Welcome, everybody to another session and today with us. We have Jessica and Jess from the rise journey and you’re like Michelle, like Look, they’re j&j. They are a powerhouse. And you’re going to love them the way I do. So ladies, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks. Hi. So my first question for you is why the title, the name, the rise journey.

So that’s a very interesting story. Um, we love the word rise, and everything that it kind of brings to mind around rising above, you know, bringing new horizons to the workplace. And one thing that we really wanted to incorporate into our name, and just kind of the foundation of our organization, is the constant reminder that it’s a journey, that you’re never finished growing, you’re never finished learning, there’s always something to be improved, and there’s always a way to work better. So it’s kind of a reminder that it is a journey and not a destination. And the rise path just really didn’t fit.

I would agree, journey sounds a whole lot better, a whole lot better. So let’s talk about one of your let’s talk about why did you get into HR? I really like that, and maybe it kind of fits into the rise journey. Um, what is your journey into HR?

Yeah, so I started, like I mentioned in my intro as a 24 year old in a tech startup, and was the UAE executive assistant to the C fo of a company who said, Can you do anything? And I said, Yeah, I can. And he said, Okay, here’s our HR platform, figure it out. And our, quote, unquote, Director of HR, who was another old white man said, Oh, well, you can do all the hiring, and you can do all the onboarding, and you can do all the training and all that figure it out. And I did. And next thing I know, I’d grown the company from 20 people to 120 people, and an additional 200 people in India, and 40 people, I believe in Australia. And then I got asked to sit at the receptionist desk, because we just needed somebody and I was the best fit. And I said, Well, I think I can take my talents elsewhere. And I quickly moved on to another tech startup. And you know, as most people do a tech startups you add in flow, and we even bob and weave and change and have now had nine plus years of experience and learning and development and HR and recruitment. And ultimately seeing a lot of the poor choices a lot of startup founders make. And that there are trends when it comes to diversity and inclusion or the lack thereof as part of the planning process really early on.

And it’s just unacceptable. You know, it’s 2020. And with everything going on, and they get just even makes it more clear that we need to be doing better and more.

Okay, I love it. Like, I know what I’m doing. And this is not it. Yes, definitely time to go.
So what would you say has been your biggest accomplishment in your career thus far?

Yes, you want to take this one?

Yeah. Um, I would say, um, and I’m answering on on behalf of both of us for the rise journey, I would say our biggest accomplishment is creating something tangible, um, you know, when we first set out to to work in the diversity inclusion, you know, building community building better workplaces, space.
You know, like I said, in my intro, you know, it was it was very hard to figure out how that what that meant for a smaller or a growing scaling organization. So we kind of took all of the knowledge that we had acquired from our experience, from, you know, classes and training, and we boiled it down to an actual program things people can do steps, actual steps you can take, you know, if you are a single founder, or if you are, you know, two co founders or a team of five you can work together and take specific steps to make these things happen early on.

And that was a real challenge. A lot of di as I’m sure everyone is aware, is very academic, there’s a lot of research, there’s a lot of numbers, there’s a lot of pie in the sky and things that you know, would be wonderful if, um, and making that happen at a small scale making that happen with a small group.

Um, it’s Very challenging. And I would say our biggest accomplishment has been really figuring out how to help these these organizations, and getting them on the right path. Sorry.

Yeah, and a huge part of that is, you know, just as background is, is isn’t HR, its operations, its business development, it’s, you know, organizational culture. And so coming from my background mixing with that, and Jesse and I disagree all the time, we have come from opposite ends of the spectrum on 90% of things when it comes to a tactical when it comes to approaching a strategy. When it comes to our values, we are 100% aligned when it comes to action oriented, what we believe that we need to move forward, we align. And no matter where we are on that spectrum, when we start, we always come to the middle. And I think anytime you talk to any founders, like it’s hard, this is a relationship, you know, it’s different than my partnership with my boyfriend, this is different than my family relationships. But this takes just as much work. And you know, there’s ebbs and flows and ups and downs. But ultimately, just an I want to create an organization that we want to see in other organizations, we want to be diverse, we want to be inclusive, we want to promote the right kind of work organizational workplace. And that’s really hard. And so kind of wrapping all of that up together, you know, is, is kind of incredible.

And you think about it, and when you think about any relationship, you know, coming from opposite ends of the spectrum and going together, coming together and then saying any hard feelings are left and we move forward because that’s what it takes.

And and I love that you have both different experiences from organizations, because those different perspectives bring about what’s the best solution. And it’s not just one way because I come from an engineering background, and then construction, then a woman of color, so many different intersectionalities plus experiences. So it definitely does make your organization stronger, because you both have different experiences just in the workplace. And it helps us cover a number of bases. There’ll be times where I’m like, I have no idea what’s going on. And guess is like, Oh, I do like I know exactly what’s happening. And I’m going to do a, b and c. And I’m like, take that away. Hey, Jess, I’ll talk to you tomorrow, like, so that really is a huge help. Because there’s so many things like I’m really good at what I do. But there are a lot of things I don’t know, and just as incredibly good at what she does. And I know there’s a lot of things she doesn’t know. And in belted worth. And so really having those different backgrounds and experiences, from both professional and personal life has really driven us forward together in a way that I think if we had both come from the same background, we just we wouldn’t have made this much progress. I agree. I absolutely agree. Now, we’ve both talked about culture, and the work that is truly required. You know, even in small organizations, we’re sitting in the midst of COVID-19.

Organizations, let’s start with the easy part.

Organizations that have book culture where their employees feel they belong, how do they maintain that communication, over communication, repetitive communication, documenting the communication, and ensuring that the communication is heard, listening when it’s not heard, and just actually just wrote a piece on communication and psychological safety in the workplace? And, you know, going to like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, like, what are the basic things that a human needs? And then what are the basic things that an employee needs, and just work your way up and back down and up and down? because things change, things evolve. There is no perfect workplace because things change too quickly. And, you know, I also work a nine to five, and I’m really fortunate in my organization, that the our leaders work really hard for that belonging piece, but it’s not easy, and even the best of leaders need to continually work on it.
Destiny, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think continuing, you know, to continue to develop a strong culture when, you know, in the midst of, I like to refer to this as just kind of a forced experiment for a lot of people trying something new.

I think there’s a lot we’re gonna learn from it, and there’s a lot of mistakes we’re gonna make. So on the same note of communicating, I think it’s so important for managers to be communicating with their teams, for colleagues to be communicating with one another.

And for managers to be communicating with individuals, I mean, looking at every single possible cross section, so your senior leadership, posting a town hall or having a you know, an AMA, like, whatever that looks like for your organization that kind of fits with what you were doing, you know, free time of prices, will really help you know, with the consistency.

As Jeff said, over communicate you. You can’t, you can’t go wrong with community.

Hitting right now, it might be like, well, I just talked to them about this yesterday, just just do it, just talk to them just reach out. Um, I would also say that I think, um, I think the consistency is, is helpful across platforms. So you know, if you have a town hall meeting, if you send out a, you know, some kind of company wide memo or email, following up in whatever, you know, chat platform you use, or whatever your weekly call is, or your maybe a daily kind of stand up call, I think reiterating, and making sure that people feel heard. And also, lastly, if you mess up, if you’re still learning in this experimental time, just own up immediately and ask for feedback on how you can do better next time.

And then if you ask if and when you ask for feedback, which should be frequently, Jess and I are both a big advocate on doing engagement surveys, in addition to post surveys, because those are two different things listed. Make sure you’re seeing that information, make sure you’re reading it, you’re ingesting it, you’re brainstorming it, and then doing taking action and then communicating on that action. And that last piece is often what gets missed. And people are like, Well, nobody listened to me or didn’t do anything. And it’s like, well, we did, but we didn’t communicate what we did and why we did it, and why your feedback is so much more important than next time, because we’re going to continue this cycle. I think something that Jess alluded to, and hers is also structure is make sure you create a structure and adhere to it, that consistency is big.

Yeah, and every culture has a different sense of what belonging means. And so ask them, what does it mean to belong here? and say, Okay, let’s, you know, do unique Korea of belonging, mission statement or a vision statement? Do you need to add some sense of belonging into your values, you know, figuring out where you can incorporate it in and why it’s important and how it manifests is key.
definitely have to agree.

Now, let’s talk about some organizations who were not as inclusive, they were, let’s just say they’re not, we won’t say they are in the midst of changing, let’s just say they’re not, what are some things they need to maybe one or two things they need to be really getting good at? Right now in the midst of COVID-19.

That’s tough without knowing an individual organization. I think, again, going back to everybody’s different, and everything is different.
The foundation of everything Jeff and I do comes down to purpose, mission and values. And I would say if you’re going to tackle any problem, you go straight to the source. And so one is getting that feedback, finding out what’s going on to the employees. And Jessica, I’ve been hired on a couple of occasions where the employer says they don’t the employees don’t trust us as leaders, but we’re hoping that they’ll trust an independent party. And it usually happens, you know, when we work on those kinds of things. Because we do instill a different communication style and consistency and structure.

But I think going back to that purpose, and mission and values and redefining it, if needed, reiterating it, and then building out as needed. And then again, communication, consistency, framework structure, rinse, repeat, you know, try again, iterate, move forward.

Just Any thoughts? I know.

Um, I would say for someone who may, you know, for an organization that maybe isn’t, you know, really, on top of things in this area, um, you know, maybe a baby step would be just, you know, that, that that really the close conversation so the one on one, the just picking up the phone and calling making sure that everyone is set up where they are remotely, or if they’re working some kind of, you know, I know a lot of people are still working on site, you know, checking in with everyone on an individual level to make sure that they feel safe physically, that they that their needs are being met, you know, that they’re, you know, making rent and there might not be anything that as a, you know, business owner that you can do to address some of those concerns.

Um, but that is a way to make people feel like they belong, make them feel heard. And again, even if you can address the issues, at least, that you’re listening as a big first step.

Yeah, ask for help. Say, I don’t know what’s going on I need help. And that’s like, it’s, you know, same thing with anything with it, whether it’s a a or, you know, fostering too many animals or whatever it is like saying, I need help. I need a partner in this Who can I partner with who can be my accountability buddy and help me move forward and take the baby steps? Because that’s what it takes. It’s, you know, what’s the thing you don’t you don’t look at the staircase, look at each step or something like that, or don’t think about the stick the full staircase, something along, I’m not good with that kind of stuff. One step at a time. Don’t worry about how many steps it is just focus on the next step right in front of you.

Now with COVID-19 many of us are fortunate to work remotely, What are some myths around working remotely?

Yeah, we hear that all the time. flexible work is a huge factor in creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. And so that’s one of our number one things that we love to help companies work on is developing those remote capabilities. And we hear time and time again, people aren’t going to work, you know, they won’t be productive, if they work from home, they won’t be as innovative, we won’t have our same team Connect, you know, how do we work on our culture, all of these, you know, it’s hard to set up, I mean, you know, just even some really basic infrastructure things, you know, that people worry about.

And when you show up to an office every day, it’s very easy to get hung up on these myths, to just dig in and put off for another day, you know, making, doing what you need to do talking about the stairs, you know, taking those those baby steps toward making that a reality. And back to this forced experiment, I think that leaders, managers, and you know, employees are going to realize that it was actually not that hard to set up. And actually, they get a lot done. And wow, they have a lot of flexibility to take care of children and family members, and all the things that life throws at you every day, especially during a crisis. And I think that people will realize, Oh, this is actually a great plan, it was actually really easy to implement.

And I think we’re also going to see a lot of the diverse, more diverse candidates coming through the pipeline. If you’re not dependent, you know, I mean, if you really want to go fully distributed, if you’re not dependent on geographical location, you can really bring in diverse talent, you can work more with women coming back from maternity leave, parents handling numerous children or caregivers, you you create, you reduce the accessibility issues for people that might not have the same mobility. It’s a really incredible time that we’re living in. And I think that we can take a lot of learnings away from this experiment.

I also think there’s something from both, you just had a ton of great points on the hiring and talent front. When you think about, I live in New York, traditionally, and COVID. I’m in New Hampshire right now. And my rent is astronomical, I have to pay all sorts of things, I have to deal with high grocery bills, I have to deal with this, you know, the subway is great, usually, but I don’t really want a car. But you think of transportation, you think of housing, you think of all of these obstacles that that, you know, we have 150 people in my office in my nine to five office and you know, the cost of rent, how many hundreds of thousand dollars a year for your organization paying in rent, what are you paying to that co working space? You know, thinking instead of, Okay, well, if I can cover my employees internet bill, and I can buy them the same exact computer, or I can you know, if I’m going to spend $250, on their desk at work, I might as well do that in their home office, you know, how can you truly enable people in their space. And culture does not have to do with physical proximity. You can build pieces of culture around it. But it doesn’t start with physical proximity. And I think organizations are really quick to forget that.

And a big reason companies don’t hire remote is because they don’t hire Well, to begin with. It has nothing to do with hiring remote remotely. Well, it’s hiring well, and doing the proper channels and doing your interview prep and doing your scorecards and, you know, thinking about bias and doing bias training and all these things that make remote work, not work. It has nothing to do with remote work at all. Yes, yeah. Hiring, it can be difficult for a lot of organizations, like if they don’t have a process that works other than to 70% of employees who ever URLs.
Okay, so I have another question for you.

How has covid 19 impacted employers not just remote work, but in other aspects?

There is a lot of fear.

And fear manifests differently for different people. And it’s scary, what’s going on is personally scary. It’s scary for your family. It’s scary, not knowing, you know, what’s going on in the future is ambiguous. And, and I think for employers, there have been a lot of immediate reactions, which resulted in a lot of furloughs and a lot of layoffs. I also think there were a lot of deliberate reactions that resulted in a lot of furloughs and layoffs. And companies, some companies did that better than others. But I think it comes back to when your leaders don’t feel safe, psychologically or otherwise. When the people who are traditionally in control aren’t or don’t or can’t, and it can mean it’s a little it’s a it’s a lot easier.

Frankly, you know, I don’t you know, yet lie about that and
baby steps seem bigger, all of a sudden,
people are much tighter on spending all of a sudden, you know, I always say that HR is the first thing to happen. But the first thing to go when it comes to spending and anything around org culture, and it’s really easy to slash and dash, and but you need to be deliberate. And I think a lot of employers right now are struggling to find a footing to be deliberate.

That’s just, yeah, no, I would, I would just elaborate a bit more and to say that, you know, just the general disruption is really challenging. And you’re, you know, as a leader, you’re also dealing with the crisis personally. So you might have financial health impacts, in addition to the company having, you know, financial impacts to your team having impact, you know, it’s just a multi layered, so not only are you you know, it’s hard for a lot of people to manage a team period under the best of circumstances. So then you add this, and kind of to Justin’s point, with the baby steps just seem harder right now. Everything is harder. And, you know, we talked about some of the myths around remote work well, frankly, this isn’t your typical remote work situation, there’s people that shouldn’t be, you know, under certain circumstances, working remotely, and they are forced to, there’s people that don’t have the same focus and ability to focus right now, given Livingston situations, health situations, financial situations, nothing about this as normal. And I think there’s got to be,
you know, as employers are worried and disrupted, you know, they’re also wondering, you know, I need more from everyone at a time when it’s hard to even do the bare minimum right now. So having that flexibility and understanding where everyone is coming from where the managers, you know, supporting them to support employees,
and back to, you know, full circle back to communication, you know, making sure that
everyone’s on the same page, as best as they can be, is really going to help kind of lead out of this crisis.
Absolutely. Communication and flexibility.
Where do you see DDI five years after COVID, 90.

Um, I think that a lot of the conversation happening now around the cases and fatality rates, I think are drawing much overdue and long ignored a spotlight on inequality in this country, and I think that that’s going to help propel all of these conversations forward.

Kind of talking about, you know, myths around remote work, I think we’re gonna realize that distributed teams are really productive, and very manageable and cost effective. And I think that we might see, kind of, you know, the floodgates opening when it comes to hiring people, you know, living in areas that wouldn’t predominantly have access to a Google headquarters or a, you know, large company might realize all of a sudden, they’re able to apply and get get some amazing opportunities. I think we’re going to see the tide kind of turning on that mean, we’ve seen remote work becoming more popular, you know, every year, you know, year over year, I think this is just going to accelerate that.

1,000% for everything I just said, and especially, I’m glad you brought up the inequalities. COVID is forcing us to tackle a lot of issues across the board, around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. It’s forcing us to rethink healthcare, it’s forcing us to rethink mental health care. I read a statistic the other day, that meant the mental health health care, crop crisis, lot phone line, the calls were up like 940% from the previous month. And, and it gets for forcing us as individuals as well as leaders to recognize my coworker has two kids at home. And now they’re expected to be a parent, and a caretaker, and feeder, and teacher, and all of these things. And I think it’s forcing some empathy that we don’t want to look at, there’s been a lot of things that aren’t pretty, knowing that you have biases or having to look inside and recognizing you have biases or, you know, oh, well they’re too busy to do this. And really, they’re just being a parent or caretaker or whatever it is. So it’s forcing us to really have a deep long look in the mirror. And literally because you can’t leave the house unless you’re covering all the mirrors, you know.

And so you hope those continue and I do think that they will I also think that COVID is is allowing
microcosms, and micro or micro cultures to evolve, whether it’s your neighborhood in Brooklyn, like I see mine on Facebook every day, or towns to really develop and leaders to pop up with leaders traditionally haven’t been. And I really hope that we can encourage micro leaders to macro leaders to keep doing so I hope we can keep the voices raised strong.

You know, I think, you know, where I work, for a nine to five, we have a number of employee resource groups, er, G’s, and they are fiercer than ever and more supportive than ever and are sharing resources in a bigger better way than I’ve ever seen them. And they are thriving, and the people in them are ensuring that the people are succeeding. And it is, you know, incredible believe an outlet or watch this to see this grow. And I, I can’t imagine, you know, it might get a little bit calmer, but I can’t imagine that strength lessening once you’ve gone through something like this. So I hope that that continues, I hope we can, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats, I think I got that one almost right. And I think that in some ways COVID is going to progress us this forest experiment is going to progress us in a lot of ways. And I just we need to be sure that we stay on it, to do it right? To continue looking inward, even when it’s tough. And so as long as we can retain some of these skills that we’re learning during this difficult time about ourselves and our peers.

I hope that di isn’t a conversation in five years, that’s my dream is that we’re just like, This shit is just normal. I work next to somebody who’s different than me and they talk different and they think different and they speak a different language and they have different educational background and different socio economic background. And that we can just, you know, clash and come out more united at the end. I hope DNI isn’t an issue then I mean, then maybe out of a job but you know,
we’ll come by we’ll come to that when the time comes exactly work ourselves out of the DI so how can people connect with you?

Jess, I’ll let you tackle that one.

Sure. Um, so you can connect with us through our website. The rise journey comm you can find us
at Jessica at the rise journey.com and just je s at the rise journey.com You can find us on social at the rise journey.

And LinkedIn, we’re all over the place you can find us basically anywhere.
Lady we have to have the most distinctive last names around so it’s it’s hard not to find us frankly.

You like my first name, maybe popular but my last name is not. I love it. I love it. Ladies, thank you so much for joining me. This has been a great time. I always love talking to the two of you. doing great work with smaller organizations for the Ei keep keep up the great work, more to come definitely with COVID-19 during and post everybody. We will see you next time.

Thank you