Closing the Gap Between Peers and People

Andrea Herron
Have you ever wondered how a company is able to offer unlimited time off or be a pet friendly office? Curious how HR leaders manage the well being of remote or essential workforces? If so, you’ve come to the right place. Hi, I’m Andrea Herron, head of people for WebMD health services. And I’d like to welcome you to the HR scoop. On this podcast, I talk with other HR leaders to explore the world of unique employee benefits, and about the challenges of managing unique workforces. Because well being isn’t a one size fits all approach.

On this fun episide of the HR scoop, I talk with Aaron Hurst about how employees defined purpose and fulfillment at work, his inspiration for building a peer coaching organization, the intersection of science and relationships, and what he has in common with hammerin. Hank, so welcome, Aaron. Oh, so much fun to be here. So, among all of the other wonderful things that you’ve done, your bio mentions the purpose economy, and I thought that was so interesting. And, you know, aside from the peer to peer coaching, which I’m sure we’ll get into, you know, I really wanted to kind of kick it off and start there, like, what is a purpose economy? mean, and how did you get involved in it?

Aaron Hurst
Yeah, no, absolutely. So the purpose economy was the name of a book I published about 10 years ago, a little under 10 years ago. And my uncle, who was an economist at Stanford had coined the term information economy back in the 70s. And as I was, in the last days of my time, as the as the founder and president of the Taproot Foundation, I started seeing changes in the overall macro economic sort of things, overall economic trends happening, that reminded me a lot of the trends, he saw that were leading us into the third economic era in history. So going from the agrarian to industrial to information economy. And my hypothesis at the time was, you know, that we’re entering a fourth economic era, a purpose economy, where our quest for wellbeing, our quest for meaning, our quest for mental health, these things would actually start to drive fundamental shifts in the economy, that would actually be the dominant source of innovation. But also it was sort of the driving force of the workplace. And I think we’ve seen that absolutely come to fruition in the workplace in the last two years. And that’s accelerated us even further into a reality where I think we truly are in any purpose economy.

Andrea Herron
Yeah, I was about to say, 10 years ago, did you have a crystal ball? And if so, what’s 10 years

Aaron Hurst
from? Now I see, I was really lucky. Like I had the best job in the world chapter because I got to see the working globally, working with heads of state government and corporate executives, nonprofit leaders, foundation leaders, and then just 1000s of professionals. So it was like a, like a huge focus group of like, what people cared about. And you guys had a really unique vantage point to see what was coming 10 years from now? I don’t know, I’d have to think about that. Well, I’ll get back to you on that one.

Andrea Herron
Okay, well, we’ll count on it. But that is fascinating. And I guess that is a really unique perspective to kind of see all the different inputs from different levels, and, you know, government and all the way down to individuals. I think that really has come to fruition. I mean, people care a lot about the types of work that they do and why and for a long time, it didn’t matter why it mattered that you got a paycheck, and you could feed your family. And although that’s still very important, I definitely think that the why has become increasingly critical, especially as the younger generations come in.

Aaron Hurst
Yep. No, it’s fundamental, like looking at a historical lens, it has been a fundamental shift in the power of people in the workforce versus management leadership. And I think what we’ve seen, which isn’t that tipping point is in the last two years, within the context of I think, especially knowledge workers, employees now have more power than management, the top priority for management’s like retention, which puts employees in a position of actually stopping and thinking, what do I actually want, if I have this power, what I want with it, and I think what we’re seeing is when they’re reflecting on it, you know, what their want is fulfillment, what they want our friends, what they want us to do work that matters, what they want us to grow. And I think what we had before was a management narrative about what work should be now we have a people narrative about what work should be for the first time do the people actually have the power? Yeah,

Andrea Herron
it’s an interesting way to put that and I think you’re right, and it’s one of the reasons HR and the whole, you know, well, being industry has really shifted over the past couple years, especially and even more so before that, because it is more than just a job people expect a lot, you know, from getting involved in social things to you know, we’ve talked about on this podcast, all sorts of things related to child care and elder care and food security and recognition and well being and that’s such a departure from where we were 50 years ago. What’s the

Aaron Hurst
departure? The science is just like there now in a way in which it wasn’t like we The work being done at Yale and Michigan, Penn, just around psychology in the workplace has like helped us like actually understand what people need to be successful in a way that has data backed and scientifically proven that I think is also opening us up to new ways of thinking, of thinking about work, and thinking about what is what is success and what actually drives productivity. So I think there’s an interesting moment where we’re just sort of have so much more scientific understanding of how we operate at work. And one of the things we found that I thought was really interesting, we do a study about every year on called the workforce purpose index, looking at purpose in either the specific region or globally around specific topics.

And one of the things we found a few years ago was that of people who are working who work full time, so people who are working on a full time job, those that are fulfilled in life. So they say, overall, like I am fulfilled in my life, only 1% of them said, I’m not fulfilled at work. And I think that’s such an important point, because it is basically saying is, it’s not an effective model to say, you know, what, like, work can suck, I will get those needs met elsewhere, like that was the narrative and still is the narrative for a lot of people. What we’re finding is statistically, that’s almost impossible.

And that’s because we now understand psychology. And we understand neuroscience, and you can’t just like shut parts of yourself off in different parts of the day, that actually like these things all feed on each other. And it’s so tied to mindset. And it’s so tied to environment, and it’s so tied to whether or not you’re operating in should have hope, or fear overall in your life. So I think it’s just more and more recognition that that old model is BS, and it was something that was sold to basically make it okay to not make work meaningful for people. Because there was this assumption, someone else would take care of that problem for you. And now we’re saying like, that’s actually not going to happen. So if you don’t do it, and aren’t part of it, don’t assume it’s going to happen.

Andrea Herron
Right? So it turns out, we are the same person, no matter shopping at work, or at home, and now the science backs it up. So you know, you found it a few different companies at this point. And you’ve had a lot of experience in these really great insights. So I’m curious kind of at what point in your journey, did you see the need for, you know, the peer coaching services, which led to imperative that kind of what was the initial thought there that you’re like, This could be something?

Aaron Hurst
Yeah, right. Early on, I, I use coaching and my career Early on, I was a manager of 30 people by the age of 23, in Silicon Valley, and had no clue what I was doing. And luckily, the startup invested in coaches, if anybody wanted one, and I got so much out of it. And I remember having this aha moment of like, Why Why don’t we provide this to everybody? But I recognized that economically, that wasn’t viable. Right? So ever since then, I was really thinking about this question of like, how can you take coaching and look for what the processes are under it so that you could actually have individuals do it for each other, so you don’t have to go out and spend two to five to $10,000 on a coach to provide a lot of the support that coaching provides.

So early on, I still have that that moment of like, why isn’t this it’s something that everyone has access to. So I was sort of the first piece the second one coming out of the Taproot Foundation, which was a nonprofit, I started to engage people in pro bono work in marketing, tech, HR, finance, helping nonprofits, what we saw was that, yes, people wanted to do that, because they wanted to do work that matter. But more than anything else, they’re just looking for some kind of outlet to make friends and to like actually build meaningful relationships, and thought that being part of something where they could meet like minded people who cared about the community, who are professionals, would be a great way to connect with people. And I think that’s one of the things that’s really misunderstood about purpose at work is that actually, it’s relationships that are the primary source of fulfillment for people that work, it’s not the work itself, you can do work, it’s not terribly fulfilling.

But if you’ve got great relationships, it generally is going to compensate for that. So I think that was the second piece like how do we scale coaching and make that available with this insight that actually, if we want to make all work fulfilling, the thing we have to fix first, is fundamentally helping people build meaningful relationships. And what we’ve seen is that the majority of people don’t have meaningful relationships at work. They don’t know how to build them. They’re scared to ask other people to interact and like build a relationship. We’ve got so many barriers and in the pandemic, and remote work make that even harder. So I think the this aha moment around the ability to actually use peers and to build relationships through the act of coaching, because coaching is the act of actually being a good friend, which is not giving advice. It’s listening. It’s storytelling, and it’s empathy, right? Like, that’s what you want in a friend. And that’s what coaching at its core is. And the nice thing about is because it’s not a paid coach that you can go hang out and do other things with them, and they won’t send you a bill. So it’s a lot of ways, has a lot of benefits over professional coach.

Andrea Herron
Yeah, well, and also you can mix and match people from different groups, which for all of us who have been trying to handle the remote work, it is impossible to have the same dynamic of cross functional conversations even on the way to the break room or well company, a new employee, that’s something I’ve thought a lot about is, you know, with all the turnover and people moving around, there’s a big percentage of employees who have never met someone they work with. And you were talking about, you know, you can do work that’s mediocre. But if you have a great group of people, it makes all the difference. And I think we could all relate to that, because you could be in the trenches. But if you’re there, and you’re laughing, and you know, having each other’s backs, it turns the whole thing around,

Aaron Hurst
Oh, 100%. And it builds a psychological safety that the research shows is what predicts performance, not the actual skill set of the people. So it’s, it’s such a natural benefit. And you’re absolutely right, what we’ve seen, you know, working with companies around the world is that, yes, there’s a big value here for coaching. And there’s a big value here for relationships. And being able to actually build relationships across silos is one of the areas where we’re seeing people are really getting a lot of value. So whether it’s a geographic, whether it’s gender, whether it’s function, there’s so many different silos to like, actually build those bridges is so powerful.

And one of the use cases we’re seeing a lot is around companies that are acquiring other companies, and really using this as a way to build friendships across sort of existing company and newly acquired company. And we’re seeing more and more companies use the platform as just a basically, core part of their onboarding process to your point, it’s like, how do you ensure someone has a best friend at work within the first three months, like, we basically have been able to create that through this platform by putting them in coaching with each others. And we’re both going through this, let’s support each other through this new experience, which is very different than let me connect you to someone who’s been here a long time to sort of show you the ropes, or whatever the cliche is, to actually have someone who’s going through the same psychological journey as you like, that’s what actually builds like a friendship, which is what gets people to stick.

Andrea Herron
Right? And there’s a huge difference between, like, here’s your, you know, a lot of places do here’s your new buddy at work, who’s gonna go with you go to lunch, and that might be a little awkward, but at least you’re in person, you can go somewhere together. If, if it’s, we’re just going to set you up on a zoom to talk for 30 minutes. That is so awkward. If you don’t have awkward to talk about.

Aaron Hurst
No, you don’t have a role, and you’re not sure how to get out of it. Yeah,

Andrea Herron
yeah. What’s the point? And who has time? You know, I mean, that’s the other thing is, is maybe not as mutually beneficial, as if you’re both getting something out of it, and that shared experience. So I guess, on the flip side, you know, have there been any obstacles to keep people from connecting, I mean, we can all have the best intentions to start programs like this, and maybe never see him through. So I’m curious what kind of feedback you’re getting positive or negative, but just the experience of making something a little bit more, you know, concrete or official to help make those connections, which I think employees so desperately need right now.

Aaron Hurst
Yeah, what we’ve saw in our research is that people don’t know who to connect to, they don’t feel comfortable initiating a relationship, they don’t feel like they have the space for it, they don’t feel like they have the skills for it. So what we had to do is create a solution that would solve for all those things in a single technology platform, so that people are connected to someone that people are immediately put at ease in the way in which it’s set up that we’re helping to basically build the skills as they’re doing it. And I think what we’ve heard from people is that, you know, it’s basically required no training and are able to immediately go in and even within the first conversation have, like, 78% of the time that conversations are rated as very helpful or breakthrough, which, you know, just speaks to me to like the power of just setting people up in this kind of conversation. If it’s guided, and supported by science, like the way ours is, we’re seeing a lot of people doing three to five conversations on a platform, then switching to a new partners so that every quarter roughly, they’re building a new a new friendship across the business, we’re finding people typically are doing about three relationships a year, through the platform, and a lot of them, I would say, the majority of them like 90% intend to stay connected, and call it a meaningful relationship.

And we hear story after story, people who like set up ongoing, you know, monthly or quarterly check ins with each other and support each other. We’ve heard of like, like, truly like deep friendships emerging. And we’ve heard stories about people who, like otherwise would have not talked to each other, like actively would have set up not to talk to each other, actually, like building friendships. So it’s just it’s pretty amazing when you apply behavioral science, to the need to build meaningful relationships at work, where they’re actually helping each other, to align their work with what fulfills them.

Andrea Herron
What I find especially fascinating is, you know, in the HR world or leadership in general, we’re constantly talking about connection and keeping people engaged and building relationships. And the bar seems so high and it’s so daunting, like we have to spend, you know, and do this instead of 1000 programs. And I mean, essentially, what you’re saying is whether you buy a platform or you find some way to do it yourself, three conversations that are meaningful between two people can create a relationship. I mean, that is not that high of a bar.

Aaron Hurst
No, and I think it’s mean you need Be consistent positive and vulnerable conversations for a period of time just to build that build that relationship. And I think that’s where there’s a need to have the skills to know how to actually like have a conversation, because most of us have a default of just giving, wanting to give advice. And I think that’s the key thing that actually like prevents relationships from like getting deeper as of the need to give advice, which is actually generally pulls people apart, not closer together. And I think that’s a big part of what we’re trying to do is help people unlearn advice, giving

Andrea Herron
and active listening skills that’s so hard to teach.

Aaron Hurst
Yeah, no, absolutely. That’s part of it. Yeah.

Andrea Herron
Do you have any examples of, you know, organizations that have changed anything or done anything differently based on you know, the feedback or going through some type of peer to peer experience? I’m curious if it translates other than just the relationships? Like Have there been actual changes?

Aaron Hurst
Yeah, no, we’ve seen We’ve did one study with one of our largest, longest standing customers and saw a 35% decrease in turnover. So just as a result of people doing peer coaching, so that in of itself is a very strong business outcome. And it makes sense, like, people who are fulfilled and have friends at work, they tend to stay right. So we’ve seen that as an outcome, we’ve seen a lot of anecdotal outcomes of like a, we hear all the time, like, we’ll connect an engineer with someone on the sales, and it’ll spark a product idea or a process improvement that technology could use, it never would have been surfaced. Otherwise, because someone’s actually complaining. As a user of the seller, like I spend so much time on this administrative task, like, well, I can build a, you know, an app for that in about two days, like, Do you want one, and they sort of do it on their spare time, and suddenly that person’s you know, using it and sharing it with their whole sales team?

So you see a lot of those, those kinds of pieces. We’ve heard stories about people identifying redundancy, really Oh, like, you’re working on that as a group. Like, there’s like three other groups that are working on the same thing even know that you’re, like all working on the same thing, like, No, I had no idea. So you hear those kinds of stories, you hear stories about the ability to actually build bridges between departments that innovation is flowing in both directions, we hear a lot of D and I positive outcomes of people who feel a sense of belonging, and suddenly have friends at work that don’t look exactly like them, and actually have like a deep like relationship between each other. So those stories are really inspiring to me. But it’s I mean, you take 1000s of people and mash them up in relationships, like so much like amazing things happen, like every possible direction, as you can imagine.

Andrea Herron
Yeah. And even I’m just thinking, something that would be simple is, oh, I have a question. And now I know somebody in a different group, I can ask it to, you know, even all the way up to product innovation, but just simple problem solving and redundancies. I mean, that would be an easy sell really, for any leadership team.

Aaron Hurst
Yeah, that’s one of the the one that’s like, very common, but not addressed is like, if you think about, there’s different communities of practice, often in a company, like an engineering, you might have like a product marketer, and you might have an HR like, these are places where you’re sharing best practices. The one area where you found, like, a real deficit is for managers, people, managers alike, that’s actually a community of people all doing the same job. It’s the hardest job in the company. And there’s no like peer support network to be able to sort of talk through the challenges of being a people manager, but also to help troubleshoot and identify what are the what are the things that are actually holding people back, or to normalize how hard it is.

So people don’t feel like they’re a failure that is recognized. Now this is actually hard, right? Or to be able to talk through something so that you build the courage to actually have the interaction that you need, or to build the coaching skills to actually be able to interact with your team in a much more effective way. So we found that that population of managers is just so underserved, and this is just so perfect for that population, because it is also so emotional. It’s so emotional as a process, being a manager to begin with.

Andrea Herron
Yeah, and the manager to manager connection and development and best practice sharing is a really hard one to get at and to create real camaraderie there. So that’s, that’s interesting. You know, another question I have is around, kind of what do we keep and what do we blow up? So the workplace, I think it’s feeling more complicated, everyone feels overloaded. There’s a lot of burnout. You know, we’ve shifted and adopted and added, how do we know what works and what is just more on top of more? Any thoughts?

Aaron Hurst
Yeah. I think there’s, it’s interesting, like the way I’ve seen it emerge, especially over the last two years as people do a lot of programs because they just start working at home, like people have such different needs that you’ve never thought of before. And you’re like, oh, there’s this population needs this, this person needs that. And there was sort of just creating a buffet for everybody to like, find the thing they want but the thing with buffets are the most the food gets thrown out, right at the end of the day, not eaten. And I think that’s what a lot of HR leaders are seeing right now are these buffets of a lot of rotten, rotten food.

And I think the spirit of that is really important, which is that every employee Need something different. But that doesn’t mean having a new program for every employee. What it means is finding solutions that actually meet the person your employees where they are, and enable them to focus on what they care about, versus having the programs for every single point solution. And I think where pure coaching has really played a key role is that in enabling people to have a partner to talk through and actually hold each other accountable for taking actions, they’re picking what they want, from, you know, the would be buffet and then actually going out and finding the food elsewhere. So you don’t actually have to create the buffet and they’re holding each other accountable to it.

So what I’m seeing is more, shifting from let’s offer everything into, let’s offer the few things that actually empower people to go solve their own problems. And if that’s actually what’s going to make the difference. And I think that’s the hard part of the next couple of years is just, it’s clearing off the buffet and just figuring out like, how to set people up to, you know, find what they need out in the world, because most of what people need is already out there. It’s just creating the right systems for them to have the space to go find it.

Andrea Herron
That makes so much sense. And I think it’s easy to just scoop up every program, every idea, we want everyone to feel included in that. Yeah, we’ll give it a try. And then you end up with 20 things that you’re halfway trying and not really committing to any. So maybe this is a good reminder for us all to kind of review what what are we offering? What is the utilization? And is there a way to streamline to a few things that have options within them versus having all the options of all the programs? Yes,

Aaron Hurst
it’s options, but it really is around empowerment, it’s like creating space for people to reflect to you and figure out what they need. So a lot of times people that presenting problems, not the actual need, right? So you need to have that layer of reflection. So that people are thinking in advance and thinking through like, what do I actually need and accountability actually do something about it, right. So it’s, it’s creating the right kind of environment, that empowers people that gives them clarity, and then hold them accountable to what that thing is, that actually then yields that change. And it makes enables you to save millions of dollars a year, because you’re not having to like, make sure you have a solution, everybody, which is expensive in terms of the cost of the software or training, but also for the team that you have, you’ve got to have people to manage all those relationships and all those systems and the communication to employees becomes overwhelming. It’s like your 30 things to do. Like, you know what, I’m not going to do any of them because you’re confusing the hell out of me, right? If you can create like one or two things that are the portals into that. It makes it such a better employee experience.

Andrea Herron
Yeah, I mean, it’s like, honestly, if you go shopping at any big store that has 25 options of the same item you’re trying to buy, I’m overwhelmed. There’s too many things. And now I’m just either not going to get one or I’m going to pick the first one I see. And maybe it’s not even the best one.

Aaron Hurst
Yeah, and I love those stories about like, back in the day when someone would come over from the Soviet Union or somewhere to the US and go to a grocery store and be like, there’s more than one kind of bread. completely overwhelmed by it. But you know, and I think that’s right, it’s we got to simplify, simplify it and help people find the right thing, but also feel like they’re gonna buy something actually going to use.

Andrea Herron
Yeah, because if you have it and they don’t use it, then it’s not really worth your investment.

Aaron Hurst
Yeah, I mean, I mean, on this topic, which is tangential, but like, I literally just saw about two garbage bags full of food, like eggs at my kitchen, of like things that people hadn’t eaten that have gone to bed because someone had an impulse to like grab it off the shelf. But like, it turns out, you don’t need that mint chutney because you’re not going to make anything that you’re gonna use mint chutney for even though you saw in the movie, and you’re excited about it.

Andrea Herron
Right. And you know, let’s be honest, the same with fresh broccoli, I have high scores every time just by the frozen broccoli.

Aaron Hurst
Brought to you by birdseye.

Andrea Herron
I mean, we mean well.

Aaron Hurst
We do. What’s the impulse, it’s that whole point about also never going shopping hungry, which I don’t know what the parallel here would be in terms of what we offer to people. But

Andrea Herron
I’m sure there’s something I mean, right? It’s connections are great, but there are probably some that are better, you know, especially if you have tension with another group, forcing some of those conversations in a structured helpful way, not as a, you know, come to the floor, and we’re going to have it out kind of way. But to build those bridges you were discussing, you know, that’s a really strategic way that HR leaders can improve their culture and make relationships better, which makes your products better, which makes the work experience better, which makes your turnover better, and so on and so on. Yep, no, absolutely. Absolutely. We did it trash bags to your coach.

Aaron Hurst
Well, especially since sustainability is such an issue. So it’s like yeah, we can we can solve for sustainability through how we even shop and then we can solve for social cohesion and mental health through connection.

Andrea Herron
Like it gonna lift us all up and keep moving. So believe it or not, you know, we have come to the end of our time, but before we let you go, I always ask our guests one final question. And that is if you wouldn’t mind to share something about yourself that most people don’t know. So many

Aaron Hurst
different things. That’s sort of where we’re Where to begin? It’s baseball season. So I’ll share the origins of my name, Aaron. So, Hank, Aaron actually broke the homerun record all time home run record, which was this huge milestone for baseball but also for race in this country the day before I was born. So the newspapers the next day, we’re all about Hank Aaron. So when I was born, that was sort of the the top of mind for my dad and ended up getting named Aaron. So kind of a fun, a fun connection to history and to like that moment in time.

Andrea Herron
That’s really cool. Do you like baseball? Did that come as well?

Aaron Hurst
I am religiously. I’m like a religious baseball addict. So it was, we can’t help but once you’re connected to it that way.

Andrea Herron
seems right. Thank you for sharing. And thank you for joining us on the HR scoop. It was a great conversation and a good reminder for us to all try and, you know, keep those connections going and find new ones where we can. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks so much. And we’ll see y’all next time. Thank you for listening to the HR scoop podcast. Please take a moment to rate and subscribe on Spotify, Apple, Google, or directly at WebMD health services.com/podcasts