There’s no clear playbook for the post-pandemic workplace, but Jacqueline Sharma has some ideas. She describes the importance of transparency in organizational policies and communications, and emphasizes how understanding the ‘why’ behind decisions fosters employee engagement and trust.
Claude interviews Jacqueline Sharma, VP of People at Envoy. Envoy empowers workplaces and properties around the globe to redefine how their workplaces run. They connect people, spaces, and data in one integrated workplace platform, providing a single solution to manage all aspects of your facility.
In this episode, Jacqueline describes the importance of transparency in organizational policies and communications, and emphasizes how understanding the ‘why’ behind decisions fosters employee engagement and trust.
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“We start with why this is important, and be really transparent around expectations. Why we have those expectations, why we have the policies we have, helping people understand how our mission ties to being in the office and working together. Dogfooding our own product and bringing people as part of that journey.”
“The ‘Why’ is really in transparency. When people understand the ‘why’ and they have a fuller picture, that allows them to make decisions based on the full picture. When you're only providing pieces of information, when somebody doesn't have enough context, they may not understand how that impacts the broader business and why they do what they do every day.”
“When our teams are together, we build empathy for one another just so much more quickly. So if somebody comes in and they seem like they've had a tough morning, you can feel that energy. You can ask them how they're doing. And that's just a natural or an organic interaction that you wouldn't have the opportunity over video. Somebody may say, yeah, my baby was sick last night, I was up every few hours. And it's like, how can I help? Do you need to go home? Can I take some work off your plate? That's building community. That's how you build bonds with one another.”
“During the pandemic, not having a playbook led to a lot of mistrust of employees and their leaders because leaders didn't actually know what the future would look like. And so it was sort of like, well, we're going to apply this remote policy right now, and I think that contributed to the demonizing of the return to office policies.”
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00:31 - Quick Hits
04:46 - All about Envoy
06:41 - Jacqueline’s role
08:52 - Creating a positive employee experience
17:18 - Why transparency is important
31:07 - Building a successful hybrid model
39:27 - Where to find Jacqueline
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Find Claude on LinkedIn
More about Office Libations
[00:00:00] Claude: Welcome to Office Libations Unwrapped. I'm your host, Claude Burns, and I'm here with our guest, Jacqueline Sharma, the VP of People at Envoy. Jacqueline, it's great to have you here today. Really looking forward to our conversation.
[00:00:10] Jacqueline: Yeah. Likewise, Claude. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:13] Claude: Yeah, so I think it's important for people to get to know you a little bit. So we like to start out each segment with sort of what we call our quick hits. And so we're just going to rapid fire you some questions and learn a little bit more about you. You ready for it? Awesome. Coffee or tea?
[00:00:29] Jacqueline: Coffee,
[00:00:30] Claude: Okay. Do you have like a favorite brand?
[00:00:32] Jacqueline: Whole Foods has this brand of coffee that I really like. It's not too acidic, so I use that. I think anyone who has children or a child, uh, who doesn't drink coffee is a superhero, so
[00:00:45] Claude: Absolutely. Uh, when I had our daughter, uh, my coffee consumption, probably 10X, uh, the first like six months of her life. What's your go to work snack or drink?
[00:00:56] Jacqueline: I, I, I hate to be cliche. I know it's a tech startup, but it's like, I probably have like five LaCroixs a day, which just may not be healthy.
[00:01:07] Claude: I don't know. Uh, if you ask LaCroix, they'll say it's perfectly fine. Um, do you have a, do you have a favorite flavor, uh, of LaCroix?
[00:01:14] Jacqueline: Of course. Uh, grapefruit.
[00:01:16] Claude: Okay. Pamplemousse. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, one of our top sellers for sure. Um, you're retired and money's no object. Where do you live?
[00:01:26] Jacqueline: Everywhere. Nowhere and everywhere. I would just travel, I think. Just keep going.
[00:01:33] Claude: Okay. Give me, where are you going to, where are you going to spend like more time than, I guess Antarctica is not like on the list of anywhere and everywhere for
[00:01:39] Jacqueline: Sure. Yeah. I feel like every time I go to a new country, I'm like, I should buy a house here when I can, like, you know, so I'm, um, I'm a, I'm a Gemini. I just, I like diversity. I like, you know, options and variety, um, special place. I was actually just in Kauai last week. So Kauai is a beautiful place. I would probably spend a good amount of time there.
[00:02:02] Claude: Okay. Okay. That's great. Um, what's, what's your best last meal that you've had? Not last meal. Cause you know, a little final, but what's your, what's the best meal you've eaten recently?
[00:02:13] Jacqueline: Well, my last meal was a protein bar, so that's not my best last meal. Um. Gosh, you know, I'm pretty simple. I, I love spaghetti. So my son and I had spaghetti the other night and at Original Joe's and it was fantastic. So that's probably comes top of mind.
[00:02:32] Claude: Yeah. You know, sometimes like the company makes the meal even better. So, uh, it's not necessarily about the meal. It's sort of about the whole experience and I'm sure we'll talk a lot more about experience in a
[00:02:42] Jacqueline: Calls it paschetti. So it's like, it's so much more endearing, you know, it's, it makes it that much more fun.
[00:02:48] Claude: what's the last book you've read?
[00:02:50] Jacqueline: The last book I read, uh, was Circe. And I don't know why I'm in this, like, Greek mythology from a female perspective era, and so I've been, I've been reading Medusa, and, um, yeah, so I, Try to unwind every night with tea and a book. And so I, again, I read like Song of Achilles recently and A Thousand Ships. Um, so it's, I, I, I'm not really sure how I got into this, but I'm, here I am.
[00:03:22] Claude: You're, you're down the rabbit hole.
[00:03:26] Jacqueline: Yeah. Um,
[00:03:27] Claude: Favorite historical figure, dead or alive.
[00:03:30] Jacqueline: Most recently I watched this article with Ruby Bridges and just her story is so interesting and how she navigated adversity in her life and being such a young child and not understanding why or how people were responding to her, um, you know, entering the school, the school on the first day, uh, it's just, you know, It was just so powerful to watch her and the fact that she had these parents who were, you know, didn't have access to education, but valued it so much for her and wanted that for her was just such an, it's such a powerful message on, you know, how we shift generations, you know, our generational experiences. And, and so I thought it was, you know, I think she's an incredible person.
[00:04:22] Claude: That's awesome. Well, appreciate you sharing and letting us get to know you a little bit better. And now we're going to switch gears into a little bit more work related things. So why don't we start by telling us what does Envoy do?
[00:04:35] Jacqueline: Yeah, Envoy provides a suite of SaaS services for workplaces. So we say that we make workplaces work better for everybody together to be together. Um, so we have a, our, our most popular tool is our visitor management. Um, software, but most recently we have, um, emergency notifications. We have workplace analytics.
[00:04:58] We have a lot of security features that we offer for those who are in the office. Um, we also have desk tooling. Uh, if you want to implement hot desking in your, in your. office space, we can help do that. So we have a lot of just workplace based software products that help, uh, help employers navigate both the physical experience of their employees and, um, and, and sort of like providing psychological safety to a certain extent.
[00:05:28] Claude: And for workplaces that don't use a solution like yours, like, what, what are they doing? Like, how are, how are, you know, are they just using like pen and paper for visitor log? Nothing?
[00:05:37] Jacqueline: In the dark. No, no. Yeah. No, really. Honestly, when we look at some of these, um, some of these companies that we speak to, they're, they're literally using this like pen and paper. How do we get the information? Somebody's uploading it in, you know, into a spreadsheet and that's what they're using for their audit logs.
[00:05:54] And it's like, Oh my gosh, this is so much manual work. Um, wouldn't it be so much easier if you could just use a software that solves for this?
[00:06:02] Claude: Yeah. I've, I've signed many an Envoy tablet being in the Bay Area. But I think about my time in the military and it was all paper logs and paper books and like just a massive amount of analog sort of technology. So just being able to have it all in one spot, I imagine is incredibly valuable for companies to, to manage their workforces.
[00:06:23] Jacqueline: absolutely.
[00:06:24] Claude: What about you? What, what do you do at Envoy?
[00:06:27] Jacqueline: Yeah, I, uh, what don't I do? I, I help navigate the people world, all, all things related to people from talent to HR to culture. Um, you know, I work, I collaborate with a group of people. Fantastic team to ensure that we are, you know, focused on our employee experience and engagement from, you know, the first time that we interact with someone through the recruiting process all the way and to their journey here at Envoy, and sometimes through the offboarding process, um, when people leave. So I focus on all of those, all of those various parts from. You know, compensation to policy, to, uh, talent metrics, to, you know, retention. So, uh, and engagement, of course.
[00:07:16] Claude: Do you have a favorite kind of area that you're like, if I could spend, you know, maybe not every day, but if I could spend time doing things, what area do you like to focus on the most?
[00:07:25] Jacqueline: Yeah, I think it's, it's employee engagement for sure. It's when we have our engagement surveys, um, that feedback reading it and understanding sort of how people are internalizing some of the policies or communication that has gone out and understanding how we can make that better is, uh, I think that's probably one of the most important and, uh, and fun things that I do.
[00:07:51] Claude: That's awesome. Can you give our listeners a little bit of context? Like, you know, how many offices Envoy have? Are you remote, hybrid, in person? Just a little bit of context around that.
[00:08:02] Jacqueline: Yeah, we have six physical offices, five within the United States, one in the UK. We do have a small workforce in Canada that's remote and a few sprinkled through the United States. But for the most part, we are, uh, hybrid. So we're In the office three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And we have flexible in office days on Monday and Fridays.
[00:08:26] Claude: when you think about that employee experience and like allowing people to thrive and be their most successful, like I typically think of, you know, you kind of have your hiring, you kind of have your onboarding, you have your like continuing education or training, um, sort of, uh, employee development. How do you think about those three different phases and creating employee experience? Or there are other phases.
[00:08:47] Jacqueline: well, so I think, uh, one, it's the first impression, right? So when you go through the talent pipeline, what are your interactions like? And so we are now, um, really focusing in on getting feedback from all of the candidates who come through our pipeline. So we understand where, you know, we can just. Do better and make that experience much more valuable for for those who are involved and then the onboarding piece is Having a very robust onboarding is Essential to bringing new employees into the company to help them understand. What are the different components of the company? How did they How are they cohesive?
[00:09:30] How do they work together? Um, I think just giving that insight to every employee is really, really valuable. It also just captures sort of engagement up front. So we have, you know, our CEO meets with every new employee. Uh, we do an onboarding program and, and so give sort of the, the why we're here. Why is this important to us?
[00:09:49] What is our mission and our values? And, um, you know, and, and what will this look like for them? Um, And then, of course, employee development and performance, so setting performance expectations up front is really important, being transparent about what our expectations are, um, and, Offering employees, um, development opportunities, growth opportunities, exposing them to different areas in the company and, and being highly collaborative, uh, and understanding how they'll work with each different team in their particular role and what their impact is.
[00:10:29] Claude: Very cool. I want to, I want to go back to sort of the beginning of your statement, because you said something that I haven't heard before. You said that you look for feedback during the hiring process. Can you kind of talk like what that looks like? Because most of the time when people talk about, you know, companies and the hiring process, it's like, I don't even get like a letter back, you know, a response. Um, they kind of got ghosted during this process and you're, sounds like you're getting even more information from potential candidates. So can you talk to me about kind of how that, how that looks?
[00:10:58] Jacqueline: Absolutely. We use a tool that goes back and takes essentially like an NPS score from the candidates and asks for additional feedback. So I think there's always, um, there's, there's always the challenge of, do you ask that question before somebody receives feedback? Do you want to do it when it's an ultimate decision, or do you do that after the fact?
[00:11:20] And the tool that we use only allows us to do one or the other, and so we actually do it, if a candidate is rejected, we ask them about their experience. And we want that feedback. It's incredibly valuable because, really, if somebody's being rejected, They likely are feeling, they're feeling rejected, right?
[00:11:42] And so we want to understand, but did they have a good experience in that? Were we communicative? How did we have the conversation? If somebody went through an entire interview process and came on site and put in the work, we want, we want to let them know that we value that. And what could we have done differently?
[00:12:03] And people have been fairly candid with us. Um, You know, sometimes we, we know that people aren't happy that they've been, uh, rejected, which is totally understandable, but it gives us a lot of insight and we do really appreciate receiving that feedback.
[00:12:20] Claude: Yeah, that's so interesting. Cause from like a, you know, a data or a surveying sort of mechanism, you're, you're interviewing sort of your toughest critics, right? Of your hiring process because they didn't make it through. And so you would assume, or at least I would assume that the people who did make it through your interview process and were extended and offered employment probably had a better experience than the people who got rejected.
[00:12:42] So you can really take those, that, that data and look at how do we make this better, um, and it will ultimately make it better for everyone. Right.
[00:12:50] Jacqueline: Yeah, what's most important in this is that the individual leaves understanding the why. So they aren't, there isn't this air of mystery around, you know, why we didn't move to offer and bring them into the company. We want to ensure that we're being really fair and mindful of the time and energy that they gave to us.
[00:13:09] Cool.
[00:13:11] Claude: Interesting. Yeah, that's, that's, like I said, that's the first time I've heard that. I, I like that quite a bit. Um, so once somebody's sort of at, at Envoy, what sort of, you know, things do you do around employee engagement to sort of make that team productive?
[00:13:25] Jacqueline: We start with sort of the why I think that this is important and being really transparent again around sort of expectations. But, but why we have those expectations, why we have the policies we have helping people just understand, and, um, how our mission ties to being in the office and working together and, you know, dogfooding our own product and, um, bringing people as part of that journey. So dogfooding, we expect everyone in the company to dogfood our product because, um, we're solving for people just like us, right? And, and so if it doesn't work for us, it's not going to work for another company.
[00:14:06] Bringing people into the decision making process. So, uh, one of the things we look at is, you know, when we look at perks and benefits, we have to explain to people that everything comes at a cost, right? And there has to be a balance there. So we have the budget at the end of the day. And if this is our budget, we pay a hundred percent medical dental vision and we want to continue to do that.
[00:14:27] But if our employees said that's not valuable to me, I'd rather see that money go towards 401k contribution would say, great, let's reallocate. Like, you know, so, so being open to that and helping people understand how those decisions are being made is pretty impactful, um, for, for our employee base, at least.
[00:14:47] Claude: And how are you looking at kind of the, you know, the, the ROI on those, uh, sort of benefits and perks and compensation? Is this sort of like driven by employee input? Is this driven kind of by finance, which is everyone's favorite friend, um, you know, is it driven by the market?
[00:15:03] Jacqueline: Yeah, it's a, it's a combination of all three, right? We have a budget, that's just our reality. We don't have endless amounts of funding.
[00:15:11] Claude: Be fun though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:13] Jacqueline: Totally. Um, so with that in mind, we say, Hey, if, um, if we expect every year, uh, medical costs will increase by at least 10 ish percent, um, this is what we know that we're going to budget for next year.
[00:15:27] So then we go to our employees and we say, you know, One, we want to show you benchmarking information. So when we look at other companies, this is what other companies are doing. And we find that, you know, it's really companies within our size are not typically offering a 401k match until they're about, you know, 400 ish people.
[00:15:48] And, and they're, you know, they're on their series. C or D. So we know that to be true and, and we want people to know that like we are paying attention to the market trends, um, while doing this exercise. And we'll say with that in mind, help us understand what's most important to you. We absolutely could move to a 4 0 1 kind of match, but that would mean that we have to pull back in other areas.
[00:16:11] And so. Tell us what's important. Are snacks and, and having the convenience of lunch, is that important to you? And I mean, everyone's going to say yes, but, um, so we want, we, we want to be mindful of what's happening in the market financially, where can we give and, uh, what do the employees ultimately want?
[00:16:32] Claude: Totally makes sense. And, you know, does that create some challenges and sort of building, you know, the best employee experience? Cause you know, everybody does like more things, right? Um,
[00:16:44] Jacqueline: Of course. Helping them understand sort of, you know, what's possible within a budget and, and again, answering the sort of why behind that.
[00:16:53] Claude: So I've heard you talk about transparency and sort of how that creates a great employee experience. Can you really explain like why is, you know, telling your team everything that's going on going to create a better experience?
[00:17:03] Jacqueline: Yeah, I think again, um, the, the why is, is really in the transparency and when people understand the why and they have a fuller picture, which allows them to make decisions based on the full picture. When you're only providing pieces of information, when somebody doesn't have that enough context, they may not understand how that impacts the broader business and why what they do every day. If they make a decision, a financial decision, for example, um, what, how does that tie into our, our broader, uh, the broader business, uh, essentially?
[00:17:51] Claude: So I want to switch gears a little bit, um, and sort of zoom out, uh, which I think is good for you. Cause I just saw you were just on a Future Of Work Panel, and everyone really likes talking about the future of work, what it's going to look like with, you know, uh, the pandemic changing a lot of things now with AI sort of, you know, going to take all our jobs, you know, tomorrow. Like there's a lot of sort of, questions around what does work look like in the future. What conversations are you having with other leaders around sort of the office and in the future of work?
[00:18:22] Jacqueline: Well, just to touch on AI very quickly, we, we think that it's incredibly important that our employees learn to incorporate AI in what they do. And it's a way of supplementing and supporting them. It's not a replacement for any human person here and what they, and the work that they do. Right. So, um, we actually, um, give a stipend for AI because we want people to get really creative and use AI in just every day and answer, you know, tough questions.
[00:18:55] And a good example is we have our compensation person use this to build, uh, Excel formulas while she was like pulling in bands while we were doing our market analysis. And it was like, so it wasn't perfect, but it was so cool to see how the tool was responding. Um, to her directives and, and altering it and how that can really just create efficiency for us in the future.
[00:19:22] That's what I'll say about AI. Um, as far as returning to the office, I think the future of work is hybrid for most companies. Um, I don't think, this is just personally, I don't think that The world will continue down a remote path, um, that there are huge benefits to being together in, in the office and that most companies really want that.
[00:19:51] It's just a very sticky sort of thing. It's become sort of demonized, the like, return to office movement is, it's like, anti employee, which is, is not actually the case, right? Like, we love our employees, we want them to be together, we want that creative energy, that synergy that just doesn't happen over, over video chat.
[00:20:15] And so, You know, I think the future looks hybrid where you offer flexibility to your employees. Um, you understand that they have lives and need to find balance outside of work, but we also still want to capture that productivity that they have when they are here together in the office.
[00:20:33] Claude: Yeah, you touched on some of those, you know, the, the disconnect between employees and employers. So there's definitely been some challenges in, in returning to offices for companies who are taking that route or even returning to a hybrid, um, with, you know, more days in office. What are some of the, I think you guys are kind of unique in that you went back to the office pretty early, um, post pandemic, can you kind of talk through some of the challenges maybe that you guys face and how you overcame those?
[00:21:00] Jacqueline: I should preface with, I was not here when we initially rolled out our return to office policy. Um, my understanding was that we probably did not receive enough feedback or understand the pain points of our employees up front. And so it felt very abrupt and, and a little bit shocking for employees. So they were not prepared and it sort of fueled the anti employee sentiment around, uh, returning to the office, you know, it was like, I moved away or I, you know, and now I take, I have a different situation with, with childcare and, or pet care or whatever it is. And so I think we could have done a better job of, of really asking for that, that information upfront and, and then try to like get the feedback, build the. Policy with some of that feedback in mind. Um, so initially the policy rolled out, it was not as successful. The policy was rescinded in its original form and then was rolled out again, which you never want to do.
[00:22:08] Claude: Yeah.
[00:22:10] Jacqueline: Which is a terrible experience, but you know, um, So there were some really hard lessons learned.
[00:22:16] People were pretty up in arms about the initial policy and, you know, so when I came into the company, that's where we were. People were still sort of, you know, didn't feel great and begrudgingly adhering to the policy. And really our end state was we want to incorporate this into performance, but this does not feel like the right time to do that.
[00:22:40] Claude: Right.
[00:22:41] Jacqueline: And so, you know, what we did was we created this, um, an office competition where we had teams come All the teams who met the three day in office adherence every month would get a recharge day the following month. And it was sort of more of a carrot versus stick approach and it was, it's been pretty popular.
[00:23:04] And, you know, now we have just about a hundred percent adherence. So this isn't really something that's challenging for us. It's also part of our performance. We just went through our performance review cycle. Um, And, and people have just accepted that this is, you know, this is our reality. We, we build workplace software.
[00:23:23] We, we need people to be here and, um, building together. And so, uh, I think it's become more successful.
[00:23:31] Some companies, some, uh, employers sort of are worried about losing people when they sort of implement sort of a return to office policy. Is that something that you guys sort of experienced?
[00:23:42] Jacqueline: Sure. Of course. Yeah. You have to make hard decisions to do what's best for, for the, the company, broadly and for performance. We want high performers here and we want people who believe in our mission. And, you know, it's unfortunate to lose employees, but fundamentally, if we don't agree on, on the importance of it, then it, we're not aligned and we probably will not be.
[00:24:13] And so, um, it is an unfortunate reality that employees left and found, you know, You know, remote work that they were looking for. And I think that's right for them. Everybody should do what is right for them, their family, and the decisions that, you know, they need to make on a personal level.
[00:24:31] Claude: You know, as, as VP of people, are you worried that you, you may be shrinking your available talent pool? Like for just this weekend, I had a conversation with a friend of mine, you know, rockstar, you know, top tier, you know, schools, top tier blue chip companies, and she's left her last three jobs, every time they sort of implemented sort of a return to office policy, cause it's not what she wanted.
[00:24:56] Um, 15 year career post grad school, that's just, you know, all star do you worry about not being able to recruit people like that?
[00:25:04] Jacqueline: We don't. I mean, we really are very transparent and I think for the most part, anyone who's interested in our product and helping us build the product understands the, why that's important to us. So I think being, and, and the recruiters are really Adamant about asking the question, like you're okay with being in the office three, we just want to make sure one more time.
[00:25:30] And we do, you know, we do our interviews on site. We want people to see and feel the energy here in the office. So we, I'm not, I'm not worried about that are actually on a, on the engineering side, we've had just such a, a stellar month hiring that it's, I think it's Just goes to show that we aren't going, we aren't struggling with that right now.
[00:25:53] Claude: Yeah, I think, I think, you know, companies, people, like when people are clear about what they want and transparent to use the word that you've used a lot. It attracts the right people to you. It attracts the people that believe in your, your values, that believes in the way that you want to do business. And ultimately, when you get a bunch of people who all believe in the same things, you can move really, really fast.
[00:26:13] And for early companies, moving fast in the same direction is wildly important. Um, much, you know, it's a, it's the, I'm going to say it wrong, but it's like the sum of the parts is greater than the whole or something like that.
[00:26:27] Jacqueline: I think that's right.
[00:26:29] Claude: I knew I was going to mess it up. You get, you get what I'm saying. Um, why is it so important for you, for you to like have your team, team members in person and build community?
[00:26:39] Like, can you give any examples of, of things that you've, you've noticed internally with your teams coming together? All right.
[00:26:45] Jacqueline: Yeah. I think, um, you know, when our teams are together, we build empathy for one another just so much more quickly. Right. So if somebody comes in and they seem like they're just like, They've had a tough morning. Um, it's like, Hey, you can, you can feel that energy. You can ask them how they're doing. And that's just a natural or an organic interaction that you, you, you wouldn't have the opportunity to, to do over, over video. And so by doing that, you know, somebody may say, yeah, my, my baby was sick last night. And I, you know, I was up every few hours and it's like, how can I, how can I help? Do you need to go home? Can I take some work off your plate?
[00:27:28] That's building community. That's how you build bonds with one another. That's, you know, what we like to do. Creating that sense of belonging is incredibly important with our teams here. Um, I'm so happy when I see my team. Somebody came in today and she said, I knew that you're traveling this week and I just wanted to like come and sit next to you. I said, Oh, that's great. I love that.
[00:27:52] Claude: Mm-Hmm.
[00:27:53] Jacqueline: I don't think I'm that entertaining, but I think that's, you know, it's like people then want to be together. Right. And it's, I think it's. It's, it's incredible to watch and, um, yeah, I think our team bonds really well. We do walking coffee one on ones and so we, um, you know, we get, we're kind of like getting each other out into the air and, you know, getting movement and, uh, throughout the day. So again, things that you can't do just over chat.
[00:28:26] Claude: How do you think it helps, uh, or maybe doesn't help like younger employees who may haven't, haven't been in the workforce and don't really know what good looks like, is kind of the way I like to describe it. Um, do you think there's a benefit to younger employees, sort of late career employees? Where's really the benefit?
[00:28:42] Jacqueline: Absolutely. When we hear our sales people, our more, uh, veteran sales people doing pitches in front of our, you know, junior, junior folks who have come into the company, they're always listening. And they're paying attention, like, what works? Why is this person so successful? That's just like, that's ad hoc mentorship, you know, and, and really, again, like, that's just an organic interaction where it's like, oh, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have heard that pitch if I had not been here next to this person during this time. Uh, it's incredibly valuable.
[00:29:21] Claude: Yeah, I'm a big sports fan. So when you like hear teams building things, it's always like you got the veteran that helps show like the rookies how to be a professional athlete. Like what are all the things that you're going to have to deal with to be successful in, you know, a very competitive field. And if you want to have a long career and so as teams will bring in veterans that Don't actually, aren't actually probably good enough to continue to play, just to mentor sort of younger employees.
[00:29:48] Do you have any sort of formal mechanisms, uh, at Envoy for, for mentorship between teams or between employees?
[00:29:55] Jacqueline: Yeah, we're in the process of building this now is the Buddy Buddy Mentorship Program where you work with somebody who's not on your direct team to get a different perspective of the company and again, somebody who's a little bit more senior understands, you know, it. Has been with a company for a longer period of time that can sort of guide that person and answer just like any, any questions and sort of, you know, provide, um, a sense of community outside of their direct team.
[00:30:28] Claude: Okay. What, what advice would you give, to companies that, you know, are, are struggling with kind of getting employees to, to buy into their, their vision of sort of coming back to the office or a more structured hybrid schedule. Any, any lessons learned that you would sort of say, Hey, this is what you kind of need to do to roll this out. You also have 16, 000, you know, plus workplaces that you work with. So I'm sure there's some lessons that have been scattered about. Yeah,
[00:30:56] Jacqueline: What are pain points. How, understanding what the pain points are for your employees and, and accepting that not every employee, this is not going to be for them. And that's just going to be part of your journey. So if an employee says it's important to me that I'm in sweatpants every day in my home, and it's, I can't compete with that.
[00:31:16] And that's okay. I love that for you, right? But that's not our reality. And so just, I think there's, there's a way to be kind, but also honest about, you know, this is, we need people to accept this. Um, and if you don't. Cool, how can I help you get to where you need to go? Um, because it's not here if you don't, if you don't believe in the policy and you don't align to it.
[00:31:43] So, but I think hearing people's pain points up front is really, really important. And one of the things that we heard was our commuter benefits were not robust enough to support employees. So, people coming across a bridge. I mean, I don't know if you, you know, No, but the Golden Gate Bridge toll is now, I think like 50.
[00:32:01] It's like, it's not
[00:32:02] Claude: it feels, it feels that way. Yes.
[00:32:04] Jacqueline: yeah. And so it's like, Oh, well, can we help people pay tolls? You know? And so, yes, the traditional commuter benefit does not allow for that, but why don't we offer commuter stipend? You know, like, why don't we offer something different? So it's just, it's allowed us to get a little bit more creative to help solve for some of these challenges for our employees.
[00:32:26] Claude: And when you think about like, you know, getting all that information and data, are you using any sort of like survey tools to sort of measure like the pulse of your workforce, not just sort of on like kind of a one off rollout, but more like, how are we doing over time? Like did this, did that commuter benefit actually help solve the problem?
[00:32:43] Um, are you using any kind of tools to, to help you with that?
[00:32:46] Jacqueline: Absolutely. We use Lattice. And so Lattice is our main tool. We do a very robust engagement survey twice a year and then we do sort of a pulse every quarter. And, uh, the post just sort of allows us to see, you know, where we are generally, the, the survey tells us like really in depth, like what it, what seems to be working and what doesn't. We share our people roadmap with the company. So we say over the next 6 months, this is what we are going to do. And, um, And we can see how it sort of impacts once we roll these things out, how they impact the employees. I think it's also really important that we drive home to the employees that the people people are also employees, right?
[00:33:37] So the policies that we're building also impact us. And so I, you know, I, I always want to remind people of that because it's like, we're not, we're not a bunch of bots. You know, creating policy that we don't, you know, won't, won't ultimately impact us. We are finding a balance between our business needs and our employee needs.
[00:33:59] Claude: Yeah. And, and it's surprising how often they actually align, right? Um, the, the team ends up being kind of the most important piece of meeting those business needs. So in some ways you have a very strong incentive to make sure that your team's taken care of.
[00:34:13] Jacqueline: That's right. You know, I have my circle of people around me that, you know, maybe like minded and, you know, have their own sort of points of view or insights, but what are you seeing?
[00:34:25] Claude: Yeah, I think you hit on a couple of the big trends is, uh, companies started realizing that they have to be honest with who they are for their employees. And I think companies through the pandemic kind of lost that. Sort of vision or direction because they didn't really know what was happening. I mean, none of us knew what was happening.
[00:34:45] So it's understandable because companies are just run by people. And so people are just making the best decisions they can with the information they have at the time. But that created a lot of, um, you know, uh, uh, Misleading messages, right? Where I said one thing one day based on this information. Then the next day I said something that was different and employees didn't really, I think, know how to react.
[00:35:07] Like, what is, what is the vision of this company? And like, where is our leadership taking us? And it made it really hard for them to make the right decisions for them. And so when a policy went the way that they weren't expecting to go or didn't want it to go, it created this, dissatisfaction or unsatisfaction with their, their employment.
[00:35:26] And I think companies have gotten a lot better at saying like, this is who we are, this is how we operate. And that helps 'em, I think a lot on the hiring side, finding the right people that are going to, you know. Build that company and it also helps with them starting to invest more in their, in their teams.
[00:35:42] So learning and development's been a big sort of trend. People want to invest more in their employees that they know share that shared vision. Um, and so I think those two things together, sort of the transparency about who we are as a company and what we expect and sort of like, now we really need to develop that team that sort of sits, uh, within our vision. Um, so that way we can go forward.
[00:36:05] Jacqueline: Yeah, no, you raise a really good point. I think, um, you know, during the pandemic, not having a playbook led to a lot of mistrust of employees and their leaders because leaders didn't actually know what the future would look like. And so it was sort of like, well, we're going to apply this remote policy right now, and I think that contributed to the like demonizing of the, the return to office, um, policies, right? Because people were like, well, wait a minute, but you, you told me just a moment ago and it was like, yeah, yes. And yes. And what we didn't do was we didn't equip people with, in the future, this will likely look different, you know, of
[00:36:53] Claude: I think a lot of it was, uh, you know, there was some safety concerns for sure, and companies wanted to be very, you know, flexible. They really wanted to take care of their people. And so I think, especially in the 2020, a lot of companies were like, how do we best take care of our people? And I don't think employees realize that that may not have been the best choice for the company long term.
[00:37:14] Jacqueline: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:37:15] Claude: when, when they're like, well, I thought you said this was good for the company and, you know, there's always. Especially in Silicon Valley, right? There's always spin around like how well things are doing, you know, everybody's great, right? And so I think a lot of companies, you know, we're trying to keep morale up around their teams, trying to keep people motivated and, and, you know, happy and working during a really difficult time.
[00:37:36] And sometimes that led them to make statements that they probably going forward a few years may have walked back slightly. And I think as companies sort of realize like, okay, we, we just have to be clear with who we are. We, you know, we can't. We can't, you know, fix the past, but we can say who we are today and what direction we're going.
[00:37:54] And I think that's going to be the, the companies that win are ultimately, they're going to be remote. They're going to be hybrid. They're going to be in office, but they're going to be clear about who they are.
[00:38:03] Jacqueline: Yeah, absolutely. Um, one thing that's really interesting about Envoy, is we created a, um, A workplace product called Protect during the pandemic in anticipation of the end of the pandemic, when people came back into the office, they would need those, you know, the, the sort of like health scorecards.
[00:38:22] And so that people could feel safe coming back into the office. And it was like any day now we built this, people bought it, we were all ready. And then it was like, you know, we're going to come back when school starts. No, we're going to come back during winter after winter break. And then we're going to, you know, and we're like, Oh, So, so people aren't coming back, but, but the team, what was really, really fascinating was a team came together and really like hustled to make this product, be prepared for the end of the pandemic when people would come back into the offices, which we thought would happen very quickly. And it did not,
[00:38:56] Claude: Yep. And I think that that exact state led to a lot of the confusion, uh, that, that leaders sort of suffered because nobody knew what was going to happen.
[00:39:05] Jacqueline: that's right. That's right. Oh boy.
[00:39:08] Claude: Jacqueline, thank you so much for joining us today. It was great to have you. Really enjoyed our conversation and your insight. If people want to connect with you online, what's, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?
[00:39:18] Jacqueline: Yeah. LinkedIn is great. I'm Jacqueline Greenberg Sharma, or, um, you know, people could email me directly at Jacqueline@Envoy.Com.
[00:39:27] Claude: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much. I'm sure we'll be in touch in the future and, uh, have a great rest of your day.
[00:39:34] Jacqueline: Thank you, Claude. Thanks so much. I really appreciate the conversation and have a nice day as well.
[00:39:40] Claude: Cheers.