Useful links

• Follow Lorna on LinkedIn
• Grokker
• ITIC Global conference 2022

Transcript

LB (Clip) 

I took early retirement and I failed because I had a burning desire to figure out how to find balance and, sort of, holistic well being in my own life. And through that, I founded a company called Grokker 10 years ago.

LN

Hi and welcome to the Fit for Duty podcast, brought to you by Aetna International. My name is Lorien Norden and to help provide organisations with the guidance on how they can redefine their approach to culture, I'm speaking with Lorna Borenstein, founder and CEO of Grokker, the on-demand health engagement solution for individuals and corporates.

As the war for talent rumbles on, organisations are now facing quiet quitting, disengaged, younger workforces and the rise of quiet firing. And when you layer in the international component, be it globally mobile personnel, overseas offices, or work from anywhere teams, it seems that organisations must rethink the management of far-flung teams and the propagation of healthy, people-first values and cultures.

LB (Clip) 

It's really an application of work to rule, I'm only going to do what you're paying me to do and not one thing more. If you're going to treat me like nothing more than a cog in your corporate wheel, I'm going to behave like a cog and that's all you're going to get out of me. If we can instead, as managers, if we can act with greater humanity and show that we really do care about the whole person, they're going to feel like their place of employment gives them more than just a paycheck.

LN

So, let's get to it!

So hi, Lorna, welcome to the Fit for Duty podcast. It's such a pleasure to have you here. Now I'd like to start by asking you to tell me a little bit about yourself, your background and experience and really what brought you to where you are today.

LB

Well, it's lovely to be with you to Lorien. So, I'm Lorna Borenstein. I am the founder and CEO of Grokker. I've had an unusual journey. I grew up in Montreal, Canada but was educated in the UK, as well as in Canada, and then ended up living in the US through a winding, crazy, hard rushing career in early tech at companies that no one had ever heard of when they were tiny, like eBay, and then worked at Yahoo and I ran a public company. And then I retired because I was so exhausted. And I have three children. And I like to joke that by, you know, some miracle with the same husband, who I'm still with after almost 30 years. And then I took early retirement and I failed at early retirement, because I had a burning desire to figure out how to find balance and, sort of, holistic wellbeing in my own life. And through that, I founded a company called Grokker 10 years ago, which is my passion. And what I do is now help employees globally to try to find balance in their own lives, which is so difficult and so challenging, but so needed today.

LN

Oh, it is, it's no mean feat. And so, understanding your role as founder and things like that, obviously, your background is in getting that off the ground operationally sound and delivering for your customers. But really, you know, what does your role today mean to you? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

LB

Normally, it's my dog who's just begging to be let out! But what really what gets me going, so every Wednesday morning, we have a company meeting at 9.30am and at the end of it, our Head of Customer Support reads out quotes, comments from our members, which are employees literally from all over the world because we have employees from our clients in 135 countries. And the comments are just... they're so overwhelmingly positive and heartfelt. And you know, we've just put together a grouping of 1,500 comments from employees talking about things like how, you know, we've helped them overcome diabetes and get off their insulin medication and help them with depression and help them figure out, you, one woman whose husband is a veteran and how, you know, this has helped him and them to grow closer. And there's just so much that people need - physical, emotional, social, financial wellbeing. And so, you know, making a difference in people's lives, doing well and doing good, it gets me up and I just can't wait to go there every day. Although, frankly, we're only in the office together Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays now post COVID - work from home Monday and Friday. But that just kept me going. Because, you know, being able to help people and make a difference. I just love it.

LN

Well, that yeah, no, absolutely, I can understand why that just motivates you every day. And and just speaking about that sort of working-from-anywhere world, working from home, wherever you choose to be based today as an employee, and thinking about the broader current employment climate. I wanted to ask you, you know, in terms of health and well-being and motivation, how productivity goes hand in hand with how we're feeling emotionally and physically? How do organisations really put together strategies that help to keep those work from anywhere employees motivated, fit, healthy and productive today, in your experience?

LB

Oh, my gosh, it is just across the board different. I think the first thing that we see if you look at the best practices, it all starts with listening. The first thing is really, you know, how do companies listen in order to be able to create engaging cultures that really take into account the diversity and the dispersed nature of their workforces? And so, what we see are companies who, number one, need to really state their commitment to their employees. So yes, we tell you, we care and then how do we back it up?  And so, everything from pulse surveys and things like what you're doing here with the podcast, to make sure that our expat populations know that you matter, right? We care, we know you're there, we understand that you've got very particular needs. And so there's the listening and then the acting behind it, in order for it to be authentic and to build trust. And I think that's the second thing, you need to listen and then you need to actually follow up on those actions in order for there to be trust between yourselves and your employees. And the third thing is to be able to have the right tools that you put in their hands. And that literally could mean things in their hands like it works on their mobile devices, because so few of our workers, particularly frontline workers, you know, we don't sit there behind screens all day long. They're out and about and even if you are on a screen, you don't want another email. So making sure that it's coming in the format that they need, which is going to be more text or SMS, you know, notifications, things like that, as opposed to expecting people to read. No one likes to read any more, which is why audiobooks are so popular and video is so popular. So you know, listening, being authentic with the follo-ups, stating your commitment and then making sure that people have the tools and the digital tools that they're going to use when and how they want.

LN

Absolutely. And I think in terms of advice for organisations who are operating in both a domestic and an international context, you know, as far as globally mobile employees are concerned, you mentioned there about making sure that you're communicating with employees in a way that makes sense to them that fits in conveniently with their day-to-day world. Do you have any guidance and advice for an organisation that is, as I mentioned, operating in both a domestic and an international context? And then if you wanted to break it down for domestic only or international only. You know, feel free to to dive into that detail as well.

LB

Well, we have quite a bit of experience working with international companies. And I think one of the best examples of companies who get it right. When we, for example, quite a few years ago now when we were launching GE globally, they really cared frankly more about their international employees than just about their domestic because the domestic they always get things first, and they feel that they are, sort of, number one. And so it was really important that the perspective of the launch with Grokker that the international leader, the country managers and the HR benefits, people that were in the international offices felt that they were first class citizens. And so, one of the best practices was to make sure that before things like a new benefit or a new programme are launched, that the country managers and the in-country, if there are Ambassador programmes, right? I'm not, you know, whatever the equivalent would be, that those folks were not just informed, but actually were consulted beforehand, and that we understood what might work best, the nuances of what might work best for their populations. And so I think just the courtesy of taking into account what would or wouldn't work.

One of the things we learned, for example, was with a different client we were launching internationally, that particularly in their South Korean population, that there was a particularly high amount of stress because of certain deadlines that were looming at that part of the year. And so we knew in that locality that we needed to be very much stress reduction first and to downplay physical fitness. And this was important because this was a programme that was launching in January, when typically, it's about New year, new you, it's more physical fitness minded. But for them, it wasn't. It needed to be about stress reduction, resiliency, mental health. And so just having that respect to treat these international offices with, you know, the consideration and the empathy that they deserve, makes such a big difference.

So I think when you have an international population, realising it's not one size fits all. Even something as basic, you know, we record our video content globally. We do a lot of it, frankly, out of the UK, where you have such an amazing international conglomeration of experts, not just in the US - different accents, people who have different expertise, things like that when you're choosing vendors the best, I believe the best employers take that into account. People who look like you, people who reflect, you know, your sensibilities, your tastes. So I think that's really important as well to make sure that you're reflecting the population that you're trying to enable, and you're trying to empower.

LN

Yeah, absolutely. And I think in terms of inclusivity and diversity as well, you mentioned, it's not a case of one size fits all for international populations, but even bringing it down to individual employee perspectives. You know, we all have our own unique health histories and health goals, for example, we all have our own pressures, that we're facing, our own social determinants of health. And so, in terms of really looking to create an experiential, immersive environment, for those remote, for those globally mobile employees, what else can organisations be doing to export their company culture in to those people?

LB

So I think one of the underutilised muscles, often with international populations is highlighting what are the winning strategies that are coming from these international countries, and bringing them back to HQ and shining the light on these ideas and where they stemmed from in order to give credit and build connection and build greater respect for what's happening out in the field, if you will. And it builds these bridges. And so what we often also don't do enough of is bring these international, you know, office ideas and the people in order to be able to transfer these ideas to build these connections. But what we see often are these wonderful opportunities for community connection that need to be created on an ongoing basis. So if you have virtual summits on a regular basis around topics of interest, so if there are employee resource groups, and they're only in country, well, that's good. But how much better if you can have employee resource groups that are across borders, and that you can find time zones that will work for people to meet virtually, and then bring them together in person at least once or twice a year. You can't really replace the face-to-face contact, that face-to-face interaction. You don't need to really meet someone in person more than once to feel an amplified degree of closeness with them. And so how do you do more than just Zoom with someone in order to build that first degree of connection and then amplify it by providing opportunities for shared knowledge, shared experiences and adding that social factor in order to be able to strengthen those bonds? I think that's really important, and I don't think enough companies do it.

LN

That it's interesting that you say that actually because, you know, first and foremost in my mind in terms of, as you said, putting together a platform for engaging and sharing culture and building culture across satellite offices and things like that, you do tend to, I certainly tend to think of it as a centralised model pushing out to the satellites, to the globally mobile, to those remote workforces. But actually, you're talking about reverse engineering. So providing a safe platform for people to bring those ideas in and to sift through and to find out what we can learn from each other, and how different pockets of culture can influence each other and give each other a collaborative leg up in terms of how that wellbeing and how those health strategies and how those productivity and growth mindset strategies can really start to impact the population. But as you pointed out at the end there, you don't think an awful lot of organisations are doing that. And why do you think that is?

LB

I think that there is such an emphasis on productivity, that we have perhaps confused, productivity as being to the exclusion sometimes of humanity, and of the personal, so that it's, you know, when you're taking a moment to interact on a human level, if it's not just about a project, that that is counterproductive. And actually, that is the opposite of what has been proven to be true. As a matter of fact, there's quite a bit of research that actually proves that if managers show a sincere interest in millennials, for example, as people, it delivers real business results, including, you know, an 8x improvement in agility and a 7x increase in innovation. That's according to some Integrated Benefits Institute research. But you don't think about that. Companies on the 'best places to work' list have consistently outperformed the S&P 500 by a ratio of two to one. But sometimes, we think, well, no, if I'm not just meeting with you, and talking about this deadline and how you're going to meet it, that that's not going to help us to achieve our corporate objectives. So that's why I think it's not given the time that I would argue it deserves. I think it's a mistake, that's confused. And the second reason, Lorien, why I think that's the case is that managers need to give their employees permission to not just, you know, socialise with one another, but to take care of themselves. And I think you have to, I call it often parenting loudly. But you have to lead by example. You have to show that it's okay to go for a walk, or to take a break with colleagues, you know, our engineers after lunch every single day, in different groups, they go for a 20-minute walk together. And I think that's wonderful. We encourage it, because it helps them bond, they get some fresh air, they're stretching their legs. I mean, this is a good thing, not a bad thing. And we don't think it's a conflict with them getting their work done, we actually think it enhances it. So I think there's this combination of we think it conflicts and you need to give the teams the managers need to give their teams permission to do so.

LN

So it sounds to me, like you're saying that we really have lost touch with what drives an organisation forward, what motivates individuals and what constitutes productivity, and how we, how we build that. And it's interesting, you know, you mentioned humanity earlier, as well, and really looking at people as individuals, and we read so much about it, and the theory is out there. And there are fantastic case studies that illustrate that these proof points are real, that this does work. But across the board, it seems to be that organisations are still struggling to embed models that really work and help propel this forward. And, you know, when we think about the recent fairly recent phenomenon of of quiet quitting, that has really taken social channels and media by storm, you know, I wanted to sort of ask your your perspective on that. And, you know, I suppose first of all, we need to start by looking at the characteristics and drivers of quiet quitting, you know, what does what does it mean to you? What do you take from quiet quitting?

LB

Well, first of all, if you think about what it really means, right, it's really an application of work to rule, in which employees are working solely within the defined work hours, and, you know, work related activities of their job description. I've heard it called, quiet quitting is also referred to as 'acting your wage'. I just love that. Not acting your age, acting your wage - I'm only going to do what you're paying me to do and not one thing more. And I think that is this philosophy of if you're going to treat me like nothing more than a cog in your corporate wheel, I'm going to behave like a cog and that's all you're going to get out of me. And so I think it's exactly you know, what you're talking about, which is, if we can instead, as corporations, as leaders, as managers, if we can act with greater humanity, and show that we really do care about the whole person and act truly as these shepherds of our workforces and to demonstrate that we understand that you as an employee, you want a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, a sense of balance, right, PB squared, which is something that I write about in my book. I mean, this is what we can do in order to arm our workforces with the resiliency and the sense of pride and the desire to go above and beyond, because they're going to feel like their place of employment gives them more than just a paycheck - it gives them this wonderful validation, and a community that they want to be a part of, and they want to protect and defend. And so I think, as we go into what we all know, is going to be a pretty long global economic crisis, it's going to be more important now, frankly, than ever, to give our teams something to be proud of, to hold on to and to feel like they want to fight for. And you may think, oh, well, you know, everyone's gonna be so desperate to hold on to their jobs. Like, well, you're not gonna get a lot of productivity out of them when you need it most because if you can't backfill roles, when people have left, if you can't give them the raises that they need, you actually risk having worse productivity, worse output, if you can't make them feel valued. So I think taking care of the whole person is more important now in difficult times than when things are going great.

LN

I recently attended the ITIC Global conference in Athens, and ITIC is the international travel insurance conference. And it's not just represented by travel insurers and assistance companies, also, you know, a large cohort of private medical insurers there and providers and all sorts. And one thing that came through loud and clear from everybody was the spiralling costs associated with hiring and training new employees, you know, the industry churn, the skill shortage, and also the employee demand for higher remuneration. So, you know, I think, in your experience, as far as health the healthcare industry is concerned, are there specific pieces of guidance that you would give to either health care organisations themselves, those who are immersed in in health care, or those who are looking to focus and really get to the heart of employee wellbeing and health and productivity? Are there pieces of advice that you can wrap around in terms of talent, attraction and retention that you could, you know, bubble up to the surface for me here?

LB

Yeah, well, a few to start with. One is, there's a lot of research around this. But if you have employees that you can encourage to enrol in whatever your wellbeing programmes are, they consistently report higher job satisfaction than your employees who you haven't successfully gotten to enrol in the programmes that you offer. So getting people to, you know, participate in things that are good for them, makes them happier. And I know this is just intuitive and logical. So one of the first things you can do is what do you have and how do you get people to engage with it? I mean, unless it's a bad benefit, and then get rid of it! But I'm saying help help them to engage, and again, that goes with, you need senior leadership to give people permission. Carve time out for it. Make sure that you have a few times of the year, these concerted group efforts to do things together that are good for your team members, you know, good for your colleagues that you can do this all together. I think that's really important to give people permission and to encourage it. That would be one important thing to do and it almost doesn't matter what it is. The second thing, it's really important in order to be able to help people with this is do people feel that you have really made an effort to see them and to hear them?

So one of the good examples I like around this is, do managers have a requirement of having a one-on-one just conversation once a week with their subordinates not about their job, just to check in. How are you doing? How are things going? Do you need help with anything? Maybe once a week is too much, maybe it's once a month, but to check in as as people, right? And is there training for the managers to help them understand how to have these conversations? Most companies don't even have this. Forget about as a requirement. But there's no training on how to speak to people just as human beings, right? There's lots of training on how to get performance out of them, but nothing that takes into account that people have whole lives, and how do you help people with that? And then the third thing is that if you understand what folks need right now, well, can you just maybe share a little bit more, lead by example and share a little bit more about your own authentic self. So if you are feeling stressed right now, because the holidays are upon you, and you're feeling a little overwhelmed, if you could share your own experience, it helps normalise it for others, and lets them share about it with you. And so it's just different ways of showing up as human without any cost involved. And that really helps people to feel like; okay, I can show up as I really am. Which can hopefully prevent the cost of the churn. Because if you show that you can show up as yourself that a colleague can and then others can, and then it becomes a safe environment, which allows people to get help, before something happens that will cause them to leave you.

LN

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I hear you talking about the fact that some of these items that you've mentioned are intuitive, and they should be common sense. but so many organisations really struggle to pull this all together because it is vast and it is complex and it does have to be so personalised. And one of the things I was going to ask you is how you tackle that within Grokker? I mean, obviously, you know, as a leader, something you're very passionate about. But who else is involved in that in that responsibility as far as departmental heads are concerned or teams of people. How do you handle it?

LB

I think one of the keys is that you have to have it work, first top down. And then you also have to have it work bottom up, but it really does begin top down. You know, I always joke that my grandmother had an expression that a fish stinks from the top down. And so you really do need your leaders to be able to make it clear to everyone and lead by example. And so what I have always done is I've been very real, and I will share about what matters to me. I talk about family, I talk about health issues, you know, when my mother was suffering from cancer, she's a cancer survivor now, which is wonderful, and she's great. But I talked about it. And I would tell people, This is what I'm going through, my mother's going through. And so if I'm in a conference room with you and my cell phone rings, I'm actually going to pick it up because it might be the oncologist and I want you to know that I'm dealing with this right now. And so that lets people know like, wow, CEO is dealing with stuff and she's being very open about it. That normalises it for me.

I had a period of time when I had some issues with one of my children suffering from anxiety and depression. And I talked about that openly, which allowed them later on, one of our engineering managers who noticed that one of their engineers was, he thought, perhaps, suffering from depression to suggest to that engineer, "o you think you might want to talk to Lorna about it?" And that engineer said, "yeah, I think I would." And then I ended up being able to speak to that engineer about it, because it created an environment where it was okay not to be okay. And so there's the sort of formal and not formal and then the formal ways are, we actually do training for managers to help them understand, you know, what are the tools that we have at the company?

We actually have, both from our health, you know, our various health plans and telehealth options, and we have our HR leaders who let all the employees know what they have available to them, that managers know to check in and they've got training about well, are people okay? Does anyone need help? In the weekly one on one formats that we use, there's something called the Four 'P's. And one of the 'P' are people. So every week when managers do one-on-one, they're checking in on the people, how are the people doing? I don't think that's a common practice. But that's one thing that we have institutionalised.

LN

Yeah, absolutely. And you spoke earlier as well about you being able to perhaps just meet with somebody once in order to really deepen that connectivity, and that bond and that human empathy and things like that. So that brings me around to a question about the role of the office in today's world of work. So what are your views on that office environment and how you entice people back into an office environment, when they've really grown comfortable and accustomed to working from home or, you know, having that taste of radical flexibility they can effectively work from anywhere.

I have spoken in the past about the lessons that we could perhaps learn from retail and the High Street and in which, you know, there are a number of high streets instances where they really are drying up and to reinvigorate that retail outlets are having to become very much experiential, and are having to offer something that you cannot get online. So I was wondering what the role of the office means to you today, and how you think organisations can really continue to make it a valuable part of the workplace experience?

LB

What we're finding is that, amongst younger employees, they're actually quite eager to get back two or three days a week to an actual office where they get to interact with people, because it is an important formation in their young careers. And they do want the social interaction as part of it.

The population that's the hardest for tend to be millennials with young children. That's the group that doesn't want to come back, because they've realised now that I've gotten used to figuring out my childcare and you know, the routine - that's who it's hard for. And so what we have found is providing some flexibility around drop-off, pickup has made a huge amount of difference, because they do still want to be there in the office, they just don't want to do it on that old nine-to-five or eight to whatever your schedule was, because it's more difficult for their lives than if you provide some greater amount of flexibility. And really, they know that now, if you don't do that, it's likely either because you don't trust them, or because you just can't be bothered to let them have that flexibility. And so I think really what what employees today want, is, look, I get it, I want to build culture. Generally, I want to build culture, I know I need to have these interactions, so you have to have something for them in the office setting that makes it worthwhile. And what we find is that if you really don't have a good culture, that coming to work isn't enjoyable, it's not pleasant. They're not having any of those social interactions. It's just you show up and you work, work, work, you're gonna fail at this. But if coming to work as an experience, you are getting to have some enjoyable interactions that are social on top of that, you know, what you're getting from the culture that your gleaning from, you know, multi-level meetings, and that you're getting from corporate events, if you're getting all of that people will be fine coming back.

And we think the average will settle down probably around an average of three days a week in general. But you have to just be very open and tell people why you want them back. What's the reason? And it better be true, it better be authentic. Because if you just say, "oh, I need you here, because..." that's not going to be very compelling and I do think people will quiet quit on you. But if you say we need you here because we don't believe culture can be built over Zoom. We need there to be more collaboration. We need to make sure that we are communicating effectively and it's not been working that well over Zoom. Then I think they'll listen and we certainly have found that we've not lost people over it. So I think being authentic about it, explaining why and following through on what you're saying and making the experience happen that is worthwhile is the way to go.

LN

Yeah, completely. And and one of the things that I really took away from that was this, the authenticity, we hear a lot, or I've been reading a lot recently about, you know, obviously organisations, greenwashing, we were aware of that terminology, but now moving into sort of purpose washing and inclusivity washing, and you know, everything is getting washed and we're losing that authenticity, because everybody is just jumping on the bandwagon. So, you know, I want to really understand what inclusivity means to you at Grokker and what lessons you could perhaps give to other organisations?

LB

I love that question. Because to me, there is a real difference between diversity and inclusivity. Right? Diversity is a statistic. And it is, it's quantifiable, frankly. Inclusivity is not. Inclusivity is about how people are made to feel based upon your actions and your interactions and so I look at what are you rewarding and punishing in the behaviours at your company? And how are people made to feel as a result of that? So what language is, is okay to use and what happens when someone uses language that would perhaps make someone feel not included? Or not considered? Do other people speak up for those who might have not been included? Or does it just pass? Or is it only senior leadership who was allowed to make a corrective comment?

Those things really matter. Inclusivity is being open to wondering, are we doing enough to make sure that all voices are heard and want to be heard? Inclusivity can be as simple as, in meetings there are introverts and they're extroverts. Introverts rarely will speak up unless invited to. Are we trying to invite those introverts to speak up? If we have a lot of younger employees, younger employees of colour might be less likely to want to speak up. How do we include them more? So I think, really, it's what are the norms and behaviours that you're rewarding and punishing? And who's upholding it and how are you making sure that you're doing it in a way that is self-perpetuating, because I think inclusivity is what will help your culture and that's what happens when management is not in the room.

LN

Yeah, quite. Absolutely. And I think that's a really good place to wrap up today's conversation. I mean, I could keep talking on this subject, but I think just in terms of management, leadership, top down, are there any other closing remarks that you would like to offer in terms of the future of workforce wellbeing, and really where the onus lies, or should lie?

LB

Well, I think the future of well being in the workplace is very bright. I think that we have woken up boards of directors and CEOs and shareholders to the fact that your workforce's wellbeing matters to the company's success. And so that's not going to reverse. And where does it lie? It starts at the top and then it is up to all of our leaders and to our amazing HR and benefits leadership, to ensure that we are bringing management along in a healthy and productive way and that managers have the tools and the training that they need in order to impart it all the way through the organisation. But I am more optimistic than ever and I'm just delighted to have the chance to talk to you today and to make sure that our international colleagues know that you you matter. And we see you and we hear you and will continue to fight the good fight.

LN

Absolutely perfect. And thank you so much for all of your time and input today. As always, I absolutely loved talking to you, Lorna. Thank you so much.

LB

My pleasure.

LN

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