How Walmart is helping its associates achieve healthier habits (with guests: Arianna Huffington and Donna Morris)
Digital HR Leaders Podcast hosted by David Green Bonus Episode: Arianna Huffington and Donna Morris

How Walmart is helping its associates achieve healthier habits (with guests: Arianna Huffington and Donna Morris)

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David Green ????

Co-Author of Excellence in People Analytics | People Analytics leader | Director, Insight222 & myHRfuture.com | Conference speaker | Host, Digital HR Leaders Podcast

发布日期: 2021年3月30日
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The Chief People Officer has become the most important executive next to the CEO because the wellbeing of employees is paramount for the functioning of the business

The pandemic has thrust the human resources function centre stage. The pivotal role of the Chief People Officer in this crisis has been likened to that played by the Chief Financial Officer during the Global Financial Crisis. HR has thrived during this difficult time in organisations where the function is well led, has strong senior stakeholder equity, has prioritised employee wellbeing and has robust capability in people analytics.

If anything, this has intensified the lens on Chief People Officers even further. Can they and the functions they lead evolve at the pace necessary to deliver on these raised expectations from leaders and the workforce?

The people experience, which is what CHROs are in charge of, is going to be the key driver of business performance

I can’t think of two better people to debate this topic than my guests on this special bonus episode of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast:

  • Arianna Huffington is the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, the founder of The Huffington Post, and the author of 15 books, including, most recently, Thrive and The Sleep Revolution. In 2016, Arianna launched Thrive Global, a leading behaviour change tech company with the mission of changing the way we work and live by ending the collective delusion that burnout is the price we must pay for success.
  • Donna Morris is the executive vice president and chief people officer for Walmart Inc. A member of the executive committee, Donna is responsible for attracting, retaining and developing talent for one of the world’s largest private employers. Donna joined Walmart just before the start of the pandemic from Adobe, where she served as chief human resources officer and executive vice president of employee experience.
We have more data, more insights, more ability to actually leverage technology, like never before, but let's use technology to really enable humans to do their human work and technology to do work that is repeatable.

You can listen by clicking on the image below or by visiting the podcast website here.  

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 In our conversation Arianna, Donna and I discuss:

  • The impact of the pandemic on the future of work and how it has intensified the lens on the importance of wellbeing ("The silver lining of this terrible year of grief and so many losses for millions of people, is that we are having this once in a generation opportunity to rethink work and to rethink the way we live so that we avoid the stress and burnout epidemic and the mental health crisis, that frankly pre-date the pandemic").
  • How the role of the Chief People Officer has changed since the beginning of the pandemic ("If I was to describe the role of the Chief People Officer in the last year, it has been architect for the organisational design, the wellbeing of your people and then the functioning of your business to continue to serve your customers and/or your constituents").
  • What the impact of these increased expectations have had on Chief People Officers themselves ("If you are in the people function, you need to be authentic, you need to be accessible and frankly, you need to be the champion for the wellbeing of your people").
  • The lessons in workforce agility Walmart has learnt from hiring over 500,000 associates so far in the crisis ("It has meant standing up 24 hour hiring...so that we could actually continue to serve our customers and our communities"), and how they will carry these learnings forward ("We have really started a movement here at Walmart in terms of all of our associates taking time for their own personal wellbeing and that catalyst might not have happened if we didn't have this crisis").
  • How to adopt the mindset to find opportunity in ambiguity why it’s important that leaders set the tone ("We have an enormous amount of new science that shows unequivocally that for the human operating system, unlike machines and software, downtime is a feature not a bug.")
  • What HR can do to capture value for the business ("Ultimately, our roles in HR, the people function, are to enable business success through people.")

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested or involved in HR and how it can create value for the organisations and protect the health of its workforce so that’s business leaders, Chief People Officers and anyone in an Organisational Health, Employee Experience, People Analytics or HR Business Partner role.

A competitive advantage as an employer will be do you care about your people enough to have programs that really allow them to integrate work and life, so they can be their best version of themselves. And if you do, you are going to be able to attract, retain and hopefully optimise the performance of your company more effectively to do that


LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

To listen to the Podcast and read the transcript of my discussion with Arianna and Donna, head over to myHRfuture by clicking on this link: How Walmart is helping its associates achieve healthier habits.


WATCH THE VIDEOS

As well as the podcast, a video of the entire episode is available on the myHRfuture YouTube channel - and also included below:


GET INVOLVED

If you enjoyed listening to this week's podcast episode, I'd be grateful if you could take the following steps:

  1. Please subscribe to the Digital HR Leaders podcast and weekly newsletter to make sure you don’t miss an episode.
  2. Please take the time to rate the show on iTunes. We rely on your feedback and support to make the podcast, so this is very helpful!
  3. Who would you like to see me interview in future episodes? Let me know in the comments below.
  4. Lastly, don’t forget to share on social media with your friends and colleagues, your support is always greatly appreciated!


THANK YOU

A huge thank you to Arianna and Donna for sharing their time and vast expertise with listeners. You can follow Arianna on LinkedIn, on Twitter @ariannahuff, check out Arianna's new season of the What I've Learned podcast and find out more about her company Thrive Global. Similarly, you can follow Donna on LinkedIn and on Twitter @DonnaMorrisWMT.

I also recommend checking out the following resources from Arianna:

Likewise, I also recommend delving into the following resources from or featuring Donna:

Thanks to Danny Shteinberg, Ruslan Tovbulatov and the team at Gloat for sponsoring Series 12 of the podcast as well as this special bonus episode, and also Ian Bailie, Manpreet Randhawa, Caroline Styr and the myHRfuture team for creating the Digital HR Leaders podcast and video series.

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CATCH UP ON THE DIGITAL HR LEADERS PODCAST

If you haven't listened to all of the episodes of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, you can catch up now by clicking on the links below.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David is a globally respected author, speaker, conference chair, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work. As Managing Partner and Executive Director at Insight222, he has overall responsibility for the delivery of the Insight222 People Analytics Program, which supports the advancement of people analytics in over 70 global organisations. Prior to co-founding Insight222 and taking up a board advisor role at TrustSphere, David accumulated over 20 years experience in the human resources and people analytics fields, including as Global Director of People Analytics Solutions at IBM. As such, David has extensive experience in helping organisations increase value, impact and focus from the wise and ethical use of people analytics. David also hosts the Digital HR Leaders Podcast and is an instructor for Insight222's myHRfuture Academy. His book, co-authored with Jonathan Ferrar, Excellence in People Analytics: How to use Workforce Data to Create Business Value will be published in the summer of 2021.

SEE ME SPEAK AT THESE EVENTS

I’ll be chairing and/or speaking about how to drive business value and employee experience through people analytics as well as the Nine Dimensions for Excellence in People Analytics model at the following upcoming events:

Kelly Swingler

Educating Coaches, Leaders and People Pros in the Burnout Academy | Global Burnout educator, author and keynote speaker

7 个月

The long lasting effects of 2020 are definitely taken their toll on wellbeing. With so many leaders still working in crisis mode this is impacting them, and their people are communication, leadership and fear continue to spread. I'd love for us all to be able to take a collective breath, realise that we can slow down and that it's safe to do do, and then reassess and re-evaluate what's really important and what the real priorities and objectives are. People cannot continue to try to do all of the things all of the time, we're getting nowhere fast, and we're not far away from a Burnout endemic

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Amy Deperrois

3 年

Michelle Morpeth you would enjoy this episode on wellbeing at work.

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2 次回应
Tanuj Kapilashrami

Chief Strategy & Talent Officer at Standard Chartered | Board member & Non Executive Director | Author of the book 'The Skills-Powered Organization'

3 年

Absolutely fantastic discussion... thanks for sharing David. So many great insights...

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Chaitali Deb

Corporate HR Manager | LinkedIn Recruiter, Leadership Hiring - Global | Talent Management | SHRM APAC & USA | Investment Bank, Ex Morgan Stanley | Sourcing | Employee Retention Policy | CHRO | MHRD

3 年

Awesome insights.

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Liv Macedo (M.S, SHRM-SCP)

People Strategist | Fractional Chief Learning Officer | HR Consulting | Awarded L&D Designer |Succession Planning | Strategic Talent Transformational Partner | People Analytics | Executive Coach | DEIB

3 年

Excellent panel and discussion David! You and your talented team did it again. Leaders make a difference daily when the needs of their most important assets are included as a high criteria in the decision making process. Thank you Donna Morris for the great example that can continue to shift the practices in our industry for good!

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