part-time tech jobs after she went part-time herself as a way to stay in the workforce while raising four kids. Becky Guenther persuaded Rehmann, the advisory firm where she leads compensation and benefits, to give its employees free maternity support, elder care, and mental health counseling. Stephanie LeBlanc, who leads Google’s Global Programming for Women of Color, launched an annual summit that’s furthered the company’s retention and professional development goals. What can we learn from their success? How can you follow their lead? They’re here to tell us. Welcome, Stephanie, Myra, and Becky.

MYRA ORNDOFF: Hello. Great to be here today.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Great to see you. Myra, let’s start with you. Back in 2020, you were struggling to meet the demands of your job in analytics while raising four kids. So, your boss at Capital One turned your full-time job into a part-time one. The reason you’re with us today is that you campaigned to turn that special exception into a benefit available to more employees. Today, Capital One’s technology department has five teams made up of 26 employees who all work between 20 and 32 hours a week. So, let’s go back to the beginning. Why was it important for you to turn that special exception into more of a rule?

MYRA ORNDOFF: Well, I knew that I wasn’t alone. I knew that I had friends and coworkers who could relate with my need, and I was also spending time helping our tech organization with analysis on talent challenges. And so I was familiar with all the statistics about how many people in the workforce really had the appetite to cut back. So, I thought, Hey, if I have this need and if this will help me stay in the workforce, we really need to build it and make it more readily available for everyone.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Talk about the kinds of benefits that you’ve seen, both personally, for employees, and for the organization with this benefit.

MYRA ORNDOFF: Personally, I really fell in love with the model because I felt just so grateful to be able to stay and so empowered to prioritize in a way that I probably should have been doing all along in my own career. And so as we launched the program, we have seen the associates in the program experience those same benefits. So, not only do part-time employees feel a higher sense of well-being and lower burnout, but they also feel more excited when they come to work and more focused and have better productivity. These employees also have higher intent to stay with the company, which of course leaders really love to see.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah, absolutely. I noticed that Capital One chose to make teams entirely composed of part-time employees rather than mixing together part-time and full-time. What’s going on there? Why are they doing that?

MYRA ORNDOFF: That idea stemmed from my own experiences of being an only, and so we had started with the whole teams of part-time roles to provide peers for mutual support and also to kind of elevate the potential challenges that the individuals would face, make sure that those were elevated and visible to their managers and leaders. But moving forward, we definitely don’t think that part-time roles should only be in entirely part-time teams, and we’re absolutely looking to expand now into freestanding roles.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, it sounds as if the part-time role has become accepted and embraced and more mainstream. Is that right?

MYRA ORNDOFF: Well, we’re getting there. I have to be honest, I thought that once we tried this, and I made a few presentations about the results, that everyone everywhere would start creating tons of part-time jobs. But in conversations with individual hiring managers, I’ve realized that most job openings come because an individual manager of maybe a team of five has someone leave, move on to another opportunity, and they have one open headcount. And so, it’s hard, despite the metrics and the great business case, for that individual team and that individual manager to say, “Hey, let me replace this full-time position with a part-time position,” because they feel like they’d be giving up capacity. And I can understand that. But I’m hoping, I’m optimistic that maybe the solution is something as simple as just starting to embrace the decimal point. If a hiring manager is given a headcount target of 5.6, then they’re probably going to create a part-time position. My takeaway is to always, no matter how much you think your business case is a no-brainer, prioritize working through the use case with the people on the ground that on a day-to-day basis are going to be implementing and scaling what you’re driving.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I want a T-shirt that says “embrace the decimal point,” okay? So, just talk us through how you made this happen. Where’d you start? How’d you make the case?

MYRA ORNDOFF: Okay. I was terrified because I knew that I was proposing something that was just totally not done, and in some people’s eyes it’s just no big deal. This is a small change. But in other people’s eyes it’s like this is a really different way of doing business and managing a workforce. So, I was emailing and giving a very brief summary of the idea and just asking for a meeting to discuss the idea. With my own leadership chain, I just shared the idea and said, “Are you comfortable with me spending a little bit of time developing this business case, and who else should I talk to, and what do you think I should include in the business case?” And then I started cold calling executives across the company and just really trying over and over again to share the idea. Once I found a couple of senior leaders that were willing to try it within their own teams, we didn’t have a centralized budget to say, “Hey, here, this program will pay for all these new part-time teams.” We had to have leaders that were willing to use their own labor budgets to try something new. And now we’re about a year, year and a half into it, and things are going really well, and we’re just trying to figure out how to grow it, improve it, and influence the rest of corporate America as well.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Was it smooth sailing? Did you meet any resistance?

MYRA ORNDOFF: Definitely not smooth sailing. I always think about this, how much emotional energy it takes to drive change. I mean, by definition, when you’re driving change, you’re going to be swimming against a current, and there’s so many forces that push us and pull us in so many directions. So, it’s hard creating momentum in the direction that you want to go. But I manage this in a couple of different ways. I try to build in recovery time for myself when I know I have a tough meeting coming up or an event where I’m speaking and I’m nervous. After this event, I have an hour until my kids come home and I am not going to spend that hour checking emails or knocking out additional tasks. I am going to give myself some recovery time to walk, pray, process, think about future ideas. And then I also try to play my whole movie. So, our brains are so negatively biased and we have a recency bias, and it’s so easy to let our brains replay things that haven’t gone how we wanted. And with the ups and downs of the journey, I have really found it to be helpful to think about the importance of the destination that I’m driving to, the progress that has happened, and I should find satisfaction in that and not in just those individual moments or milestones.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I love that notion of playing your whole movie. Stephanie, I’d love to ask you a few questions. You helped launch Google’s Summit for Women of Color, and it has become a central part of the company’s retention and development strategies. So, can you talk a little bit about how this has actually helped women of color and Google?

STEPHANIE LEBLANC-GODFREY: Sure. So, the backstory of how this actually all got started, we had our first and largest gathering of black women at Google in 2018, and that was the brainchild of Melonie Parker, who’s our Chief Diversity Officer, and Valeisha Butterfield Jones, who’s our VP of Partnership and Engagement. And I liken myself to the doula that created this beautiful and meaningful space for this community to gather. And it was based on data, our diversity annual report, that’s public information. We actually just launched our 10th edition of that. And it gives data around our hiring, representation, attrition numbers across a number of demographics. And so, in 2018, there was qualitative and quantitative data that said that black women were having a disparate experience from the rest of the Google employee base. And so, given that, that gave us a moment for action to bring together the community so that they can see, feel, hear one another and have this moment. And it’s since grown and expanded to include women of color where we have a yearly gathering, albeit now it’s virtual. We’re still in that space here in 2023. But virtual gatherings for women to experience community, development, a signal from the company that we are dedicated to investing in them.

AMY BERNSTEIN: You keep talking about data, and that’s no surprise. This is Google after all. But what can our audience members take from this? What if they don’t work at organizations with the kind of data generating and gathering muscle that Google has? What can they do?

STEPHANIE LEBLANC-GODFREY: Yeah, I think, one, there are so many organizations, like HBR, that puts out survey results, reports, various studies that give a general sense of where differing communities stand, what the state of the union is for those communities. So, I think that’s one body of work that can inform the way in which companies show up for their employees. And then two, employees will share how they feel and the experiences that they have if they’re asked and if they feel like what they say will be acted upon. And so, what I would say to organizations is believe them when they share their experiences, don’t look for the way out or to explain it away, and really stick to a commitment to making change based on what you’ve heard.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I’m very struck that this is an event, and a lot of organizations would regard an event as a kind of nice to have, but not an essential part of DEI strategy or a talent development strategy. How did you win buy-in for this?

STEPHANIE LEBLANC-GODFREY: Sure. So, I think the important thing for folks to realize is that events are not meant to be a standalone or performative notion for the communities or for organizations. It has to be lock armed with the systemic change that’s happening in all of the moments of the employee cycle. So from the moment that they are recruited to career progression and then even how they leave a company. And so, if we’re doing the work in all those spaces, then those events feel like an add-on and an integral part of the overall investment that we’re taking for employees and not just this shiny event that happens. I think the other piece too is when you have an event, it shouldn’t be, “All right, see you in 364 days.” And so, what I think we’ve done extremely well within this body of work is create standing leadership teams, what we call ambassadors, that represent each of our offices across the US and even now global, so that they continue the connection, continue the community building on our local office spaces so that it’s not just this annual event that they look forward to with silence in between.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, I want to turn to you now, Becky. You are with Rehmann. It’s a financial service firm. And you chair the Women’s Initiative Network Council, in addition to being the Director of Total Rewards. The benefits that you won are really, really generous. It’s free counseling sessions, on-call pre and postnatal coaching, and elder care consulting. How did you persuade the company to do this?

BECKY GUENTHER: I think similar to my co-panelists, it’s back to connecting those dots for leaders between what the people in your organization or future employees will value as far as benefits go and what their families will value, but then also what are those positive business outcomes that also are intertwined? So, we also conducted benefit specific engagement surveys to gather and listen to that employee feedback. And then we also did a lot of external benchmarking with a variety of sources, and we looked at our aggregate healthcare claims data to see how is this connected to impacting behavioral health outcomes or other comorbidities that we might be seeing. And then fortunately for us, the caregiver support platform that we ended up partnering with, Cariloop, they actually let us do a pilot program before we even officially signed up with them. And we had one of our associates try it out for six months and share their experience. And it was such a positive experience that that connected with all this other data really sold itself, so to speak.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Well, I notice you’ve said we, we did this and we had a partner. How did you get people to join the cause, to team with you?

BECKY GUENTHER: So, I am very big on collaboration both with internal team members, whether that’s fellow HR team members or other leaders throughout the organization. We have an amazing healthcare task force that I lead, that we have key leaders alongside me sort of making these final determinations on what do we think we want to focus our time and energy on from a benefits perspective. And then our external partners, we have an engagement survey partner who is just phenomenal. And then our insurance broker too. I feel very, very lucky that we have an amazing client service team we work with. We have a well-being strategist we work with. And all those partnerships, those relationships that you can build can really help you propel things forward in a meaningful way. So, I would say those key relationships that you can build both internally and externally are just critical to pushing your organization forward if you’re trying to drive change.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, you’ve each had a chance to listen to your co-panelist stories, and I wonder what you’ve picked up from each other that you’re going to take into your next project, your next campaign. And I’ll go to you first, Myra. What did you hear from Becky or Stephanie that you thought to yourself, Yeah, I’m going to do that next time?

MYRA ORNDOFF: So, I find encouragement to hear from Becky that she also used individual stories. So, when I was presenting my business case, at times I would lead with my own personal story, and the audience would be so drawn in and engaged, but at times I actually got some people saying, “Hey, you’re making it too personal,” or, “Hey, let’s stick to the data.” And I listened to that feedback, and I still think you do need to be very intentional about the use of stories and examples, but I don’t think that I’ll hesitate as much in the future to do that, to really paint the picture for partners and leaders with my own story and with the stories of others, making sure that I capture all of those stories. So many people have come and volunteered. Part-time program participants will send me testimonials. It sets a blessing to have firsthand knowledge and visibility into the impact of the program and really featuring those stories alongside just the numbers because it really helps people get their minds around the benefits and the reality much more quickly.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Stephanie, what about you? What did you hear?

STEPHANIE LEBLANC-GODFREY: Yeah, well, first I want to second the importance of the qualitative and quantitative data being integrated. Because what we often hear is you hear the story and then you’re like, “Well, what does the data say?” And then you hear the data and then people will say, “Okay, well, give me more. I need to understand the people behind the data.” And so, I love the fact of being intentional about the storytelling, being able to have both, to quiet the critics or depending on whatever their area of interest is, to bring both, to really give this whole holistic and visual view of what the challenges are, what the opportunities that you’re looking to go after. I think for me, what Myra said that resonated with me the most was around frontline managers and leadership and bridging that gap. I think, without a doubt, when we talk about these topics around parenting, caregiving, women’s issues, DEI, I think from high level leadership, we get their buy-in. They are totally sold in on whatever programs or initiatives that would most benefit the community. I think the tension that we then experience is then the frontline manager who has the one headcount for a limited number of resources already on their team, how do they embrace a program or initiative like the one that Myra was talking about where it’s not a full-time employee. And so, the imperative that I bring from that is that we need to invest in our managers so that they can meet the needs of their direct reports and that there can be way making for them to be as supportive as they would like to be for these programs and initiatives that can negatively impact or just cause strain that may already exist on their teams.

AMY BERNSTEIN: And what about you, Becky?

BECKY GUENTHER: Something Stephanie said really resonated with me, and that was it’s great if you can get that buy-in and implement that benefit or that event, but then what? How do you continue connecting those dots behind, say, the event? What impact does it have on everything else? It’s not just this great party you threw. How you connect all the pieces together is so critical.

AMY BERNSTEIN: As I listen to your stories, one thing hits me, and that is you each put yourselves out there. And I wonder if you thought about the social capital you needed to win these programs, to win these benefits, and how you think about amassing and spending social capital today. Does anyone want to jump in on that one first?

STEPHANIE LEBLANC-GODFREY: I think-

MYRA ORNDOFF: Go ahead, Stephanie.

STEPHANIE LEBLANC-GODFREY: -people want to help, and especially if they can see the passion and the engagement that you have and what the outcomes and the benefits are, they’re willing to use their social capital often to make connections, get meetings on calendars with certain folks, or add their name as a supporter or an ally in this. And so, that’s the way in which I’ve used social capital and just sharing my story and talking through what the benefits are, again, on the qualitative and quantitative front, and getting people caught up in a good way to also be invested in moving a thing forward.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Anyone else? Myra, you were going to jump in, weren’t you?

MYRA ORNDOFF: Yeah, so I was just going to offer that I have really tried to make sure to be familiar and maintain a familiarity of the needs of the leaders and partners that I was trying to work with. So we talk about the business case like it’s a singular thing, but I’ve redone this business case 50 versions of it, adjusting for the audience and then adjusting over time because everybody’s priorities are constantly shifting. So, I think when you’re delivering somebody a solution to their own need, it doesn’t feel like you’re spending social capital. But when you are asking for someone to maybe lend their name or their voice to your cause, I think that it really helps if you make it clear why you are asking for them to lend their voice because they are uniquely positioned, there are specific reasons. Maybe there’s some benefits to them that you can highlight as well. But people really appreciate it when you just express intentionality and thoughtfulness about how you are asking for them to spend their time.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Now I really would love to turn to the audience questions because there’s some really good ones here. And I’m going to start with one that’s for you, Myra. It goes like this. “I’m in a situation where I would love to create a role that doesn’t exist now that would totally rock the status quo. What did that conversation and process look like for you, and what obstacles were you able to overcome?”

MYRA ORNDOFF: That process looked like initially me thinking of what’s in it for my boss. And then I also outlined, Hey, how is this going to impact the people that I work with? And then I proposed a trial period. So, it’s me always trying to think of how can I make this the easiest possible for them to say yes. And so, I said, “Let me just use my vacation time for this for a little while so we don’t even have to make any system changes and just see if it’s going to work. And then we’ll regroup and see if we think it’s working well and make a decision about more long-term after that point.” So, that’s a recommendation that I have for everybody. Consider a trial period. It’s a little easier to say yes to.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah. Much easier to say yes to. So, interesting question from Ellen in our audience, and I’ll direct it at you, Becky, first. “Have you gotten any pushback on your initiatives as businesses are trying to get back to normal or facing tough economic times ahead? Are the original business cases still just as strong, or have you had to adjust them?”

BECKY GUENTHER: For the benefits that we’ve recently implemented, I honestly don’t think they’re necessarily impacted by economic conditions because if I’ve done my job well from the get-go, connecting those dots between what associates value, what their families value, and then that business case of what positive outcomes is this going to provide to our business, I think the cost of that benefit, it’s going to end up being somewhat of a wash, whether that’s because you can retain people or you can attract talent. We’re always going to have a need for attracting and retaining great talent. That’s not going to go away even if there’s a recession. But I will say, I think it was Myra who pointed this out is, you might have to tweak and change along the way in terms of evaluating whether or not that benefit is still a fit for your organization today as it was last year or two years ago. So I think it’s important that you’re continuing to measure the impacts of that benefit and is it something your people still value, because we’re in a world of rapid change right now, and their needs might change also.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah, and that point you make about talent retention, it is so expensive to churn. Churn is so expensive, it slows things down. Stephanie, do you have any thoughts about whether or not you need to adjust the program you fought so hard for as we face tough economic times?

STEPHANIE LEBLANC-GODFREY: Yeah, I think the answer is no. We still need to stay the course. I think there’s some creativity in play in terms of what it looks like. Again, hybrid versus virtual versus in-person. But in this economic moment, we need to retain the talent that we have. And so, this is one of those important levers to do this. I consistently hear folks talking about the first summits that we had back in 2018 and 2019. We offered headshots in one of the events. And it’s to this day still the headshots that you see in folks’ profiles, both internally and externally. And so, the lasting effects that these types of events have on folks wanting to stay within the company to continue to have those moments, to have a space specifically for them. Here’s the truth, right? Many historically excluded folks don’t get to feel seen, heard, or valued within their core working group, whether that’s with their manager or with their team. But if organizations and companies can create those spaces, whether that’s through ERGs with the community groups or events, this is a lever where folks can still have moments of true authenticity where they may not feel like they can have it within their core working space. And so having that balance is incredibly important to retaining high value talent that has been historically excluded.

AMY BERNSTEIN: And now a question for you, Myra, also from our audience. “How did you balance pushing for your cause when advocating for this enormous change you won while not coming across as too pushy?”

MYRA ORNDOFF: Yeah, that’s a tough one. I, by nature, am not pushy. So, I was told even I think when I was five years old by my father that I was a diplomat. I’m an extrovert. I really converse with people, connect with people, and then I rely on that. I rely on those connections to navigate the agenda that I have. So, I think really investing in relationships in the midst of pushing for the change that you want, not ever steamrolling, being cautious not to be disparaging of existing processes. You can easily misstep when you’re trying to illuminate the problem so that you can propose your solution. So, you have to be very intentional and cautious there. And then my own personal story is personal, but the data is not. And so, that well-rounded story builds a little bit of protection for you that, hey, the data is saying this and this is needed. So, I think all those things kind of work to combine to hopefully not be seen as pushy.

AMY BERNSTEIN: And again, we’re hitting on this idea that you need the data to strengthen your argument, but the personal story brings the data to life. That’s what makes it kind of irresistible. Here’s a question I’m going to throw at both Becky and Stephanie. “How can you share ways to keep track of the rapid change and keep assessing needs as they change? Is it all about employee engagement surveys and focus groups and town halls? Is there more to it? Do you need to balance approaches?” Talk about that. And why don’t you start, Becky?

BECKY GUENTHER: Sure. I do think the engagement survey is a good place to start when you can listen to your associates and listen to those ever-changing needs. But one thing we’re doing more of now, instead of just focusing on an annual engagement survey, or even a couple surveys a year, we’re starting to do more of these short pulse surveys. So, you can have a very short list of questions. We hear a lot, I think, and especially as the pandemic went on, that people were getting over surveyed. But I think if you’re keeping it very pointed to information that you’re looking to glean from those employees, and then as Stephanie had mentioned before, that they can see that you’re listening and taking action on that, it is a key way to understand whether or not something is still a benefit that is valued and that you’re placing your budget dollars wisely. And then I know for us, we look a lot at our aggregate claims data because we can tie together both that feedback from our associates, but then also what is it looking like from a health outcomes standpoint. A lot of these work-life benefits, they’re not just nice to haves from managing stress and maybe not feeling that burnout, but they have health impacts. And we can tie those two together and determine where we want to set our priorities going forward.

AMY BERNSTEIN: What about you, Stephanie?

STEPHANIE LEBLANC-GODFREY: Yeah, I think what I’d add there, because we too do pulse and then the sort of bigger moment surveys, creating bidirectional pathways for feedback. So, top down but also bottoms up. And we do that through the 17-plus employee resource groups that we have at Google. So, not only do we have these snapshots, but we have a pathway for issues or opportunities to be raised to leadership. And then the other major point here is that even in moments when we get to parity or reach our goals, it’s not enough to say, “And we’re done,” and move on to the next one because we need to ensure that that parity is consistent and maintaining over the span of time. And then also what we’re seeing now too is the definition or what we have traditionally defined as minority or underserved or historically excluded. All of these things are changing or expanding rather. And so, there are more communities now that are feeling excluded, that are being targeted. And so, the way for us to think about it is that we always need to have our head on a swivel to see spaces and places where folks are not feeling included or not having a sense of belonging and who they look like. It’s not the typical, Oh, just women. It’s not, Oh, it’s race and we need to support the Black communities. The folks who are being marginalized is growing, and so we need to remove what that avatar has traditionally looked like and make sure we’re meeting the needs of all of those communities.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Stephanie, Myra, and Becky, I am so grateful to you for taking the time and sharing your stories and insight with us.

MYRA ORNDOFF: Thanks for having us.

STEPHANIE LEBLANC-GODFREY: Thanks so much.

AMY BERNSTEIN: That’s our show. I’m Amy Bernstein. For more ideas about how to make a difference, listen to our season eight episode, How To Push For Policy Changes At Your Company. In it, Amy G and I speak with two experienced changemakers. They explain the strategizing, relationship building, and risk management that are the foundations for any successful proposal. And because sustaining a grassroots initiative requires motivating a bunch of volunteers, they also share tried and true ways to keep everyone invested in the cause, aligned, and on track. Women at Work‘s editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoch, Tina Tobey Mack, Rob Eckhardt, Erica Truxler, Ian Fox and Hannah Bates. Robin Moore composed this theme music. Get in touch by emailing womenatwork@hbr.org.