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How to Support Workers in Times of Crisis, From Natural Disasters to Personal Challenges

“What I love about benefits is that it’s not stagnant. What was considered a hot benefit 20 years ago ain’t a hot benefit today, and there’s always a need to make sure what we’re providing through benefits–yes, we want to make sure it’s competitive–is truly meeting the needs of the people,” said Chris Smith, a veteran of the benefits field with more than two decades of experience.Yet he’s surprised by how few people will simply ask employees what they need. “There is this belief that, if we ask, if we do a survey, we are signing a promissory note,” he said. So rather than promise something they can’t deliver, some don’t ask at all. But that’s not how Smith sees a survey or a sit-down meeting: It’s not a promise, it’s an exercise.Smith is the head of benefits at Universal Music Group, the music label supporting massive stars including Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Stevie Wonder, and the Rolling Stones. Smith spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s January virtual conference on benefits and total rewards. He offered frank advice for how employers can support their workers in crisis and in peace.Smith prides himself on delivering great benefits, so he was disappointed to find, during an open enrollment roadshow, that employees simply didn’t know what’s available to them. The same weakness so many benefits leaders find in their own organizations. And Smith prides himself on great communications emails, so he was equally disappointed to learn that those weren’t making traction.But that was the point of this listening tour, to find ways to make the system better. He’s now exploring creative ways to strengthen comms and lower barriers to access so employees can find and get what they need in good times and in bad.Though this isn’t a part of UMG’s process yet, Smith says he’d like to introduce text messaging or mailers. “People are bored of emails. People are overwhelmed with emails, and because of that, they’re missing really important information.” He’s also exploring old-school methods like mailers. If he can “shock” employees with novel or unexpected communication methods, they may be more likely to listen.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza interviewed Christopher Smith of Universal Music Group (photo by From Day One)In the meantime, they’ve made access easier. “People are not thinking about benefits between nine and five. It’s around 5:15 when you’re at the pharmacy and you’re trying to remember, ‘Oh, shoot, who do I call for my pharmacy benefits? What’s that phone number? I can’t find my ID card.’”So, he stood up a microsite with basic information on benefits–which company handles this or that and which phone numbers to call for help. There’s no log-in required, so employees don’t have to bother with a lengthy sign-in process as the line at Walgreens forms behind them.Universal Music Group is headquartered in Santa Monica, at the epicenter of the recent Los Angeles fires that killed 28 people and displaced more than a hundred thousand. When employees came looking for support and resources, Smith was clear on his team’s role in providing disaster relief: They pulled together every resource, whether directly or indirectly related, into a single place that employees could reference and use. Removing barriers to access was priority number-one.He also made himself personally available. “One of the things that I do–and my family sometimes chastises me for doing it–is make my personal cell phone number available in a heartbeat. I might not be able to get to you as quickly through an email, but you will be able to get to me pretty quickly by calling my cell phone. I don’t want there to be any guard rails or barriers to getting information.”Smith is preparing for the next disaster, hoping it never comes. “However, I think we’d all be irresponsible if we came through this, and didn’t take anything away from the experience and ask ourselves, what can we do better? How can we be more prepared?”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.

Sponsor Spotlight BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | January 31, 2025

People-First, Performance-Focused: Linking HR Efforts to Bottom-Line Success

Despite HR’s new and powerful place in business, many leaders concerned with the bottom line struggle to understand the return on investment for HR’s activities, and many in HR struggle to communicate their value. But bridging human resources to the business isn’t an impossible task; in fact, it’s getting easier thanks to sophisticated HR tech and new access the department has to business leaders and their goals.Ken Matos, the director of marketing insights, and Keren Kozar, senior people and culture officer at HR tech platform HiBob says that the best way to make the connection is with what they call people-first HR.“People coming into the workforce are expecting a leader who genuinely cares about them and genuinely wants to see them be successful in the workplace,” said Kozar in a From Day One webinar on linking HR strategy to the bottom line. “[People-first HR] means that you’re considering your people. They’re not just a number.”“Every single department wants to contribute to a thriving company,” she said, but that may mean different things to different people. “For some, that 100% means the bottom line. For some people, that’s going to mean having an industry-disrupting product, but at the end of the day, happy, engaged employees who feel like they are contributing to an organization that cares about them are going to be the most successful, and that’s how a company is going to thrive.”The Latest and Greatest Business Expense: Artificial IntelligenceCompanies are cutting big checks for artificial intelligence–powered tools and all their promises, and entire organizations are receiving directives from the top: Start using artificial intelligence. But there’s little direction about how to use it, and the tech is still new to many users. Even without detail, departments will be asked to report how it’s improving their work.Ken Matos, Ph.D., the director of market insights at HiBob spoke during the webinar (company photo)Treat AI like a hypothesis to be tested, said Matos. “The first thing is to understand your theory of change for AI.” Identify the problems you believe an AI tool will solve, and “once you have that, you can move on to measurement.” Measure whether people are using it, then track how they’re using it and what they’re producing. “If you know what that chain is supposed to look like, you can pick key places where there are doubts or possibility for failure and focus on measuring those bits. And if the end result is what you’re looking for, then odds are that the whole thing worked.”Linking HR to the Bottom LineIf you want to get business leaders to listen, find out what motivates them. If they want to increase revenue, then it’s your job to identify how people affect revenue with not just what they do, but how they do it.“You can articulate to a leader that you want to get sales revenue up, and here are a bunch of enablers, or obstacles,” Matos said. “My job is to make sure those enablers are maximized. Here’s how and how these obstacles are removed.” With that, those business leaders will start seeing you as an ally, not an admin.And if you’re going to vouch for the efficacy of HR and its work, then you have to speak the language of the business. Kozar once worked for a company where the leader was “100% a numbers guy” who cared only about the balance sheet. “He used to say, ‘HR, you’re so touchy feely.’ And my response would be, ‘people are a measurable metric. They matter. That is a data point. People’s feelings are actually a data point. You need to consider it, just like you would consider absolutely any other analytic that factors into your business decision.’”This can’t end with employee sentiment surveys, though. “We often talk about how to align with leaders and how to communicate with them, but it’s just as important to make sure that HR leaders are speaking to every level of the business,” she said. “So talk to individual contributors, your entry-level folks. The best feedback that I get is from the individual contributors and entry-level people that I’m just sitting with at lunch. That’s how I’m going to synthesize anecdotal feedback and deliver that back to leaders in a way that they’re not going to get through an engagement survey.”Those who chafe against the notion of people-first HR do so because they “don’t realize how feelings change the effectiveness of their business,” said Matos. Think of it this way: How many times have you avoided emails or a project because there’s a person on your team who slows down the work, or is simply a pain to work with?Matos often speaks to business leaders who wonder why it’s their responsibility to motivate the workforce. Maybe you can’t motivate them, he said, but you can certainly demotivate them. “You can strip away their natural desire to do their job, from micromanaging to disrespect to not being communicative. All of these are things under your control.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, HiBob, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.