Matthew Owenby

▶0:00IntroWelcome to the Built by People podcast,

▶0:02Hostwhere we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders.

▶0:05IntroJoin us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce.

▶0:37HostI'm excited to welcome Matt to the Built by People podcast. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today.

▶0:42GuestSure. Thanks for having me. I started out in HR recruiting, moved up the HR ranks there primarily in multiple different business lines. I was an HR recruiter, then I was an HR consultant, then I was an HR manager, then I was an HR director. Early career was predominantly focused in HR. Then I moved over to Bank of America, worked there for about— down to Columbus, Georgia to work for Aflac. I've been here 13 years and predominantly in HR until about 4 years ago. Then took on some what I'll call more traditional operations functions from accounts payable to corporate security, real estate, corporate aviation. Our Office of Persistency, the president of our printing company. So it's been a mixed bag.

▶1:32HostMatt, thanks for a great introduction. I know a lot of our conversation today is going to center around the concept of burnout. Aflac's workforce report shows 59% of employees feel burned out. What innovative workplace policies or programs has Aflac implemented to tackle this?

▶1:51GuestYeah, Aflac is not immune from the feedback that we saw in the survey. Although we are probably more genuinely aware of it, we have a very, what I would call in my own experience, pretty unusual company culture. It's employee first. Our motto is really take care of the employee, they're going to take care of the company. And so we tend to be a lot more sensitive to not only the feelings of our employees, but how they're doing in the workplace, how even their away-from-work life is going. There's a portion of everybody's job that is a job, right? And we're aware of this, but we try and bring events into the workplace, whether it's a wellness event with a fitness competition, or we do tailgates when we kick off college football season, which is huge here in the South. A lot of it is down to allowing leadership to be creative in the context of their own divisional cultures. We encourage that. Of course, we have onsite healthcare. We have career centers that will help people project out their opportunities into the future, develop plans for their own long-term developmental plans within the corporation. We think that obviously takes away from the burnout in the workplace. But we also know and recognize that leadership has a lot to do with a person's burnout. And I'll make it personal to me. It is, I am controlling the pace of work for my, I am very much in control of the dreaded fire drill or the lack thereof. The vast majority of which, if I am good at planning and understanding my role, can be prevented. You will occasionally get a Friday afternoon, hey, this has got to get done.. But I do my best to limit that. I limit it by communicating things way in advance. Hey, here's where the corporation's going. Here's our vision. Here's our strategy. Here's our plans. But now I make it very clear, hey, look, get to this when you can. This is a priority 7. This is a priority 10. This is a priority 1. So it allows people, I think, to bring down the temperature of the grind of anxiety. And I think it reduces burnout. I'm not an unusual leader here. I'm pretty much normal. And so a lot of that burnout I think is directly controllable, or a big portion of it, by leadership.

▶4:20HostMatt, what are some practical low-cost actions that employees can take in their daily work routines to manage stress and prevent burnout based on Aflac's insights into employee wellbeing?

▶4:31GuestSome of the things that we would recommend is Breaking up the workday. With the advent of different workplace configurations, remote, hybrid, all the things that are going on right now in the modern workplace, people that work remotely ironically tend to work more because they don't have natural breaks and interruptions in the day. So where that isn't happening, you have to create those. You have to create a reason to get away from that computer screen, to get away from that video, to get away from that call. 15, 20 minutes at a time all throughout the day. You know, just this morning I've had 7 or 8 unplanned interruptions. They were good. They were all good interruptions, but they break up the monotony of the grind. And so where that doesn't exist naturally because of workplace configuration, employees, they have to build that into their schedule. They have to know that, set an alarm for every hour and 30 minutes, stand up, move around. Especially if you're at home, get out of that area, wherever that is, wherever that workplace is. When you're at work, obviously we encourage people here to build relationships. We encourage people to get up, go talk to a neighbor, go grab a coffee, go grab a snack, go walk around. We have walking areas, walking tracks, things like that. So these are, these don't really cost anything. At the end of the day, they're really more of how you lay out and Deliberately plan your day. And we encourage our leaders to encourage our employees to take those breaks.

▶6:04HostNow, with the emergence of AI, how do you see burnout being addressed in the future through the use of technology? And are there specific recommendations that can help HR leaders prepare for that?

▶6:16GuestYeah, the natural response to this question, Dave, is that we hope that AI is going to that a person may be engaged with or reduce the sort of mental fatigue of researching complex ideas or the time that it takes to think about a problem in a different way via the usage of AI. The other side of that is there tends to be a lot of anxiety around AI. I'm old enough to remember the tech explosion at the turn of the last century, which is strange to say, but I remember very much similar talking points around this many people are going to be out of work and the internet's going to do— we probably experienced 5% of the worst-case scenario, whatever that may have been. I think AI is going to enable people to be less burned out, primarily because it should reduce the anxiety of the daily grind of a task that maybe automation can help. When I think about what HR leaders can do, it's down to really any kind of integrated into an employee's life and work to make them more effective, to make them more engaged, to make them feel like they're more part of a team, something bigger than them, rather than using a tool that's going to eliminate some. We think that it's going to enhance our employees, not only their personal experience, but ultimately our customer's experience because it will be a lot easier for employees to have a complete understanding of a customer via a very, very rapid engagement with AI tools. It's really about education, awareness, how you can leverage these tools, how they're appropriately used when in the workforce. There's a lot of corporations that are pretty concerned about unleashing AI within their corporations for all the data security and infrastructure. So I think where you do is where it doesn't exist. You start with the beginning and education. Here's where we see it going from our corporate perspective. Here's where we see it going from your job perspective and taking the edge off of any of the concerns and fear that we see and read. There's not a week that goes by that I don't think I see an article. We don't see AI as a car that pushes a horse. We see AI as an enablement of a person, making them more effective, giving them the ability to take some of those breaks during the day to reduce that workload down. To where they can have a much more balanced experience in general.

▶8:54HostMatt, how can companies foster a culture that prioritizes mental health to reduce burnout long-term?

▶9:00GuestI think the first thing they have to do is start with building a relationship of trust where you can open the door to communicating and making it safe to talk about mental issues, mental health issues, mental— and it may not be I've had this experience personally in my life with people that I live with. So while I don't believe that I have a mental wellness issue, people that I live with, members of my family do. And being able to talk about that in the workplace reduces the overall stigmas that come along with, at least historically have come along with that. When you think about the benefits, we know that time away from work, PTO, the ability to have your healthcare taken care of and paid for are all in the element of mental wellness and mental health because it reduces the anxiety of going and getting checked, going to have a conversation with a mental wellness specialist or provider. But I think it has to start from an employment perspective with building a relationship that is safe to talk about. The more we can talk about these things in the appropriate context with the right people, the better off and the more place where, you know, most people spend 80% of their lives.

▶10:19HostMatt, you touched on trust. Another important factor, of course, is discovering purpose. How can companies help employees rediscover purpose in their roles? Can you share a case study where Aflac or another organization used purpose-driven initiatives to lower burnout?

▶10:37GuestYeah. The first thing, to answer the first part of the question would be, You have to connect the employee with the vision, with the plan, with the strategy in a simple, clear, understanding way like this. Matt, here is how your work connects to these 3 objectives, divisionally, organizationally, corporately, whatever. So, first of all, you've got to have those conversations. You got to be willing. And if you, as a leader, you're unsure, You should ask them. It is your responsibility to make a person's purpose work very clear. It should not be opaque to a person on how their work actually impacts the corporation in any way, but certainly in their daily work. A case study around this, how we go about connecting our employees to whether it's Vision 2025, Vision 2027, long-term planning, the very first thing we do is we make the goals and objectives directly connected to work activities that people have clear line of sight and transparency to. So it's very easy for a person here to see we want to do X in sales. I'm in service. How does this service work? Ability of our salespeople to sell a product to a customer and hear our objectives down to the finite level so that people don't walk around going, remind them. So for them and recognizing, hey, look, remember this. So connecting people to success through recognition. We do that often here. In fact, we believe in starting every single touch base meeting with a person with Here, let me give you some accolades. Let me give some people on your team some recognition. So recognition, while it's a broad topic, it really should be primarily in that reconnecting people's work to short— Matt, what

▶12:41Hostparting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶12:44GuestI would say it's really up to leaders to, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, leaders need to use their own creativity in the context of the culture within their division as well as their corporation and lever that to make things less monotonous and more fun. Perfect example, you mentioned as I joined the call, it must be hot down there today. It is. Where I'm gonna get my entire team together, it'll be outside. We'll have an icy pavilion come in and give people snacks, essentially. The purpose of that is at least threefold. Number one, it breaks up the day. Number two, it gives something for people to look forward to. And number three, it gives me a chance to engage. Leaders have got to take that on. They cannot be scared about being creative and just using what I'll call the seasons of life as a way to connect with people. That's really the main thing. And I would say the final statement I would say for the community is putting the employee first has secondary derivative effects. Meaning if you put those employees first and they feel like they matter, a lot of this will dissipate, if not be eliminated. And you can do that in a dozen different cost-free ways. Don't let a week go by without talking to somebody. Don't let people feel isolated. If they feel, be inquisitive, but it's all about communication and relationships.

▶14:04HostAnd that's where it starts. Matt, thanks so much for joining us today on the Built By People Podcast.

▶14:08GuestThank you.