This is a transcript of the HRchat Podcast about employee engagement as it relates to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) that is part of a media partnership between HRchat Podcast and HR Exchange Network.
Welcome to another episode of the HRchat Podcast. I'm your host today, Bill Banham. As employers look to the future, they are creating a workplace where employees feel heard, where they feel that their voice matters, and where they feel a sense of belonging, which is vital for the future success of any business. Employee engagement is an excellent barometer of organizational health. The companies that get employee engagement right can enjoy a competitive advantage that's hard for others to replicate.
With this in mind, the April 25th to 26th, All Access Employee Engagement and Experience 2023 online event produced by IQPC's HR Exchange Network, will focus on such issues as whether employee engagement is on the downturn. If so, where are we all going wrong? It will also cover prioritizing diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) in your employee engagement strategy.
The event will feature a panel called prioritizing DEI in your employee engagement strategy, and speakers include Heather Laychak, Vice President & Chief People Officer of People Operations at The Aerospace Corporation. And today's guest, Dr. Stephanie Murphy, former head of People Insights and Assessments at Dell Technologies and current Adjunct Professor over at the University of Texas at Austin. Stephanie is passionate about people analytics, and what Stephanie appreciates about the numbers she says is how Human Resources leaders can connect them to true human stories. I hope you enjoy this conversation that I had with Stephanie:
Bill Banham: Hey, Stephanie, welcome to the HRchat show today.
Stephanie Murphy: Hi, thanks for having me.
Bill Banham: So beyond my introduction there, why don't you take a minute to introduce yourself? And tell me about your role over at the University of Texas at Austin.
Stephanie Murphy: Yes, for sure. So my name is Stephanie Murphy. I spent most of my career at Dell Technologies leading the people insights and assessments team. I recently left, so I am currently teaching and working on employee engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. I have my master's [degree] and PhD in IO psychology. So the bulk of my work is just around making the workplace better for people.
WATCH: Stephanie Murphy at the Women at Work 2023 Conversation
Bill Banham: Excellent. Thank you very much. So, as you mentioned, you have very recently - as we record this interview toward the end of March - left Dell. In terms of raising the DEI bar over at Dell, as you look back, what are you most proud of from your time there?
Stephanie Murphy: Yeah, so, so amazing. I was at Dell for almost nine years, and so there was a lot of really interesting work I was able to do, from understanding our hybrid work strategy to looking at inclusion after the murder of George Floyd to understanding our culture and our culture code.
I think 'most proud' is a really hard one to answer. But I think our employee engagement survey [would be it because] I was able to get the participation rate increased to almost 90% during my time at Dell. Out of our 130,000 team members, 90% to 96% of our team members responded to our employee engagement survey. We use that as a tool to really hold leaders accountable for different aspects of our culture.
Bill Banham: Thank you very much. You also serve on several boards and committees, including the HR Exchange Network Advisory Board, and we'll be getting into that in just a sec, the IT Survey Group (ITSG) and the Society of IO Psychology. Why get involved with these groups? And how are they helping to push the needle in the world of work?
Stephanie Murphy: Yeah, it's a great question. I really feel like these groups are a good way to understand employee engagement and experience across different organizations. So, the IT Survey Group is a group of a bunch of different tech companies like Microsoft, Cisco, HP, and Google. We all get together, and we talk about employee engagement on a regular basis, how we're measuring it, the topics that we're bringing up, what scores we're seeing. So, we put all our data together, and we benchmark and really are able to see how we're viewing employee engagement across so many different organizations.
SIOP (Consortia Committee Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology) is another one, where it's just a good way to benchmark and understand and hear different people, different experiences on different parts of the journey throughout these other companies. [You can] learn about the research on SIOP, and it's good because you have practitioners and academics together, and so you're able to hear the most recent research and everything that's coming up in the academic research. But you are also able to listen to different practitioners and how they're actually implementing some of those things. Being a part of those studies and boards allows me to really network and understand and see the big picture across so many different spaces of employee engagement.
READ: How Dell's People Analytics Leader Uses Data to Tell Stories
Bill Banham: Stephanie, how have companies reprioritized DEI efforts since the murder of George Floyd? In your opinion, which companies are getting it right today?
Stephanie Murphy: That's a really good question. I think, unfortunately, a lot of it has been performative, where a lot of people have asked them, so they put out statements and did a bunch of different programs, things that have since then slowly started to fade away. But there are companies that are still willing to hold leaders and team members accountable for fostering an inclusive environment. A lot of companies put out diversity goals to make sure they were getting representation, which is a good thing. But you can't get that representation without building an inclusive environment. If so, you'll go recruit, you'll bring in diverse talent. But a couple of years after they're there, if the environment is not there to support them, to make them feel valued, to make them feel heard, then you'll lose them.
I think where companies need to make sure they're focusing is not just bringing in the representation and having these really good goals of bringing in a diverse team but also fostering those inclusive environments. One of the things that I did at my time at Dell was we focused on getting our inclusion questions into our employee engagement survey. We've always had them in there, but we put them in as a category.
What we have is nine leaders get scores on all these different categories on in their in their employee engagement surveys. If they get low [scores] on inclusion, they have to have consultation. And if they get low scores two years in a row, then there's a mandatory consultation. The first one's voluntary, second one's mandatory. If they get low scores three years in a row, then it's more about accountability. It is like, 'Maybe you should no longer be a leader.' I think that level of accountability is needed, where it's not just lip service. We're saying, 'Oh, we value inclusion, we're holding leaders accountable for it to the point where if they're not, if they get low scores and lose inclusion scores for years in a row, then there are consequences and there's action.'
Bill Banham: Okay, so is that the approach to incentivize people to complete the surveys, and it's a bit of a carrot and stick that there are bonuses for completing the surveys? If you don't complete the surveys, then there are penalties involved in your experience? Is that the best way to ensure that people actually complete the surveys?
Stephanie Murphy: So this is not about completing the surveys. This is like once the leader gets their report, so say team members go, they complete the surveys, the leaders get a report that says here's how your team's scored you on all these different things. And here's how you scored on your leadership, on your culture, on the overall experience, and then also on inclusion. Then, leaders are held accountable to have conversations with their teams about those scores. So, a leader sits down and says, 'Okay, overall, here's what you all said about how I'm doing as a leader, let's talk about it. Where can I improve? What can I do better? Overall, here's how you're feeling about inclusion.' If those scores are low, then HR will reach out and say, 'Hey, you know, looks like you had a hard time with your inclusion scores this year. Let's talk about how we can help.'
Then, the next year, it's a mandatory, 'Hey, you got low scores, let's talk about how we can help your team because it is not feeling like you're fostering an inclusive environment.' Then, that third year, it's accountability. It's more so, 'Hey, looks like for three years in a row your team has said that you don't foster an inclusive environment. Let's talk about how you shouldn't be a leader anymore, or what are some actions we can take to actually drive change?' Every leader gets these reports. Thousands of leaders will get reports from their teams about what their employee engagement scores were. And that's how we drive accountability for leaders to foster inclusion.
Bill Banham: So, what about on the employee side? Then how does one incentivize employees to complete surveys?
Stephanie Murphy: Yeah, so that's a hard one. When I was at Dell, it was really just about making it a part of the culture. I always laugh because there was this one time I was at a bar in Austin. And there were people sitting next to me, and they were talking about Tell Dell. That's the name of our employee engagement survey, and so it's really just to the point where everyone knows about it. If you ask anyone who works at Dell about Tell Dell, they'll know what it is. And so we really ingrained it into the culture, into the process. People expect it, they wait for it, they wait for the opportunity to share their voice. And then we take actions and team members see the actions taken from Tell Dell.
And that's a huge part of it, too. If people feel like they're sharing their voice, and things are actually changing and shifting based on what they're saying, then they're more likely to want to share it again.
Bill Banham: Got it. Thank you. Hey, Stephanie what are some typical challenges that HR leaders face when it comes to getting leadership buy-in to prioritize the efforts in their employee engagement strategies?
Stephanie Murphy: Yeah, I think it's tying the engagement to the things that matter. Some of the things that we did at Dell was tying employee engagement scores to revenue. We looked at sales attainment and showed that teams with higher engagement have higher revenue. We looked at inclusion and showed that teams with more inclusive environments are more likely to have better customer satisfaction. I think a big piece of it is, as we looked at leadership teams with high leadership scores, they are more likely to to have high engagement to have high revenue and sales attainment as well. And so I think a big piece of it, if you struggle to to get buy-in is making sure that you're showing the importance of engagement and how it does matter to customers to revenue and to sell the payment of all these outcomes that matter to leaders.
Luckily, at Dell, it wasn't a struggle for me. My CHRO was also an IO psychologist and Michael Dell is very much into data-driven decision-making, so it was something that was always a part of the culture. It wasn't hard for employee engagement to matter to the voices of our team members. It was always something that was top of mind. But for those that I feel like struggle, I think it's about tying those engagement scores to outcomes to other data. It might be key to those leaders and show them the impact in that way.
Bill Banham: Okay, thank you. So you'll be on the IQPC’s HR Exchange Network panel at the Employee Engagement and Experience 2023 online event about prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion in your employee engagement strategy. Tell me more about the event, the panel, some of the hope for learning outcomes.
Stephanie Murphy: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It's really a discussion, which I love the most about a lot of the what I do with HR Exchange Network - the dialogue! We all get up there and we talk and we feed off each other. We really just discuss what's going on in our companies and organizations and how you're viewing DEIB [diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging] and how we're able to measure it and how we're using employee engagement as a tool.
So, I think it'll be a good opportunity to just learn about different companies doing it in different ways, and actions that can be taken again, back to my earlier point. We've been talking about it for a while. I think it's time to shift from not just talking about things to what are the actions, what are the things we can actually do to move the needle on DEIB. I'm looking forward to being a part of that dialogue.
Bill Banham: Stephanie, we're almost at the end of this particular HRchat conversation. Before we do wrap up though, how can folks connect with you and learn more about you?
Stephanie Murphy: Yeah, for sure. LinkedIn is the best way to reach me. So Stephanie Murphy is my LinkedIn name. So that's probably the best way to get in contact.
Bill Banham: Perfect. Well, that just leaves me to say for today, Stephanie, thank you very much for your time. It's been lovely chatting with you. Thanks for being my guest on this episode of the HRchat show. Awesome. Thanks. I appreciate the time. And listeners as always, until next time, happy working.
Bill Banham is the Host of the HRchat Podcast and the Editor of the HR Gazette. You can reach him on LinkedIn, and you can listen to his other podcasts.
Don't miss your chance to hear Stephanie Murphy's conversation at the All Access: Employee Engagement and Experience event. It's free to join.
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