Carol Juel, Chief Technology and Operating Officer, Synchrony, Eunice Lee, Chief Operating Officer, Scopely, Moderator: Lila MacLellan, Senior Writer, Fortune; Co-chair, Fortune COO Summit
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00OK, so we have a tough topic, employee engagement.
00:03It's been sinking, and we want to do more than just move
00:06around the deck chairs on the Titanic.
00:08So we'll get to some advice later, but I want to start with
00:11the question that's right in the title of this session,
00:13which is, why isn't this HR's job?
00:18And I want you to convince me that this is a COO's concern.
00:23Carol.
00:23All right, well, I will start.
00:25Generally, COOs have a large number, a large majority of
00:28the employees in the company.
00:30And communication and culture is core to any job that you
00:34have, but building that trust with your employees is part of
00:37the job.
00:38And how you do that and your tactics that you use to
00:41listen, and act, and respond is part of how you can drive
00:44that change agenda, which is so important for the company.
00:47Great, do you have anything?
00:49Yeah, I totally agree with that.
00:51I also think it's not only the COO's job.
00:54I think it's all of the leadership.
00:56It's not HR's job to put programs in place, and then
01:01expect that that's going to give you
01:03an uplift in engagement.
01:05I think it's about how the leaders show up.
01:07And as Carol mentioned, the COO typically has a very large
01:11remit and a large employee population that can have a lot
01:15of impact and have a lot of say in how the company is set up
01:19and how it's operating.
01:20So for me, it's not only because I'm a COO, it's
01:24because I'm a leader in the company.
01:25And how I show up, how my colleagues show up from the
01:29get-go is super, super important.
01:31And so I think at Scopely, we really believe in that.
01:34It's a topic that we're always discussing at the leadership
01:37team, which is something I think is phenomenal.
01:41I haven't always seen that.
01:42And I think it's interesting, too, now that I listen to you.
01:45Employees are often watching their leaders and thinking, do
01:48they really know what they're doing?
01:49Are we on a good path here?
01:51And so if their motivation in their career is to be a very
01:54successful company, that's part of your job, too.
01:58OK, so why?
02:00I think we all have different answers for this, but why is
02:02employee engagement so low?
02:04Like, it just hit a new low in April.
02:07Yeah, well, we actually have a bit of a good news story.
02:11So for those of you that are, I know.
02:13So maybe we'll share how you can help manage it and
02:17improve on it.
02:19One of the things that I hit on in my opening comments were
02:22around listening.
02:23And I know we think, and I was probably a leader like this,
02:26that we are listening to our employees.
02:28And that is really important.
02:30But there's a difference in terms of listening to actually
02:34act and respond and make decisions.
02:36And a decision could even be, I'm sorry, we can't do that,
02:40but I've heard you.
02:41So this idea of listening with intent.
02:44And then one of the things we learned through the pandemic,
02:48as we were really pulsing and listening to employees
02:50around what was happening with them, how they were adapting
02:52to remote work, all the things that we were doing,
02:54was that they wanted to stay in an environment where they
02:57had flexibility and choice.
02:58And that was a big decision for us as a company.
03:00And we leaned into flexibility and choice.
03:02But with that, we had to create the opportunity to make sure
03:06we were staying close to our employees and pulsing them.
03:08And where we really, really found how this would work
03:11for us, and so I obviously run tech and operations.
03:14So I have a background in tech and product development.
03:16If you think about how we listen to customers,
03:19and you think about agile development in that life cycle
03:21of continuous improvement, the biggest thing in that
03:24is customer feedback.
03:26And so as a company, how do you treat your employees
03:29like customers, take their feedback, work them into
03:32the processes you have to work similarly to how you work
03:35with your customers?
03:36It sounds so easy, but many companies are not set up
03:39this way, that's not how we take feedback.
03:41We get feedback, we create a couple initiatives
03:43and you move on, you have to have this continuous
03:45feedback loop, and with that, the communication of that
03:49back to employees.
03:50So as the COO, I get out to all my hubs every year globally,
03:54and out of that meeting, there is a ton of things we learn,
03:56but we respond to the feedback and say, hey, here's what
03:59we're gonna take back, and here's what we need to table
04:02for these reasons.
04:03That goes so far because, oh my gosh, they heard me,
04:07they understood, and they know that we can't work on that
04:10right now, and that we'll come back to that at another point.
04:13It sounds so simple, but if you're not doing that,
04:16your employees are gonna say, wait a minute,
04:17they come out, they write everything down,
04:19and they never hear it again.
04:19Right, creates cynicism for sure, and I wanna come back
04:22to some of the things you hear in those listening circles
04:25or tours, but Eunice, what have you found also
04:29as a drag on engagement?
04:31I mean, I think coming out of the pandemic,
04:33a lot of people's habits changed, and I think that that
04:37has a huge impact on engagement and how connected you are
04:41to where you work, and I think for being fully remote
04:47or some version of that for a lot of companies,
04:49and even hybrid, and people's comfort of,
04:53our CEO always says, do I like working from home?
04:55Is it easier?
04:56Yes, but there's something also missing,
04:59and I think it's been hard for employees and individuals
05:03to understand what those trade-offs are,
05:05and sometimes there's a lot of emphasis
05:08in the conversation about flexibility and being at home
05:11or being able to do things by working remotely,
05:15but there's also that missing piece of human connection,
05:18and I think, this is my own, having read a lot of articles
05:23as well and my own kind of what I see out there,
05:25but I definitely think that there's something
05:27about that lessened human interaction and connection
05:30that does drive engagement down, but I don't know
05:32that individuals can always articulate it that way,
05:36but I totally agree with Carol too.
05:38It's all about listening and doing something
05:41about what you've heard.
05:42It's not enough to have the listening circles,
05:45but be active in terms of what you're gonna do about it.
05:48We're very committed about talking about what we see
05:51in our survey and then trying to link back,
05:52like, here's the actions we're taking,
05:55and we've seen an increase in a number of areas
05:59that we were focused on, so that's been positive to see.
06:03I love what you said about remote work
06:05because I think it's true that people are working at home
06:08and they feel like maybe they start to feel flat
06:10and they don't know why, and it's because they don't know
06:12that it's like, that they need to be with people,
06:14but they need to be seen in order to feel motivated
06:17to keep going, you know, like that's been proven.
06:19Right, because I think there's that link of like,
06:22you know, all the studies are saying that loneliness
06:24is at an all-time high.
06:26I can't help but believe that there's a connection there too
06:29with like, how you feel engaged at work
06:31if you're feeling lonely.
06:32Right.
06:33Well, I do think on flexibility,
06:34offering that to employees is important,
06:36but it is a two-way street.
06:38We are flexible to understand the needs you have,
06:40but there's flexibility around,
06:42hey, we're gonna do purposeful gatherings.
06:44Yes.
06:44You know, you need to come in for these types of things
06:46on a periodic basis because the way we talk about it
06:49at Synchrony is our culture is very special to us
06:52and it is built by all of us,
06:53so the ability to continue to improve and evolve that,
06:57especially as you have folks joining the company new,
07:00is an obligation we all have,
07:01and so that purposeful gathering
07:03and setting those expectations is really important.
07:06A little stress.
07:07Stress is the spice of life, right?
07:08You need a little bit of a productive pressure.
07:11In a few minutes, I'll be coming to the audience
07:13to solicit questions,
07:15so be thinking about what you'd like to talk about,
07:19but let's go back to some of what you've heard
07:21from your employees when you go and you do these surveys
07:24and then you take it, you know,
07:25and you actually put something into action.
07:27What have you learned?
07:30So I'll start.
07:30So I think when you really do listen,
07:34and I'm not trying to be too much pontificating here,
07:36you always want to hear,
07:37just like with your children,
07:38you want them to tell you the things
07:39that are probably the hardest.
07:40Same thing with your employees.
07:41Building that trust so that they will tell you
07:43the things that are hard.
07:44You know, we prided ourselves on having
07:46very robust tuition reimbursement
07:48as well as skills programs,
07:50so if you think about upskilling, re-skilling,
07:52many of the things that are on all of our minds,
07:54robust programs,
07:55and I was really struggling with,
07:57why aren't we seeing enough adoption of this?
08:00And I was thinking, is this a self-starter issue?
08:02Is this a management issue?
08:03Is this an employee issue?
08:05So I started just listening for signals from employees,
08:08and finally, one employee,
08:11and then it sort of became a few others,
08:12had the courage to say,
08:13well, the problem is, Carol, it's a friction point.
08:17I want to do this,
08:17but the way tuition reimbursement or a skills class
08:20if I want to get this AWS certification
08:21is I have to wait until I'm done to get paid,
08:23and that's a barrier
08:24because I might not be able to make my car payment
08:26if I float that class.
08:28I was like, whoa, okay, that's fixable.
08:31Like, okay, so we went back and we said,
08:32what can we do to allow,
08:35and there are companies that do this,
08:36you work with through your HR teams,
08:37to actually pay for those at the get-go
08:40so someone can go in and do the work.
08:41You know, you can build the fraud detection in it,
08:43you can do all the things,
08:44but again, the uptick from an employee perspective,
08:46and that was something, it didn't even occur to me.
08:48Like, we just were so far removed from certain things
08:50that an employee having the courage to say,
08:52I want to do this, but I'm not sure I can afford it
08:54is a humbling thing for an employee to say,
08:56but for them, for us to take action was really,
08:58I mean, that was like,
08:59that was like the, you know,
09:00those were the high fives around the room
09:01because that was solved in a couple weeks.
09:03Some of the things take a little more time.
09:05Right, and that's a great example, yeah.
09:07100%, yeah, very interesting.
09:09I'm gonna take that away.
09:09I think for us, just to give a little context on Scopely,
09:14we're not that far from being a startup.
09:16So, you know, we've scaled rapidly,
09:20we're still a relatively small, mid-sized company.
09:23You're best known for your Monopoly game?
09:25Yes, Monopoly Go.
09:26I'm sure some folks here have touched it.
09:28Yeah, we, 40% of the US
09:32has played one of Scopely's games.
09:33Oh, wow.
09:34You may not know it, but has definitely done that.
09:36But, so I think for us,
09:38on some ways we're still managing a decent sized scale
09:42that makes us able to do certain things
09:44that maybe larger companies can't do at this time.
09:46But I think one of the things that we've found challenging
09:49is a few years ago, we really invested
09:51in building up our Spain presence and in Barcelona.
09:55Of course, we were sort of ahead of the game.
09:57This was before the pandemic
09:59and before it became like this total hotspot
10:02for folks to relocate to,
10:03whether you're from the US or in Europe.
10:06But I think one of the challenges we've felt
10:08is that those employees,
10:10through listening, through feedback surveys,
10:12every time I travel to any of our offices,
10:14I also sit down with a group of employees
10:17and have a session with them,
10:18and so do the rest of our C-suite.
10:20It's just that that Spain hub,
10:22it's our bigger employee population, actually.
10:24It's our biggest employee population,
10:25but they always feel second class.
10:28Even if you're providing the best services
10:31and experience for them,
10:32they just feel like it's a US-centric company.
10:35I have worked in Europe for a US headquarter company.
10:39I lived in London for six years
10:41and worked across all of our European offices,
10:43and I know what that feels like.
10:45And there's no intention on the part of HQ
10:47or your US colleagues to make you feel that way,
10:49but a lot of our executives are in the US,
10:52so a lot of our time zones and our meetings
10:54are done around that.
10:57And so just hearing that in the last couple years,
11:00we added one of our executive team members is based,
11:03we have actually two based in Europe now,
11:05and I think that that's made a huge difference
11:07in terms of them feeling,
11:08employees feeling like they have somebody
11:10who's senior and an advocate for them.
11:12Also, recently, my leadership team
11:15read Culture Map by Erin Meyer.
11:17I highly recommend it if you haven't read it.
11:20And even though I've done cross-cultural training before,
11:23it was just such a good reminder of how much gets,
11:28I think, misinterpreted and miscommunicated
11:30due to cultural misunderstanding
11:33and operating in different time zones.
11:36And when you expand to truly having a global footprint,
11:39how much of that comes into play in your everyday.
11:42So Erin Meyer is actually doing a session
11:44with our DEI leader, a Q&A session for the entire company.
11:50And I've asked the executive team,
11:51let's do this as a book club reading
11:53because we really need to be reminded of this.
11:56Great idea.
11:56Yeah.
11:57Yeah.
11:58I'm a little familiar with her work.
11:59Yeah, it's really smart.
12:01Yeah.
12:01Do we have any questions from the audience today?
12:05And if you raise your hand,
12:06somebody will bring a mic to you.
12:10But audience engagement, no.
12:11Okay.
12:12So, okay, yes.
12:21A question about surveys.
12:23So we're all surveying our people a lot
12:26and we get a ton of data.
12:28How do you, from that signal to noise,
12:31how do you make sense of it?
12:33We all fill out surveys all the time as consumers
12:36and usually we fill out more when we're angry
12:40or something has gone wrong.
12:41So a little bit about that.
12:43How do you make sense of them?
12:44How do you use them?
12:45Great question.
12:46So I'll start.
12:47So we've been a public company for 10 years
12:50and when we were on that journey,
12:51we made the decision to partner with Fortune
12:53and Great Places to Work early in that
12:55to begin the Great Places to Work survey.
12:57And for those of you that don't know it,
12:59it really is a survey that is about measuring trust.
13:01Trust between the employee and their direct manager
13:04and employee and the leadership team.
13:06And obviously the series of questions at the heart of it
13:08is trying to help you understand
13:09where they are in that journey
13:10and then what you need to do to support them.
13:12And then at the end,
13:13there's two questions that I always love.
13:15It's what makes your company,
13:17what makes Synchrony a great place to work
13:18and what would make it an even better place to work?
13:21And so that data is awesome
13:23because you can slice and dice it by generation.
13:26So in that, we found things relative to Gen Z
13:30and the need for,
13:32we heard some things in there around
13:34sort of overwhelmed feelings, mental wellness.
13:37So we then kind of pulled the page out of the book
13:40and did a series of round tables.
13:42And we heard that we really,
13:43the thing we worry the most about,
13:44it's not compensation, it's not promotion,
13:46it's just overwhelming mental wellness and stress.
13:50And so we then decided we were gonna bring
13:52an onsite therapist that we now have onsite
13:55in our headquarters,
13:56in addition to all of the remote coaches we have
13:59to help our employees.
14:00So I think you have to,
14:02I always say, if you're gonna do a survey,
14:03you have to be willing to hear the things that are hard.
14:05One of the things we did this year that was really great
14:08to kind of segue into,
14:09we use some AI to actually,
14:11cause I have a very large employee population.
14:14So my total comments were upwards of 30,000.
14:16I was gonna make the same point.
14:18Yeah.
14:19So we, I generally have my spreadsheet madness
14:23that I run over a couple of weekends,
14:24but then I use some AI to help categorize,
14:26to connect things that I might not have seen
14:29to kind of draw these conclusions.
14:31And again, that then becomes what my roadshow around,
14:34here's what you all told me,
14:35and here's what we're doing about it.
14:37I know surveys can be like,
14:39oh my gosh, we've got another survey.
14:41But at the end of the day,
14:42that's your mechanism for really understanding.
14:44And the biggest thing about Great Places to Work surveys
14:47is you want, it doesn't matter where you land,
14:50you just have to start somewhere,
14:52but it's getting that feedback
14:54and getting the participation.
14:55Cause if your participation rate is high,
14:56it means you have an engaged population.
14:58They're willing to give you the feedback.
15:00This year we landed number five
15:02on the Great Places to Work in the US,
15:03which we are extremely proud of.
15:05And it's very hard to do having done that.
15:08So Eunice, what prompts,
15:10you said you do the same thing.
15:11What prompts do you give the AI
15:12to dig into that survey data?
15:14Well, I mean, I'm probably not like Harold,
15:17haven't done it directly in my own spreadsheets,
15:20but I think it's actually trying to drive for insights
15:22in the themes.
15:23It's something that somebody can do
15:25by manually reading the comments.
15:27And some of the tools nowadays
15:29give you some summarized views of it,
15:31but I think it's actually trying to see
15:33how many counts of the same things you're looking at,
15:37what populations it's coming from,
15:39because it's not all is equal.
15:41Again, we'll have differences in our Spanish
15:44versus our Bangalore based employees.
15:46And so being able to really get to some insights
15:49versus just data,
15:50because it's very overwhelming,
15:53I think is really important.
15:54And we talk a lot about that,
15:55not only in our business KPIs,
15:57but also in our employee engagement KPIs.
16:01I would say participation is super important.
16:03We were really proud of the fact
16:05that we are like a 98% survey participation.
16:08It's like pretty insane from my perspective.
16:11I haven't seen that before.
16:14But also you have to know
16:15when your employees are at survey fatigue.
16:17So my grand plan had been a couple of years ago,
16:19we're gonna do these pulse quarterly surveys,
16:22but actually our employees were telling us we're good.
16:25Maybe just one a year,
16:26that's the right amount is good for now.
16:29And we might change that
16:31depending on when we might wanna know about something,
16:33an initiative has worked or not.
16:34So listening is super important and reacting.
16:39What are your employees saying about AI?
16:41Because we've seen AI be something
16:44that motivates people to go on strike a couple of times now.
16:47So is it something that you can use
16:49as a tool for engagement beyond the surveys?
16:53I think so, for sure.
16:54I think for me, first and foremost,
16:57it's about demystifying it
16:58and kind of being less fearful of it.
17:01And that's brought to life by use cases.
17:03We talk about it from like,
17:05how does an admin use it to great effect
17:07to make them feel more productive and efficient
17:11all the way through to the bigger business use cases.
17:14But part of it is that demystification.
17:17So for example, I think people teams
17:20or any of the other ops functions
17:22may not typically see themselves as the use case for AI,
17:27but thinking about how they might use it
17:29and make their jobs easier.
17:30So there is a human component of looking at your survey data
17:35or whatever data it might be, data sets it might be,
17:38but how might AI help you do it faster
17:41and actually get to the really insightful things
17:43that are gonna help change and drive impact.
17:45We've talked a lot about that.
17:46We're about to launch a number of workshops
17:50where you're going through use cases.
17:51So our CTO co-founder already led a session himself
17:57personally, because he's leading the AI efforts
18:00in our company with the finance team
18:02and the finance business partners
18:04and just went through how you might use chat GPT.
18:09We have the enterprise version of it,
18:11how you might use it to make you more effective.
18:13And we're about to do the same thing
18:14for the people function, et cetera, et cetera.
18:16So how to make it so that you do the things
18:18you love in your job a little more.
18:20Yes, and you're better at it in some ways.
18:22Right.
18:23So what is your one piece of advice just to go back?
18:26Oh, sorry, Carol, if you wanna answer about AI,
18:28we can do that.
18:28Yeah, go ahead.
18:29It's like the debates.
18:30I completely agree with Eunice.
18:32And so much of the commentary today
18:33is about humans in the loop.
18:35It's not, and you need to demystify it
18:37and make it less fearful for employees.
18:39So one of the things we did last year
18:41is we have a culture of running hackathons
18:43on a regular basis around how we come up with new ideas.
18:45Our generative AI hackathon
18:47was the most oversubscribed hackathon.
18:48We invited anybody across the company to participate.
18:51So that opened it up for those that were willing
18:53and able to just get an understanding
18:55and work through that.
18:56And generally, for anyone that's run a hackathon,
18:58you usually on anything get maybe five or six ideas
19:01and then many offshoots of that.
19:03We got almost 30 unique ideas.
19:05So when you think about how opportunistic
19:07this can be for any business,
19:08when you actually let people be creative with it
19:10and not fear it, and that helped create the pipeline
19:13for the use cases that we were testing over the last year
19:16to really solidify the AI strategy.
19:18Great, okay.
19:19So I'm going to ask you each for one tip
19:21about how you would improve employee engagement
19:24and what you said about a therapist bringing in the office.
19:27My tip is bring in some horses.
19:29We learned yesterday that horses can teach you a lot.
19:32What is your number one piece of advice?
19:35Eunice.
19:36I don't want to steal your thunder.
19:37That's okay.
19:38But I do think it's about listening
19:41and doing something with it.
19:42Like you can say, oh, these are the themes
19:45from whatever feedback we've had
19:46and then go silent on it, which is very common.
19:49But I think it's about showing employees
19:51and engaging on a human to human level.
19:53I think it's super, super duper important.
19:55And your executives have to show up.
19:57If they're not living it, it's going to fall flat.
19:59Yeah, I think it's listening.
20:01But my three magic words that I share often
20:04when someone's talking and you're not sure
20:05if you can get it out of them,
20:06you just say three words, just tell me more.
20:08And then people will just start talking.
20:10And I think that shows a level of empathy
20:13and ability to want to hear what's on their minds
20:16and they can speak more openly
20:17versus answering a targeted question.
20:19And you get a lot that way.
20:20It also works on my kids.
20:22Great.
20:23So many good ideas.
20:24Thank you so much.