Lisa Calicchio

▶0:00HostI'm excited to welcome Lisa to the Built by People podcast. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:09GuestSure. First of all, Dave, thank you for having me. It's an honor. I love the podcast, so it's really a cool thing to actually be on the podcast. A little bit about my career journey. I would probably describe it now that I look back at it decades later as opportunistic and adaptable. If you would've asked me that question when I first started out, what do you wanna be in 5 years? I probably would've told you a communications professional because that's what I went to school for, and that's actually how my career started out. And it just meandered from there. Had the opportunity to work in a couple of different functions, which was awesome. But I knew I found my home when I landed in HR back in the mid-'90s and have loved it ever since. So happy to talk particularly about all things HR, although I've got some business experience that I infuse into my approach to HR, which a lot of people sometimes like to hear about that more than the HR stuff.

▶1:06HostLisa, can you share a specific story or example from your experience where transitioning to a remote work environment significantly improved team productivity and morale?

▶1:16GuestYeah, the— our company, for the record, we are officially remote. We went remote like many people did at the start of the pandemic. Back in March of 2020, which ironically was my first week on the job here at WCG when the world went mad and everything just turned upside down. We never went back. I would say, Dave, that was initially, it was not my choice to go remote. The pandemic was in full swing. But what we started to realize about 2 years into the pandemic is we had access to talent that normally would not have either sought us out because of our footprint where we used to be located, or we would not have sought them out because initially we were an office-based culture. I think now about half of our employees are not within a traveling distance to any of our former offices. We've closed almost all of our offices at this point. One of the big aha moments was the increase in the breadth and depth of talent that we had access to by not having physical borders on our company. We did not see any dip in productivity. We saw spikes in engagement. We saw spikes in conversion rates of candidates that we recruited for, and our folks have loved the arrangement. So they always ask us, are we going back? Are we going back? I think the fact that we've closed all of our offices, but our headquarters office is proof of that. So engagement remains really high. Folks treasure and value the remote work experience. And we find as a result, they work really hard to make sure that we're delivering on what we need to be doing. Because it is such a privilege for them.

▶2:53HostLisa, can you tell us about the biggest challenges you faced when implementing a remote work culture and how you overcame them to maintain employee engagement and company culture?

▶3:04GuestYeah, there were probably two, Dave. I, I'll touch on them just very briefly. One of them was obviously staying connected. So how do you preserve your culture? What makes your company unique? What makes WCG unique? When you don't have it in 3D, so to speak. So that was one of the immediate— we're relegated to digital engagement and digital interaction. So that was a big challenge every leader faced. The second was for new hires. And a lot of folks may not always appreciate, but new hires come in all shapes and sizes. And for some of our new hires, this was their very first work experience, let alone their first remote experience. Experience. So we had folks coming right in out of college who they never worked in a real office setting before. So working remote was all that they knew. And so how do we help ingrain them into our culture, help them feel the essence of the culture? But we also had new hires who they'd grown up in offices and this was really new. And while it sounds great to be remote, there's actually, there's some downsides like the loneliness factor. At times, or you just miss some of those organic connection moments. I happen to see Dave every day when we're in the cafe getting our breakfast, and I get to know other people because I walk through their departments as I go back to my office. Now, in a remote environment, there's a lot more planfulness, which is great, but it shortchanges you on those serendipitous moments where you just make new connections you probably wouldn't make in an organization structure like ours. So for sure, those were the two biggest challenges, staying connected and helping our new hires really feel and be absorbed into WCG's culture.

▶4:53HostLisa, could you discuss innovative practice or strategy that you've implemented to combat loneliness and foster connectivity among remote employees?

▶5:03GuestYeah, so we've done a couple of things, Dave. I'm just gonna highlight on the major ones. And the first one, I don't know that I would call it innovative, but I would call a timeless classic, and we highly recommend this to any organization, whether they're remote today or they're hybrid. You've gotta get your people leadership basics down. Simple things like managers making time to talk with their employees, those regular check-ins, those connection points that managers provide with their teams. There's no substitute for that. The manager is the hub and the linchpin of what holds teams together. And helps teams feel connected, or unfortunately sometimes promote isolation by not doing all the right things. I equate it to diet, exercise, sleep, human connection as the classics of being healthy. You've gotta make sure that you're doing the basics consistently. And when it comes to people leadership, some of the other things that we've done, and we actually just had one of these about 2 weeks ago, we now do wellness weeks. At WCG. They are virtual because we're remote. We do 2 of those a year. One of those is actually focused on physical wellbeing. That's actually the one that we just had the last week of April. And it incorporates things like mindfulness. We actually do a HIIT class, if you know what a HIIT class is, high-intensity interval training. We just did it last, 2 weeks ago. It was actually led by one of our team members, which is getting people up and physically active in front of their desks. To just understanding stress on the body, defining work-life boundaries, how that contributes. So that was focused all about physical wellbeing. We'll actually have another one in October that is fully focused on mental health and things like, again, loneliness. What are some things that folks could be doing all year round to combat loneliness, drive better quality relationships, whether it's at home or in your professional lives? So pretty proud of that. And the crown jewel, which was the innovation, which we get asked about quite a bit, is our remote work playbook. To our knowledge, this is the first of its type that's in existence, at least in our industry. This was about a year-long effort where we had a cross-company team of folks. So this was not an HR project, but a cross-company team of folks come together and develop a robust playbook of activities to do throughout the year. There's about 60 activities. So we bill it as you can do one thing a week if you're a team leader or if you're an individual contributor. It's everything from no-budget activities to the marquee things, which we promote and we do. They're connection weeks, and these are where business leaders and department heads schedule these meetups. And one of our divisions actually coordinates them across the country. So there are 6 different connection events going on in big hubs like Seattle, Cary, North Carolina, New York, and New Jersey, where folks physically get together. We rent space, we have a planned agenda, we have a leadership presence. Those are not free, of course, from a budget perspective, but we highly recommend those at least once or twice a year and that our team leaders get their folks together for these connection weeks. But for all of the other weeks, there's a chock-full roster of activities. In our remote playbook. It's actually called Stay Connected, Thrive Remotely. And we're really proud of that. So that is our crown jewel of our secret sauce of how we are effective being remote.

▶8:39HostLisa, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶8:42GuestI think one of the things I've already touched on, Dave, it's first of all, if you're going to try to innovate, make sure you're doing at least the basics make sure that particularly your people leaders who are just such a linchpin for success in most organizations, the expectations there are clear of what people leaders should be doing in a remote environment, what they shouldn't be doing. We actually have one universal people leadership goal across WCG. It's part of every people leader's annual goals and their performance assessment. It is weighted. And when you're innovating, I would say look to what's going on around you. Don't close yourself off and rely only on what's worked. We think we've become experts in remote work. We've been doing this now for 5 years. We're always learning. We're always benchmarking with other companies. And you also have to figure out what works in our culture, may not work in your culture, may not work in the airlines industry, for example. So be open to adapting your approaches. Never stop looking at what's going on around you. Sometimes what someone's doing in its exact form may not work, but just with some tweaks or maybe flipping something on its head, you've got a great new innovative practice. So do the classics well and consistently, but always have an open mind and be benchmarking what's going on around you. That'll keep you, number one, on your toes, makes life interesting, and you come up with some really good ways to just build and improve on what you're doing already.

▶10:13HostLisa, thank you so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶10:18GuestLikewise, and thank you for all that you're doing to serve our industry and help people continue to bring their best every day.