In this episode of Transform Your Workplace, host Brandon Laws sits down with Chief HR Officer of Aflac, Jeri Hawthorne, for a discussion revolving around Aflac’s most recent Workforces Report. The two discuss the challenges facing today’s intergenerational workforce and best practices for helping your people feel heard and supported amidst this ever-evolving workplace. Interested in ramping up your customer service? According to our guest, it starts with taking care of your people.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Jeri Hawthorne is the Chief Human Resources Officer of Aflac, an American supplemental insurance company. She guides organizations in fostering corporate cultures that empower their talent to propel business success.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, Sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
A CHRO’S PRIORITIES
Aflac, according to Chief HR Officer Jeri Hawthorne, is all about wellness, engagement, and customer support. When it comes to providing a better experience, Jeri stresses the importance of employee well-being and engagement. But with the challenges infiltrating from the outside — namely high inflation — she says, “What keeps me up at night is helping our employees navigate that.” Of course, as CHRO, she wants to make sure that her people are supported amidst economic uncertainties, and this ensures better care for the customers they serve.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Employee Support and Engagement
“It’s about retaining our employees and engaging and making them feel supported and heard. […] As a company, we know that employees who are stressed, who have higher levels of burnout, are more likely to look for other opportunities. They’re more likely to have microaggressions in the work site, more likely to have a toxic work environment, and so we really are focused on not just putting the reports out, but using our own employee population as a bit of a Petri dish, so to speak, to try new and innovative ways to support and engage employees and make them feel well, or give them opportunities to become well and healthy.”
Taking Action
“The one thing I would say is don’t ask if you don’t want to know and if you’re not going to act on it. […] Because if you ask your employees what they want, and then you don’t either follow through or at least explain why — you weren’t maybe able to incorporate something that they requested or some of the key themes that you heard — that will cause frustration among employees as well. That will cause lower productivity because employees want to feel heard. They want to feel cared about. They want to work for an organization that knows that they have a stake in how their employees are feeling.”
The Challenges Facing Us
“One of the things that we found in the survey is […] that employee financial wellness continues to be a challenge. […] I think our survey found that about half or three-quarters of Gen Z wouldn’t be able to cover the cost of an unexpected medical expense over $1,000, right? And that’s a little bit better than it was the prior year, but if you have employees who don’t feel like they can make ends meet, and you are having to make decisions between putting gas in the car or going for some sort of check-up, that’s a challenge for employers. That’s a challenge for HR folks. But it’s also a challenge for the business because if you don’t have well employees, they’re more likely to be absent. Productivity is likely to be lower.”
What People Want
“76% of those that we surveyed actually said they are more concerned about mental health care coverage than they are physical health care coverage, which ties to kind of that emphasis on burnout. So compensation is always important, and I’m certainly not saying that someone’s going to turn down a $200,000-a-year job for a $50,000 because the $50,000 has better benefits, but employees and candidates are absolutely looking at what are the core benefits and the perks that organizations are offering to help them to have better financial planning, to have better access to mental health care coverage, to have better access to fitness and physical wellness.”
Working with Purpose
“Employees — and Gen Z in particular — want to work for companies that they believe have a purpose, and that purpose potentially aligns with what’s important to them. So it’s not just a company that’s good for its shareholders, but it’s a company that is good for the communities in which it operates, and maybe even on a larger scale that has a cause that people can kind of rally around.”
LEARN MORE
Use Aflac’s Workforces Report to inform your organization’s thinking when it comes to benefits, compensation, workplace safety, and more.