We'll explore key findings from recent research and tackle some of the most common challenges professionals face when it comes to business travel—from booking frustrations to policy gaps—and share actionable strategies to improve the experience for everyone involved.

We'll discuss how these programs can uncover valuable trends, highlight cultural influencers, and provide leaders with a deeper understanding of their workforce. If you're curious about how tech-driven tools can enhance culture and engagement—this conversation is for you.

Joining us is KeyAnna Schmiedl, Chief Human Experiences Officer at Workhuman, whose work has been recognized by Forbes, Business Insider, and the Diversity Journal. Together, we'll explore how HR leaders can add value to executive-level conversations, elevate the human experience, and empower their teams for long-term impact.

If you're ready to rethink what HR leadership looks like in 2025 and beyond, this episode is for you. Let's get started.

We'll explore how mapping the employee journey, meeting key needs at the right moments, and using smart technology can significantly boost engagement, retention, and productivity. The research is clear: when employees feel supported and empowered, customer satisfaction rises, innovation thrives, and turnover drops.

Investing in your people isn't just good culture—it's smart strategy. Let's dive into how a thoughtful employee experience can drive real business growth.

Our guest also delves into the evolving role of AI in HR technology and its potential to reduce manual processes while providing predictive insights for HR and business leaders. We examine common bottlenecks in data integration and how organizations can overcome these hurdles with flexibility and expert support.

Whether you're navigating core metrics like turnover and headcount or looking to merge historical and blended data for deeper insights, this episode provides a roadmap for leveraging HR analytics to drive meaningful outcomes.

Consider these findings:

• Gallup reveals that managers are the single biggest influence on employee engagement and performance, accounting for 70% of the variance in team engagement.

• A Stanford study shows productivity can increase by up to 50% when employees transition from an average manager to an exceptional one. Better bosses also lead to higher retention rates.

Yet, exceptional managers remain all too rare. But that's something we can change. It starts with understanding what makes a manager someone people are eager to follow.

In today's episode of #WorkTrends, we're diving into this topic with a management development expert to uncover the secrets to becoming the kind of leader every team deserves.

It's understandable if you're unsure. Many organizations are grappling with a significant disconnect between leadership perceptions and the realities employees face. Consider these insights:

• While 74% of executives surveyed by Gartner want employees to feel free to express themselves, only 56% of employees feel comfortable doing so.

• Similarly, 75% of leaders claim they consider employees' perspectives in decision-making, yet only 47% of employees agree.

• This disparity is even starker among frontline workers, with half feeling expendable, only 30% feeling valued, and just 36% describing their work as a positive experience (O.C. Tanner).

Bridging this divide is no small feat, especially as modern work culture continues to evolve. With shifting priorities and expectations, defining a positive employee experience has never been more challenging — or more crucial. Communication, recognition, and reinforcement are critical components, but they must be underpinned by a strong cultural commitment. Notably, 94% of executives and 88% of employees agree that a distinct culture centered on engagement and motivation is key to workforce and business success.

So, how can leaders build and sustain a culture that truly elevates the employee experience? Join me as I unpack this question with an expert innovator on today's #WorkTrends podcast!

It's not about quick fixes but deliberate action and consistent effort. But how do you bridge the gap between leadership values, company culture, and performance outcomes? That's the focus of our discussion today, as we hear from an expert who has dedicated his life to helping individuals better understand themselves and others to drive improved business results.

Empathetic leaders foster an environment where employees feel heard, valued, and understood. And when employees feel this way, they're more engaged, productive, and dedicated to their work and your organization.

Astute employers understand the transformative power of fostering a culture of appreciation. Such an environment not only attracts top-tier talent but also cultivates a stronger sense of connection to the organization's mission and values among employees. The research underscores this, revealing that when managers acknowledge their efforts, employees are 69% more inclined to invest further in their work.

However, crafting such a culture proves to be a formidable task, particularly in today's dynamic post-pandemic work landscape. Hence, I've invited an expert in employee appreciation and recognition programs to impart her insights with us.

Strategies that helped organizations thrive under different circumstances are no longer relevant. But during lean times, companies need to preserve what's valuable and unique about their organization. A question that is top of mind for most business leaders is how they can do this seamlessly and with conviction to assure employees and customers that business is still of the utmost importance.

Join us as we discuss this topic in depth with a specialist in human resources. They'll share how organizations can adopt a more empathetic and understanding approach, recognizing the unique challenges menopause brings for your employees. Learn how to foster a work environment that is cognizant of this phase in an employee's life, ensuring a supportive space that boosts overall productivity and engagement.

We're excited to welcome Shireen El-Maissi from Blueboard as our guest speaker. Shireen brings with her a wealth of knowledge and experience in human resources, talent acquisition, and employee development. Listeners will gain valuable insights on creating and maintaining successful rewards and recognition programs that can transform their company culture for the better.

We're excited to have Todd Maycunich, a thought leader in the AI space and a key figure at Radancy Labs, joining us to share his valuable insights on this topic. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of generative AI and its implications, empowering them to make informed decisions in their own organizations and careers.

In this podcast we dive into this topic with a human resources expert, who will share how organizations can create a more people-centric approach to their structure, focusing on the unique strengths and values each employee brings to the table. Listeners will gain valuable knowledge on how to create a workplace that values both the squeaky wheels and silent geniuses, ultimately leading to a more engaged and productive team.

In this episode, we discuss with a leading leadership company the importance of employee development and how businesses can make training an integral part of their culture. We also explore some of the best practices for effective learning and development programs and how to start implementing them in your organization. Finally, we provide actionable steps businesses can take to make training a priority and ensure employees are engaged, motivated, and successful.

We laugh at shows like The Office, but work is a sober affair. Babies laugh an average of 400 times per day, but people over 35 only laugh an average of 15 times per day. Considering that 91% of executives believe a sense of humor is key to career advancement and 84% believe that people with a sense of humor do a better job, it's time to bring some giggles, cackles, belly laughs, and guffaws back to the break room.

You don't need to screen stand-up routines over lunch, but as a leader, bringing laughter into work with you is one of the best things you can do to bolster your teams. The key is to skip the bawdy Will Ferrell humor in favor of tactful, work appropriate comedy, and leaders are the ones who set the bar for acceptance.

In this podcast, we explore the role of ethical AI in skills-based talent decisions. From the standpoint of an experienced recruitment and HR leader, we discuss how businesses can use AI in a responsible way to identify and develop the skills of their workforce. We also explore the challenges and opportunities that arise when ethical AI is used in talent decisions.

What are some ways you can improve the digital employee experience? Listen to find out!

In order to create meaningful change within an organization, it's important to gather everyone together and get their buy-in. However, maximizing these gatherings can be tricky. In this podcast, we discuss how to make the most of your next workplace meeting.

There are many benefits of EWA for both employees and employers. For employees, it can provide much-needed financial flexibility and peace of mind. It can also help them avoid expensive fees associated with traditional payday loans. For employers, EWA can improve employee retention and satisfaction, and may even lead to increased productivity.

In this podcast, we'll explore the ins and outs of EWA, including how it works and how companies can use EWA to great effect.

Through games and challenges, businesses can use gamification to create inclusive team environments that encourage collaboration and performance. In this podcast, we'll explore how gamification can help your team achieve success. By incorporating gaming elements into teambuilding exercises, you can create a fun, engaging environment that results in high-performing employees.

In this podcast, we explore why work sucks – and how we can fix it. We also look at some research on what makes employees happy and productive, and offer tips for leading a high-performance team.

What will the future of work look like? This is a question that has become all too common, asked by business leaders, managers, and employees like never before.

The future of work will be different from what we're used to, but there are a few things we can expect. In this podcast, we unpack the future of work and discuss how companies and organizations can prepare for the changes ahead.

So what does this mean for the future of work? The Ivanti survey results and what they tell us about the rise of remote working. We'll also explore the benefits and challenges of this new way of working, and offer some tips on how to make the most of it.

When looking at this from a mental well-being perspective, it can cause burnout, disengagement, lower production output, and ultimately a total disconnect between people and production.

The key is leveraging pressure as a tool of success rather than a weight on your shoulders. The first step is mindset, figuring out how to think of pressure in a way that serves you. From there, you have to learn how to build up your resilience and learn how to use pressure as a structuring tool when you're facing uncertainty.

That said, employers still play a big role. Today's companies need to provide well-sourced, well-considered content and help drive motivation to ensure that employees gain truly valuable skills. Then, employees take over from there.

Among other things, that means recognizing the unique struggle of frontline employees, providing support to push back against burnout, skills training to help adapt to the future of work, and a targeted effort to drive better performance. That way, you can continue to support the communities who rely on you.

The key to respect is understanding what respect means in today's work environment and the role leaders play in it. From there, leaders can craft their organizational standards of respect, accountability, and appropriate handling of disrespectful conduct. The net result is a happier, healthier, and culturally rich work environment.

Humans inherently resist change, and your employees are no different. However, there are ways to overcome change-resistant mindsets. By driving understanding and reframing the effort, you can change employees minds (and their mindsets) to the betterment of your business.

The key is to strike a balance—not just tools that get the job done, but tools that enable safe collaboration. That way, your team can confidently work (and innovate) whether they're across the table or miles apart.

Today we're going to one way a new approach to benefits is changing the game – bringing well-being to the workforce. Pop-up dental clinics right in your workplace are a proven way to ensure your employees get the dental care they need — despite their busy lives. And this ingenious new way to bring benefits on-site can have an enormous positive impact on financial wellness as well. A Cigna study found that regular preventive dental care over a five-year period reduced annual dental costs by 31% for people aged 18-64.

Today Meghan M. Biro talks to Jordan Smith, the CEO of Jet Dental, about this groundbreaking model of employee healthcare. It's a new way for employers to get ahead of employee expectations around benefits and care.

It's more than just a bad attitude. It's a toxic workplace culture that culminates into a dangerous trend for workplaces. Just look at the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, when workplace culture took an ugly turn.

It's time for employers and HR professionals to do better. It's time to revitalize culture and create a work environment that strengthens you. It's time for managers to develop a plan of action to make sure their workplace culture is engaged, attentive, and positive. That has to happen at all levels, and it starts with commitment at the top of every organization.

What caused it? Upheavals in the workplace, a revelation among workers that they can work remotely and prefer to, a new wave of retirements that opened up new opportunities. Add a general tide of burnout and disengagement as companies undergo rocky digital transformations, and push production to gain traction in crowded marketplaces. And there's the pandemic's pressures, bearing down on already stressful roles.

Recent research from Microsoft found that 41% of employees are considering resigning from their jobs in 2021—compared to 15% voluntary turnover rates pre-pandemic (as reported by Mercer). The Wall Street Journal notes that the actual "quit rate" is four million people per month, the highest we've ever seen.

Today Meghan M. Biro talks to Morgan Chaney, Senior Director of Marketing at Blueboard, about how new approaches to recognition can help employers overcome this wave of departures, catalyze engagement, and turn this resignation ship around.

The number one myth about career changes is that they're simply too difficult. We think it will take too much time and effort, or that starting from the bottom in a new field isn't worth the cost. In reality, changing careers will require some legwork, but it's not at all impossible. You just need the right toolkit, and enough preparation to guide you through the process.

For one thing, relationships still matter, which means employees at all levels need to continue networking and cultivating work relationships. Employees also need to change their mindset, especially if they're transitioning into leadership positions. And we all have a personal and professional brand to draw on—the key is to build it early and continue refining it.

That uncertainty and disengagement comes with a high price tag—The Gallup Organization estimates that there are 22 million actively disengaged employees costing the economy $350 billion each year in lost productivity due to absences, illness, and other problems related to unhappiness at work.

In order to shift to a happier, healthier workplace, leadership and HR professionals need to shift how they manage uncertainty. Instead of shying away from uncertainty, managers need to embrace it and take charge of gray areas to drive understanding, open communication, and engagement.

Strong leadership comes from a few key areas: having the right mindset, building trust, cultivating engagement, and encouraging employees to support diversity and inclusion. Leaders have to interrogate their own approach so that they can work towards the diverse teams they need—and for leaders who do so early and often, the results speak for themselves.

There's just one problem: less than half of Millennials think businesses behave ethically.

In order to attract the best talent, businesses need to change this perception. That means leading with values, demonstrating ethics, and showing that values translate into action. In the process, businesses can create a more positive work environment, strengthen their competitiveness, and set themselves up for future success.

HR professionals will need to adapt to new technology to reflect a new talent acquisition environment and a new talent management environment. Hiring will have to reflect flexible labor, offering the right incentives for in-person work. In the office, HR professionals will have to learn how to manage both remote employees and person employees.

There's just one problem: translating your work culture into your work-from-home culture.

In fact, culture is the hardest thing to transition to remote work, even though many managers believe that going remote is as sending a worker home with a laptop and a to-do list. You have to invest in your remote culture just as much as your in-person culture, which means giving employees signs that they matter, no matter how far apart you are.

Learning how to recognize and rewire these behaviors is about more than just getting over the hump. It's about changing your relationship to success, getting over your anxiety, and giving yourself permission to shine at work. Learning how to get out of your own way can radically alter your relationship to work in all the right ways.

In other words, what you think about your business shapes your business in the future. So if your assumptions are wrong, you have space to make your business stronger. Once you improve your assumptions, you can change the way you do business for the better. The key is understanding and interrogating your mistakes.

STEM, a program designed to advance technical thinking in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics at the school level, was created to ensure technical progress stagnation doesn't happen. It enables learners to advance their thinking to more significant innovation and critical thinking while building on future skills. Exposing school-age children to the benefits of STEM introduces them to the benefits of technology and the future career opportunities awaiting them.

In fact, 82% of women with kids and 76% of men with kids would prefer better benefits over a salary increase, and 80% of employees overall would opt for better benefits over a better salary. And while 92% of Millennials say money is a major factor in a job, 90% of Millennials say they would prefer benefits over a salary increase.

In other words? Employees are planning for the future, and they know that benefits can help them secure it. Recruiters planning future talent acquisition need to think the same way.

Now, 80% to 90% of workers want to remain remote. And on a deeper level, working parents want to keep the benefits of working from home—65% of respondents who preferred a remote model were female, and 84% of working parents with children under 18 find that the benefits of hybrid work outweigh the cons.

The key for employers and HR managers is to deliver the benefits employees want in hybrid work while leveraging employee happiness into productive hybrid models.

In the era of COVID-19, as employees demand more support from their workplaces, HR is more important than ever before. Yet there are also more opportunities for HR professionals than ever before. Experts now say that viewing the employee experience through a customer lens can help HR drive a better experience. The key is understanding how to fit that experience to your unique sector.

The best leaders have wavering styles and connect with people differently and situationally, but two of the most common traits are showing humility and empathy. And great leaders also possess an uncanny communication style, one developed using a combination of empathy and self-awareness. They are also great storytellers who can engage and relate when working with anyone from executive leadership and board members to direct reports.

Also, given the highly charged societal issues facing our world today, showing concern for workplace issues along with those happening around us shows an awareness. It brings conversations, normally tabu in the workplace, to the forefront of meaningful conversations. These discussions create more room for transparency and engagement.

That's a big deal, considering that companies with happy employees outperform the competition by 20% and happy employees are 12% more productive. And happiness matters to employees—36% of employees report they would give up a $5,000 pay increase to feel happier at work. Which means it's time for employers and HR departments to invest in an engaged and happy workforce.

The talent cliff places hiring companies in a position to suffer losses of key people who filled critical roles aligned with the organization's overall business strategy. Finding and filling these roles quickly is essential but not always possible, especially when it's a job candidate's market. This void creates bumps in the smooth running of the company and can have long-lasting financial implications on the business.

In 2016, the General Social Survey revealed that 50% of their respondents claimed to be burnt out or near exhaustion from the demands of their job. This percentage showed an increase of 32% from just twenty years previous. Disrupted sleep patterns, increased consumption of alcohol and caffeine beverages, decreased time spent exercising, fear of losing one's job, and moodiness have been identified as signs of burnout.

That presents a dilemma for businesses.

On one hand, businesses need to be efficient in hiring. On the other hand, it's difficult to making hiring personal—and streamlined—when there are so many potential candidates. Lack of efficiency leaves your business in the dust, but a lack of personal touch may drive away candidates. And either way, business competitiveness rests on striking a balance in this gray area. Today's podcast offers tools to help businesses like yours find the happy medium.

That has a profound impact on the workplace—not just in productivity, but also in climate. And in a time when employees increasingly turn to their employers for health support, wellness is no longer just an employee perk. It's a critical competitive benefit and a crucial investment in long-term success. Workplaces that go above and beyond to support employee wellness will be the ones that rise to the top in 2021 and beyond.

HR departments lie at the heart of the transformation, driving not just policy change but the culture changes necessary to adapt to the new talent landscape. HR professionals will lead the charge to acquire new talent based on the new metrics of competitiveness, and their success in adapting to new talent demands translates directly into the success of their organization.

An ESG survey found that 36% of knowledge workers who are "extremely concerned" about their personal health and safety due to Covid-19 say they would prefer to return to the office compared to 49% of respondents who are "not that concerned" or "not at all concerned" with their personal health risk. In the meantime, the face of work is changing alongside reintegration. Employers are adopting new strategies to mitigate risk, from digital solutions to in-person measures.

But these changes come with pressure. Employers are now viewed as humanitarian leaders responsible for keeping employees safe—and if they fail, the blowback can seriously harm the business's future. Learning how to insulate your business and make the right decision for employees is essential as more employers return to work.

Organizations that are concerned about the mental and physical well being of its employees recognize the need for down time as well as time away from work. Many studies have shown that mental stress and high physical demands placed on employees is detrimental to the company's staff as well as damaging to the productivity output for the organization.

Both employees and employers need to have a plan of action to create more structure and boundaries to delineate work from personal time and implement this plan in a meaningful way. Employers can start by asking employees more about their lifestyle and armed with this information, set forth to create workplace initiatives that help employees to recognize when down time and personal time are needed. Also, programs that allow employees access to resources (e.g., virtual yoga and exercise classes, meditation and counseling) are all sets to creating a healthier work environment.

Practicing good communication and embracing the critical need for innovation are not always easy. They require throwing away archaic thinking and adopting new ways to view your business model, which means accepting change, and we all know change is not an easy ask for most people. So, what path does that lead many of us down? The path of least resistance, which means accepting what is versus working towards what can be.

Without a culture that propagates collaboration, open-mindedness, and transparency, flexible work options are not likely to exist. When organizations attempt to bring programs into cultures that have not been primed with a solid foundation to support the programs, they most always fail. This holds true when incorporating benefits or perceived flexible options into a workplace unable to sustain in the long haul or can only weakly accommodate present and future employees.

Many employees have been forced to relocate their workspaces into areas previously used as home space. This along with the isolation of working remotely and adjusting to a new "normal" has taken a toll on many people. With this in mind, employers need to step up and be supportive in ways that may not have been a priority in the past.

Health and wellness has come to light as a priority and with that technologies that support in this way have been called upon to up their game with advanced ways of accessing health and wellness assistance. This uptick in demand has drawn the attention of employers and forced them to re-evaluate their current wellness benefits in lieu of advanced technology and more encompassing wellness programs.

According to the 2020 McKinsey & Company Women in the Workplace report, researchers discovered that working women fared poorly under the challenges of Covid-19. They further report that women of color fared the worst of all, suffering from layoffs and furloughs. In addition, they followed the trend of female mobility in the workplace, and based on their findings, upward mobility for women was no better in 2020 than in 2015.

The bigger picture here is that lack of upward mobility, equal pay, which is still an issue when compared to male counterparts, suppression to be allowed a strong voice, and inflexibility to recognize the need for diverse opinions are all major factors in employee retention.

According to an article in HR Executive, "61% of working caregivers said helping loved ones has impacted their employment situation, and 53% reported going in late, leaving early, or taking time off to accommodate care." This means that over half of the working population struggles to work while providing care to loved ones. The mental stress and added duties take their toll, with some people leaving the workforce entirely to be an elder caregiver.

Presentism opens the mind and allows one to focus on the immediate situation and people in the moment. It's an ability to focus on one's own emotions, reactions, and moods, along with recognizing these traits in others. So, basically, by learning and practicing emotional intelligence, we learn to be good observers of our own surroundings and the people we come into contact with every day.

One of the factors leading to why the nature of the gig worker remains clearly undefined is that it lacks a firm definition. This gray area means that employers cannot set forth well-defined policies and protections when hiring gig workers. Given the rise in demand for gig workers, lawmakers are working with employers on a local and national level to define and qualify what constitutes an on-demand worker and what employers also need to know to protect themselves from litigation. However, conclusive data about the on-demand workforce, mostly at the state level, remains undefined.

In the business world, they blend well into online communication venues such as chats and groups where people share opinions and offer advice. They mesh best with more outgoing people than themselves, and when introverts and extroverts collaborate, the results are generally good because the results gain the benefits of both sides' strengths.

Evermore necessary is the skill of possessing great communication skills. Being able to interview virtually has taken on a new role. At one time, it was something done by large enterprise companies who had the budget to purchase this technology. This is no longer the case, as most companies now must rely on technology to assess candidates, hire, and onboard these individuals into the company. Being able to rely on technology that is well connected and intersects with other technologies, coupled with excellent communication capabilities, is essential for any organization and is quickly becoming the standard practice for talent acquisition.

For job seekers and candidates, getting comfortable with using technology for job search and interviewing is no longer an option, but is a must. Developing a comfort level using technology will be one of the factors recruiters will use to assess someone's job candidacy, along with the customary historical items. Coming prepared to the interview with good questions and insights, showing an ability to communicate as though you were sitting face-to-face, will fall into the assessment bucket.

From the employer's perspective, they can expect higher productivity levels, greater concern and care for the business's success, better engagement with customers, increased employee referrals (one of the highest compliments a brand can get), and overall feelings of goodwill from employees.

Conducting proper research and doing your due diligence to vet companies that are a good match for your skill sets and personality type is still true. The difference here is that many organizations are not hiring, and further, they are reducing the number of people working in their business. This is where the roadblock begins for some job seekers. Also, the preparation and execution of how you present yourself during an interview are complicated by the fact that most interviews are being conducted via virtual platforms powered by technology. Some people don't feel comfortable speaking in front of a computer screen. This adds another dimension to the preparation. Job seekers now need to practice how to get comfortable with a virtual interview.

And the use of social media has become even more important. It has now become a major networking vehicle for most people. Ensuring your social profiles present you in the best light is essential in these times.

Additionally, the rules and customs of looking for work are still in place. Job seekers need to be organized and use their network to help them identify opportunities. Resumes need to be targeted to the job you want and easy to read by recruiters and hiring managers.

Ultimately, there are pros and cons, so tenacity and a strong desire for your dream job still count.

Attempting to create strict boundaries between one's personal life and work often meets with disappointment. Given that we live in a world where communications travel fast and people are easily reachable, distancing oneself from personal life when at work and work when on downtime is becoming increasingly difficult, but not unacceptable. In actuality, it is possible to blend personal time and work hours into a finely balanced lifestyle. However, with some concerted effort, people can find ways to balance satisfying personal and work goals.

According to many pundits on this topic, our ability to communicate any time, especially now during the pandemic, is our best way to stay actively engaged with our business associates. Some experts take it further and encourage people to be over communicators, especially when engaging with their supervisors. This action will help people set the stage for what they need and how their new work-life balance has changed. For productivity to be maintained, both employees and leaders must understand how the new work-life balance will affect workloads and prepare themselves accordingly.

to look at effective strategies for supporting your workforce and their mental health during and beyond the pandemic. Appian was a fully in-house, open-door, come-together work culture that found a way to take that work culture remote — and also make sure its employees get the support and help they need. And that includes mental health: we've all seen anxiety levels jump over the past 9 months. The key is to acknowledge it, and find ways to discreetly remind employees they have access to help.

Enter the pandemic of 2020. If ever there were a time when corruption could rear its ugly head, it would be now. Given the confusion, lack of face-to-face contact, loosened controls, and opportunity for fraudulent activity, the time is ripe for integrity to take a nosedive. In fact, according to a 2020 survey conducted by EY, they discovered that 90% of employees believe that the pandemic puts their employer at risk for unethical business dealings.

to talk about the challenge of alignment in workforces right now. Achievers' Workforce Institute just put out the 2020 Culture report, based on their June survey of over 1100 people around the world. Culture alignment now is just as important as ever — but as with so many facets of working today, COVID-19 has had a profound effect. Culture alignment plays a key role in recognition as well as engagement. We'll talk about the study, and the best strategies to promote alignment now.

Information such as "a day in the life" is rarely provided, nor is enough information about the position and team or department where the new hire will be working. In essence, they are static, one-sided statements that create a challenge for engaging job seekers. This neither benefits the employer nor the job applicant. It potentially increases the risk of applications from unqualified candidates, along with confusing job applicants with poorly written descriptions. But thoughtful companies are making strides to improve their job descriptions by writing them to attract and engage interested, qualified job seekers.

Keep in mind that sexual harassment does not always occur through physical contact. The spoken word, emails, texts, and video conferencing can all serve as vehicles to deliver sexually harassing messages.

Further, sexual harassment can be delivered in various ways. Comments targeted to your gender, wardrobe, hairstyle, or even an inappropriate joke can be construed as sexual harassment and under many legal jurisdictions can be reported as such.

In this episode of #WorkTrends, entrepreneur Nathan Hirsch, the co-founder of OutsourceSchool, describes the myriad benefits of hiring virtual assistants. He explains how to properly hire, onboard, train and manage virtual assistants to get the most from the skills they bring to an organization. He, also, shares advice on when the best times are to hire virtual assistants with specific skill sets during various business growth milestones.

Today I'm sitting down with Augie Smith, Founder of Otherhood, to talk about how his company partners with employers to help their employees with a pressing challenge today: saving as much pre-tax income as they can for what matters: healthcare, education, and retirement. We'll be looking at the role of automation and AI in this innovative platform, and talking about why employee self-service is so important when it comes to benefit management.

Jennifer Toton, Chief Marketing Officer at Reflektive, joins host Meghan M. Biro to download some of the more compelling trends that the survey uncovered. The report sheds light on the present and the future — and how the shift to remote working has changed our views and expectations on performance, as well as our desire for feedback, reviews, coaching, communication, and time.

In this episode of #WorkTrends, I'm spending time with two veterans of remote working, Maria Orozova and Scott Thomas. They own and manage a creative services agency and do this successfully as a married couple. Many of the struggles employees and businesses are facing now are challenges they overcame in their many years of learning how to divide child care, finding ways to create "alone" time, delineating between work and home hours and using good tactics for interactions that don't create communication fatigue.

Today I'm sitting down with Iain Moffat, Chief Global Officer of MHR International, to talk about the importance of safety, relationships, and purpose as the cornerstones for building real trust in today's workplace — and radically strengthening the company culture. These may be uncertain times, but creating a sense of trust and belonging in your workforce and your workplace gives people an anchor we all need — and it's an incredibly effective way of sustaining the kind of performance and engagement that, in turn, sustains your business.

Then came the pandemic, and suddenly we shifted to remote working and flexible schedules out of necessity — which as more than one colleague of mine has said is, after all, the mother of invention. And with that shift came the realization that we really can break out of the 9-5 mold, undo our adherence to staying in cities in order to be near our workplace, and detach from the need to stay on salary for being independently affiliated. There are, of course, tangible matters to address, including how we best source and hire freelancers with the chops and skills we really need. But here's another revelation: HR is a great opportunity for hiring freelancers – and being a freelancer. Freelancers with HR talent are on the rise and for a number of reasons, we're going to see more organizations turning to freelancers — and finding that both strategically and practically, it's a win.

Today I'm welcoming Chris Russell, Founder, HR Lancers, and Jim Stroud, VP marketing, Proactive Talent, to talk about the enormous shift we're seeing in how people work and how organizations hire — from salaried to gig. And that includes HR as well, which may surprise some of you. But with millennials leaving major metropolitan areas and remote working becoming the norm, freelancing is becoming a viable way to build a great HR team. We'll talk about effective strategies for hiring the best and the brightest freelancers for HR, from best practices to best resources.

Against this backdrop, we still need to hire people. And we need to find a way to onboard them into a work culture that inspires and engages them. Just how to do that has always been a challenge. But now it's even more so — because we can't rely on proximity to transmit behaviors or a sense of shared purpose, or energy, or enthusiasm. It all has to happen in a way that transcends physical boundaries and is effective nevertheless.

Today I'm welcoming John Baldino, President and Founder of Humareso, to talk about the best practices for onboarding your new hires into your workforce, no matter where you are — and how to uncover the blind spots in your onboarding process as well as your workculture to make onboarding a success.

In many ways and on many levels, we so often don't know what our fellow coworkers are going through. We don't see their struggles — and in some cases, that ignorance can make it worse. Since bias, diversity and inclusiveness are very much front and center for so many conversations about work, and they should be, I wanted to make sure we looked at how it is for LGBTQ employees. That's a segment of diversity and inclusion we don't focus on enough. So we're going to head from an expert on the issue who's developed a very effective methodology for increasing empathy and self-awareness. It's a tool for reducing unconscious bias, microaggressions, and other challenges that LGBTQ employees face all too often, and creating a sense of camaraderie, collaboration and support that truly includes everyone.

Today I'm welcoming Elena Joy Thurston to #WorkTrends. Elena is an inspirational speaker and founder of the PRIDE and Joy Foundation, and she has an incredible life story. She's here to talk about the connection between growing our self-awareness and making our work cultures truly inclusive.

Forward thinking leadership means taking a clear stance on diversity that is effective and relevant. It's one critical way to increase the resilience of your organization and your work culture. If you don't address the problems that make your work culture brittle, it snaps under pressure. If you don't aim to expand your workforce to represent as many diverse points of view as possible, you lose that ability to make the best decisions based on seeing all the possible angles. But if as a leader you don't have a well-developed sense of emotional intelligence, you won't practice the empathy and the clarity to understand the dynamics at work in your organizational culture, and steer your workforce through a crisis — any crisis. And you likely won't be able to keep your best talent for very long.

Today I'm welcoming Melissa Lamson, CEO of Lamson Consulting to talk about the new imperative for leaders — to bring resilience as well as diversity to their organizations, and why the two go hand in hand.

The answers to those questions are going to be increasingly key in the coming months and the near future. Today on #WorkTrends I'll be talking to Doug Coull. Doug is the founder and CEO of APS, Inc., makers of SmartSearch talent acquisition and staffing management software. He's here to discuss why we need to get real about ATS. It's a lot more than a process or a tool. An ATS system thrives on guidance, collaboration and partnership. That means having an ATS partner who can work with you to create great solutions. An ATS partner helps companies make the best decisions around hiring — to improve their hiring success and sustain their business as they move forward, regroup and rebuild. There's a lot to know about the why and the how of ATS.

The good news is that if leaders take the right approach they can help steer the company and their people through the maze of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety and be in far better shape when they come out on the other side of the crisis. That means being as transparent as you can be, communicating clearly and frequently, and being careful about the speed and velocity of any decision, or pivot. Leaders have had to oversee a dramatic shift to remote work in so many industries — and in others, they have had to find ways to help make their workforce safe. But these are all the factors of trust — and trust is the glue that's going to hold your organization together, no matter the nature of your business, or the size of your workforce.

Today I'm talking to Doug Butler, the CEO of Reward Gateway, on #WorkTrends. We're going to be looking at how leaders bring their organizations through a crisis — and how to make the best decisions and changes to sustain yourself over the near term and the long term. Reward Gateway is an organization that has adaptability built right into its DNA, and it's a great example of the kind of flexibility and forward thinking we all want to have in our own organizations. But the ability to survive a crisis has as much to do with each and every person in the organization, and with the leader's capacity for empathy, ability to converse their energy, and to look forward with clarity.

Digital skills were in high demand before Covid-19, part of the digital transformation some call Work 4.0, and that demand is increasing. As businesses scale, adjust, strategize, and aim for the future, their survival depends on workforce that's skilled in digital skills — including analytics, data-driven decision making, and new and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

How do you create that workforce, as a startup, an SMB, as a Fortune 500? By understanding the nature of your business, assessing what you need to function, and identifying the gaps. And there are effective strategies to assess the digital skills of prospective hires today that accommodate a changed hiring landscape.

On this episode of #WorkTrends, sponsored by SAS, our guest is Sean O'Brien, Senior Vice President, Education at SAS. We're discussing how to create a digitally skilled workforce, including assessing the skills gaps you may not even realize you have in your company. Sean will talk about the new realities and challenges organizations face as far as hiring talent, and how to better develop the talent you already have.

But it's not always that easy, or that simple. Even before the pandemic triggered a lockdown and work from home, we weren't always succeeding. Now that we're working remotely with increased distraction and less direct contact, or on the front lines as essential workers under tremendous pressures, the dynamics have gotten even more complicated. Zoom fatigue and incivility are just two factors undermining our working relationships, whether we're aware of them or not.

Today, Robin Rosenberg, CEO and Founder of Live in Their World, as well as an executive coach and clinical psychologist, joins #WorkTrends to talk about the best practices for improving our work interactions and our empathy for each other, and learning how to repair the damage before it adds up to an impasse. Robin's organization, Live in Their World, uses VR technology to teach us not just how to walk in each other's shoes, but "in their feet," to truly experience their perspective and build bridges rather than walls.

At #WorkTrends we're looking at some of the companies who are focusing on wellness as a key differentiator -- in terms of employee performance and experience, and also customer experience. And we're looking at how the pressures and challenges today are helping to catalyze a new definition of what wellness means. It's not a matter of offering isolated benefits or perks anymore — it can't be. As companies shift to flexible and remote working out of necessity, they're finding the need to provide a through-and-through culture that embodies their values — and wellness is an enormous component.

Today I'm bringing Arthur Matuszewski, VP of Talent, Better.Com to #WorkTrends to talk about how he and his company are innovating a wellness culture that employees thrive on. It has demonstrable benefits in terms of customer success, and some of its most popular elements may surprise some in this audience.

Today we're going to learn from an expert on the workplace — in fact she's an expert on so many facets of technology and teams that it's hard to keep track.

This is a new normal that can seem like anything but normal, and among many HR practitioners, there's a very real need for guidance and support. One very effective strategy is HR outsourcing. But it's not about giving up control. It's about the value it can bring to the business.

Today I'm bringing Tom Hammond, VP, Corporate Strategy and Product Management at Paychex, to #WorkTrends for this sponsored podcast on the why and the how of outsourcing HR. We're going to talk about the best strategies for surviving these tough times, and supporting our businesses and our employees through it. In light of COVID-19, we'll be looking at a range of outsourcing models — such as professional employer organizations (PEOs) and administrative services organizations (ASOs). We want to help our listeners understand how these solutions can support them right now — when we really need them.

Today I'm talking to Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek, Chief Marketing Officer at Skillsoft, to #WorkTrends for this sponsored podcast on the key to remote workplaces that allow your people to excel, thrive and grow. We're going to talk about the challenges for leaders and managers to engage and support their remote teams, why knowledge is so important right now to all of us.

An AI-driven digital coach named Amanda is actually proving to be a phenomenal solution for companies looking to train, develop, and educate front-line managers, supervisors, and upcoming leaders. It was launched by Kevin Kruse of LEADX using technology powered by IBM Watson. We're going to talk about what it is, how it works, and why it's leveling the playing field for organizations no matter their size. Both 80% of those polled on whether or not they wanted robot coaching, and the same percentage of those polled on whether or not they want human coaching said yes, they do. The bottom line isn't machine or person. It's having a coach, period. And the results with Coach Amanda are really compelling.

Culture also sets us on a course for the future. And all the organizations I know are obsessed with what the future holds. Culture helps us attract the next superstars to our organization, helps the leaders connect with the rest of the workforce, and supports the employees who have the promise to really go the distance and be the next leaders. And that's what Jim Knight is all about. He's a standout expert on workplace cultures and rockstar leaders. So we're going to talk as well about how you can become that leader — who creates an amazing workplace culture, embodies it, and keeps it evolving, current, and sustaining for the long-term. And hey, we love those bands that have stood the test of time and stayed relevant through the decades, am I right?

Today's guests, Diane Adams, Sprinklr Chief Culture and Talent Officer and Grad Conn, Sprinklr Chief Experience & Marketing Officer, are here to lay it all out for us — and talk about the approaches they've used at Sprinklr to bring in, inspire, and to be honest, keep top talent. They're passionate about the crossover of marketing and HR to create an amazing workplace culture — and about how marketing techniques that keep engaging customers can be utilized so effectively when it comes to talent.

This week on #WorkTrends, host Meghan M. Biro welcomed Salvador Barros, CEO of Tap My Back, and Jason Lauritsen, Keynote Speaker and Best-Selling Author, to the podcast to discuss the barriers to adoption and the value of recognition programs.

This week on #WorkTrends host Meghan M. Biro was joined by special guest Shane Green. They discussed culture, customer experience and the impact both have on the employee experience.

Here are a few key points Shane shared:

• The way your employees act defines your brand online
• A leader must spend time to build culture where people feel a connection by showing care
• The greatest enemy to tomorrow's success is your past success
• Great tip: Looking at behavioral skills rather than experience when hiring

You can also check out the highlights of the conversation from our Storify here: Didn't make it to this week's #WorkTrends show? Don't worry, you can tune in and participate in the podcast and chat with us every Wednesday from 1-2pm ET (10-11am PT).

Remember, the TalentCulture #WorkTrends conversation continues every day across several social media channels. Stay up-to-date by following our #WorkTrends Twitter stream; pop into our LinkedIn group to interact with other members; or check out our Google+ community. Engage with us any time on our social networks, or stay current with trending World of Work topics on our website or through our weekly email newsletter.

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