Your host, Sri Chellappa, talks with the SVP, Talent, and CHRO of Harvard Business Publishing, Angela Cheng-Cimini. Angela shared her extensive knowledge gained from 30 years across various industries, including consumer product goods, professional services, and nonprofits. With her strong background in HR venture advising, Angela brought a wealth of information on the transformative power of personalizing the employee experience to the table.
Angela underscored the significance of understanding and catering to the individual needs of employees. She drew parallels between the personalized experiences offered by giants like Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify, and how such personalization can be mirrored in the workplace to create a tailored employee journey. The demand for hyper-personalization is not just a trend; it's a growing necessity.
Angela highlighted the various dimensions of the employee experience, from recruitment to offboarding, and the importance of personalization at each of these touchpoints. She dispelled the myth that personalization requires advanced technological tools, asserting that organizations already have the data they need to create a more personalized experience for employees.
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[00:00:02] People First Organizations will win in the future of work.
[00:00:06] The only real asset is your people. We all want purpose for their work.
[00:00:10] HR led organization is the future. I'm sorry, but leaders don't lead empty desks and empty shop floors.
[00:00:16] Welcome to the People Strategy Leaders Show.
[00:00:20] I'm your host Srikant Chellappa, founder and president of Engagedly
[00:00:24] and a serial entrepreneur in technology, films and music.
[00:00:28] We talk to people leaders, business strategists and organizational savants about leading in the time of change.
[00:00:34] What is working? What is not working? And more importantly, what we should be thinking about.
[00:00:40] Stick around to the end of the show. We will reveal how you can be our next guest.
[00:00:44] And now let's engage.
[00:00:48] Hello and welcome to People Strategy Leaders Podcast. I am Srikant Chellappa, your host.
[00:00:54] Today I have the honor of having Angela Chang Smini on my podcast.
[00:01:00] Angela brings 30 years of HR experience across consumer product goods, professional services as well as nonprofits.
[00:01:06] She has shepherded businesses through startups, growth and maturity and has led teams domestically and globally.
[00:01:14] Angela currently serves as a CHRO for Harvard Business Publishing.
[00:01:18] She received her BS in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University and sits on their alumni board.
[00:01:24] She serves as an HR venture advisor for Semper Verans in an early stage venture fund that invests in technology, transforming work, health and financial wellness.
[00:01:38] Angela also volunteers for two organizations to promote diversity among AAPI professionals and increase diversity in the media industry.
[00:01:48] Well, Angela, you've got quite a bit of experience there. Thanks for joining me on the show.
[00:01:52] Thank you so much, Srikant. I should start saying 20 plus. 30 just sounds like a really long time.
[00:01:58] 30 is still better than 20 in terms of the number of experience you have and the diversity of experience you have, especially with your experience in working with media and other types of industries.
[00:02:06] It's very impressive. The one thing that we were talking about is something that's gaining a little momentum with your discussions is the employee experience and how organizations need to move towards more personalizing the employee experience instead of trying to do where one size fits all approach.
[00:02:26] First of all, I want to start off with a question. Why is that really that important from your perspective? And what type of impact does that have?
[00:02:36] So I think it's important to recount because our employees are demanding it. So if you think about all the other facets of our life, right?
[00:02:44] Amazon knows when I'm about to be out of my favorite shampoo, right? They have it ready to be shipped to me. Netflix knows what kind of movies I like based upon other movies that I watch.
[00:02:56] Spotify will suggest new artists to me based upon the music that I like. So almost every other facet of our life, there is a mountain of data that someone has.
[00:03:07] And in fact, they spend billions of dollars to acquire that data. And then they actually use that data to construct a customer journey that is tailored just for me, right?
[00:03:17] The Facebook ads I get are different from what my husband gets even though we live in the same household.
[00:03:22] And so equally, employees are looking for an employee journey that is fit just for them. And to be fair, Shrikant, I think organizations have to make sure that they have laid a foundation that they have established in a value proposition that is at base good for everybody.
[00:03:40] And then once you've done that, then you can move to the next level of hyper personalization. But I do think that employers are going to be increasingly demanding it.
[00:03:48] They want to work where they work, how they work. They want feedback when they want it, how they want it. They want learning and development in the modalities where they learn best. So it's coming for us whether or not we think it is.
[00:04:01] Yeah, so talking about that, employee experience is a very broad term. Our organizations use it sometimes differently. How do you define employee experience overall? And specifically, what aspects of employee experience do you feel fits within your perspective of personalization?
[00:04:24] So there's actually many dimensions of the employee experience. But for me, it's a journey, right? So from the very first touch point when they get a call from a recruiter to talk about an opportunity, when they get promoted, when they have their first failure at work, when they have their first review, when they choose to leave.
[00:04:43] That entire journey from beginning to end, from in to out, all of those different touch points make up the experience. And it says a lot about what your organization values in terms of how you onboard, in terms of how you discipline, in terms of how you pay, in terms of how you off-board.
[00:05:00] So the organization should be concerning itself with how the employee experiences itself at any of those milestones.
[00:05:08] So for personalization, I would assume that you would need systems in place, first of all, to capture the data that would use to personalize the experience. So let's talk about a little bit more about how does one go about implementing something like that? And what does that actually look like? Can we talk about an example of what a personalized employee experience might look like for somebody?
[00:05:32] Yeah, I really I love this question. And as I've been talking to other HR practitioners, that's often the question that I get. And I will remind people that it doesn't necessarily take a lot of technological bells and whistles. In fact, you already have the data you need. If you know how much someone makes, if you know their age, if you know whether or not they're a parent, if you know whether or not they're a caregiver, if you know the last time they were promoted, all of those things are going to be used to personalize the experience.
[00:06:02] And those are just bits and bytes of data that you already have about your employee. And so the trick is then to take all the data and turn it into information that you can then action on. So if you have a strongly performing employee, but they haven't been promoted in three or four years, you probably should dig into why that is.
[00:06:19] Have they been overlooked? Have they just not been given opportunity? Maybe it's a matter of coaching. And those are the kinds of data that you can then use to drive an employee experience that's built just for them. The other example I have is learning and development, right?
[00:06:34] Some people learn best in a classroom setting. Some people want to learn asynchronously. Sometimes they want to learn in a group. Maybe they'd like to learn as an individual or self-paced.
[00:06:43] We established an individual learning grant program where employees work with their managers to identify their goals and skills that they needed to acquire. And they applied for a course or seminar or certificate, and they identified whether or not they wanted.
[00:06:59] Was it a week-long boot camp? Was it something that was spread out over the course of three months? Is it asynchronous? Is it live?
[00:07:06] And so we approved those learning grants and it delivered exactly the experience and the training and the skills that employee wanted. So that's a very granular example, but of how L&D can be constructed to meet the employee where they are.
[00:07:20] Yeah, definitely. There's a lot of personalization investments have gone into L&D in terms of systems that are trying to figure out what's the best way you learn by micro learning just on the go, TikTok-style learning.
[00:07:34] There's also classrooms are not as common anymore, at least in the knowledge worker space. They're not as common anymore. So there's been other movements towards that as well. Some of them have gamification and quiz, different type of quiz, competition, things like that to make it more fun.
[00:07:53] So personalization there, I think it makes sense. In the case of, you talk about promotion, like somebody who hasn't been promoted for let's say five, six years, seven years in some cases. What would that mean? Can you give me an example of what personalization of experience for that person would look like?
[00:08:10] So it starts with understanding why that person hasn't been promoted. Maybe they are perfectly happy where they are. Maybe they don't want an added scope of responsibility, but we should be intentional about that. It shouldn't just be like, oh, we forgot to consider how James is doing. And so we did put him in the mix.
[00:08:26] It's because we had a conversation with James because we identified what he wants to do. And let's say he does want to get promoted. So then you need to identify the skills or the gaps or the experiences or the competencies he needs to acquire and then help him build out the development plan that affords him those opportunities so that he is ready the next time it comes along.
[00:08:47] Yeah, that's actually management 101. But it is a form of personalization.
[00:08:53] To some extent, that would the challenge I think is that then you need to make sure your managers are enabled and coached do that correctly because a lot of my biggest problem I have noticed in my own experience of leading teams and running organizations is that we have a lot of managers who don't know how to manage effectively from that perspective.
[00:09:18] They became managers because they were extremely good individual contributors and or they really wanted to be a manager because that's what the society told them they should be at. So they become managers, and then they're like, how do I be a good manager? Because now it's not about your performance, but your team's performance and your team's engagement and your team's growth. How do we do that?
[00:09:41] Yeah, that's exactly right. That is the $64,000 question. So 70% of an employee's experience, the variance of that experience, whether it's good or bad or lukewarm, is based upon the manager. 70%. That means things like factors like pay and internal mobility. All of those things don't matter nearly as much as the manager.
[00:10:02] They manage accounts for three quarters of the employees satisfaction with their experience. Yes, we absolutely need to be our equipping our managers with the skills they need to lead and also I would say help them manage their time. Right? Middle managers are getting crunched.
[00:10:17] They are both strategist and executioner. They are player and coach, and they are often overlooked even though they are the most important part to making sure that an organization is cohesive. So we've often heard that a person leaves the manager not necessarily the organization.
[00:10:34] Yeah. And so when we talk about delivering a hyper personalized experience, it does come down to how well the managers in tune with what each team member needs and then their ability to deliver.
[00:10:44] So one question around that is so the organization really has to make a huge investment. I mean, not necessarily huge in terms of cost, but more I would say most deliberate investment in building good managers in the organization so that the managers can then take a hyper personalized approach to employee experience.
[00:11:05] Because one of the things we talk about a lot as engagedly as well is our recognition and rewards. The recognition rewards are also need to be personalized for different individuals. Some people prefer getting a gift card to Amazon and some people prefer having a day off or having a nice dinner with their spouse or their loved one or whoever that is.
[00:11:29] So there are different experiences they like from a reward technician perspective. And really the managers job is to understand that aspect. How do you like to learn? How do you like to grow? How do you like to be even communicated to?
[00:11:42] And so there are a lot of aspects on that and we talk a lot about that. So in hyper personalization, is there a way to actually is there like a framework that you propose or do you have some sort of a guidebook that new at CHRO or a CEO wanting to pursue this path?
[00:12:01] And how to deliver hyper personalization. So what I would say is that because there are so many dimensions, right? It's culture, it's L and D, it's pay, it's career pathing. I would say pick one or two things that are the most urgent to solve for. Don't try to boil the ocean and do everything.
[00:12:20] And undergirding that, of course, where we started this conversation is making sure that your basic employee value proposition is solid. Know what you stand for. Know what it is. Generally speaking, the kind of experience that you want your employees to have. And then you can dive deep and start delivering that hyper personally.
[00:12:36] Because if you don't even know at the basic level what it is you want your employees to experience, you're really going to lose the message. You're going to lose the thread when you try and you're going to end up paying playing favorites as opposed to hyper personalizing. If you don't know at the ground level what it is you want that to look like.
[00:12:52] So I would say pick one or two things that are the biggest pain points or are the most cause for friction or tension that most need addressing and start from there. And then just methodically work your way through. So pay is another one, right? As you talked about, some people value very different things. To what extent can you afford giving everybody more flexibility in their work? Or do some people value benefits more than they value stock options? I don't know. To what extent does your plan allow you that kind of variability without having to pay for it?
[00:13:22] I think that's the biggest problem with the system is that it's always causing inequity in the system. It's always a watch out.
[00:13:27] Yeah. One aspect of which I think is fundamentally interesting about products like Facebook or Netflix or Amazon Prime is that because of choices you make, they have built a profile of you.
[00:13:46] So I think interactions are going to be a little bit harder in an organization because they exist in multiple systems as well. And they exist in communication that are non-digital in nature, right? Communications over calls, meetings, discussions like that.
[00:14:02] So I think building that profile of that person might be a little bit challenging, but I think it's possible to do that. But like you said, instead of trying to boil the ocean, try to figure out what aspect of your employee journey you want to personalize.
[00:14:15] Maybe it is the onboarding process that you want to focus on first. Or maybe it is the learning and development you want to focus on first. Or maybe it is the compensation structure you want to focus on first.
[00:14:24] Of all these different types of employee experience categories, what are the top two or three that you would say the organizations can probably get the most value from focusing on?
[00:14:36] Wow, that's a great question. I think there are table stakes, right? Employees expect a safe work environment free of harassment abuse. They expect to be paid a living wage.
[00:14:48] They expect to know that their contributions mean something. In terms of what comes next, I think that really depends on what the mission and the purpose of the organization is.
[00:15:00] If you're out there to sell as many widgets as possible, then maybe you want to look at your total rewards to make sure you're incentivizing the right behavior.
[00:15:08] If you're a nonprofit like we are, then achieving mission, which is about making sure that leaders get the information to be as good as possible.
[00:15:17] We're the home of HBR magazine. Then culture is really important. If we're going to teach and preach about leadership, then we better make sure that our organization is one of the best examples of what leadership looks like.
[00:15:29] Right. And we can't compete on compensation because of our nonprofit status. So a lot of it has to do with the core of who your organization is and then being consistent with that.
[00:15:39] That is a great point to make, because the first thing that most people think about is compensation, and then you realize that's not the key driver in many organizations.
[00:15:48] If you're on the sales team or if you are very much profit-driven, then that might be the case. But especially for nonprofits, I think it becomes even more important that they have a really good employee experience because we know...
[00:16:01] I've been on a board of a couple of nonprofits in the past, and I know that people were not necessarily paid what they would get in a private sector.
[00:16:09] So you have to take a different approach to their experience in terms of what they actually value in the organization.
[00:16:18] One question I had, which I was thinking about as you're talking about employee experience and building that persona or the profile of the person.
[00:16:26] Do you have any opinion on whether any of the assessments like the disk assessment or predictive index or MBTI or any of the other strength finder, if you will? Now there's another one called Principle CU.
[00:16:39] Any of them help in this aspect?
[00:16:44] I'm pretty diagnostic tool, agnostic. What I would say in my experience has been those have been most powerful when everyone or a critical mass of your organization uses that tool because then you establish a language that everyone can use.
[00:17:02] That's, oh, I'm red or I'm a XYZ. It's when you have a common language that you can more quickly understand and relate to the other person in the room.
[00:17:11] So I don't have a preference over one tool over the other. What I have a preference for is a push consistency in its use, and I'm finding that's a lot more difficult to do right and the organization comes out of the gates really hot.
[00:17:22] Everybody's going to do this, and then you make it only one third of the way through, or you put everyone through it and then you never use it again.
[00:17:29] You never use it to talk about how that helps performance, how that drives results, how that improves community and your organization.
[00:17:36] All of that effort just to have the report set on a shelf is not terribly useful, but I did want to go back to one thing you said, which is about the data and how difficult it can be to corral all of that.
[00:17:48] And I think this is one place to be a really interesting application of AI. If you think about how GenAI can record this conversation and write a transcript.
[00:17:59] If you to do that for every single one on one, have your large language file ingest all of that and then distill out what are the most common themes that have come up over the past year in your one on one conversations with FreeClan.
[00:18:11] It could tell you that FreeClan most often talked about workplace flexibility or that for Jane, the thing she talked about most was that she was working too much, she was burnt out.
[00:18:21] And then you can start gathering data because GenAI will distill and synthesize all of that for you so that managers can have a playbook for. Okay, these are the things that are top of mind for this employee and these are the things that are most concerning for that employee and then drive conversations and hopefully action plans to resolve.
[00:18:38] Yeah, no, that's a great one actually that a lot of you've been looking into that doing that as well and it engaged lease because we have a meetings and one on one tool in our solution that potentially could do something like that.
[00:18:50] Do you have a good example of where hyper personalization has been implemented? Well, maybe even in a segment of an organization.
[00:18:59] I can talk about our experience at HBP about a year and a half two years ago we built out a very robust career path and frame.
[00:19:07] And we created 20 different job families and each of those job families identified anywhere between three to five job based skills.
[00:19:17] And each career ladder, each job family is anchored by our corporate values and what we believe to be good leadership skills.
[00:19:25] So it's a total of 11 competencies.
[00:19:28] And we then defined four levels of mastery, working foundational working extensive and expert.
[00:19:35] So if you're a sales director, you go look at the chart and you say okay these are the skills I need to be a director, I need to be extensive in these I need to be expert in these and these two I can be foundational at.
[00:19:47] And so what happens is that an employee can look across all the job families take an inventory of their own skills and see how many matches can be made across all of those ladders.
[00:19:57] So as an example, I love to tell the story is marketing director really wanted to join HR because she found a passion for DEI work.
[00:20:05] So she wanted to come over. Not all of her skills were transferable, but a good deal of them work.
[00:20:11] So we were able to match up her skills for marketing with those that were required in HR. And we discovered that actually you know what she only had the skills of an HR manager.
[00:20:21] We chose not to change her title, but now she understands what actually sorry, we changed her title we didn't change her pay.
[00:20:30] But now she understands to be attain that director level. These are the skills and competencies she needs to go after.
[00:20:36] So she was able to choose her own adventure, chart her own path as opposed to becoming the marketing VP.
[00:20:41] She actually could pivot because we made it really clear to all of our employees what are the skills that are required in any role.
[00:20:48] That's a great example. Actually, the learning and development use case makes a lot of sense for personalization.
[00:20:54] And then putting them on a path of development and growth to get to that next level, which is where they were, technically speaking, on paper.
[00:21:04] That gives them that path to get there. It might take them a year, two years or even maybe sooner.
[00:21:10] But that's definitely a great example. Awesome. What if you were to give advice to other CHROs wanting to look at this path, what would be the one advice you would give them?
[00:21:22] So I would do an audit again to make sure that your organization clearly understands your foundational employer value proposition.
[00:21:29] What is at the core of what you think is important for your employee experience?
[00:21:33] And then when you've got that nail, then identify the painful points in your organization, things that are causing the most attrition or the most friction in the organization,
[00:21:42] whether it's culture, pay, L&D, internal mobility and pick one or two and start working on those and then knock off the next one on the left.
[00:21:51] That's awesome. Thanks a lot, Angela. This has been an absolute pleasure talking to you and I hope you get to get some time to enjoy Italy where you are right now.
[00:22:01] Thank you so much for having me, Srikant.
[00:22:03] Where can people read more about you and your point of view?
[00:22:07] I am the only Angela Trangsemini on LinkedIn. So if you reach out and connect with me, let me know that you heard me on this podcast with you, Srikant, and I'll be happy to connect.
[00:22:17] Great. Thanks, Angela. It's been a pleasure.
[00:22:19] Thank you.
[00:22:49] Thank you for listening. We will see you next time.
[00:23:19] Thank you.