Host Intro (Gene Kim)

Okay, so one of my favorite presentations from last year came from Charles Lafferty, who has now been promoted. He's now VP of Customer Relationship Management at ADP. So ADP was founded in 1949. They offered payroll services, and now serves over 1 million clients in over 140 countries.

So I loved two things from that presentation. One is how his talk was centered around the incredible research that ADP Research has done on employee engagement. The second thing I loved was how Chuck has been using those findings on employee engagement to help his teams build the tools to help other ADP employees do their work easily and well, so they become more engaged, to help them better achieve ADP's goals. And it was such a wonderful talk.

So I'm so delighted that this year he's co-presenting with Dr. Mary Hayes, Research Director of People and Performance from the famous ADP Research Institute. She'll be talking about what they've learned on how leaders can create genuine employee engagement. And interestingly, she is one of three people with doctorates in psychology who's here this week, which shows how much this community values the work in that field. So here, up next, is Chuck and Mary.

Charles Lafferty

I'm still waiting for my paycheck. Thank you.

Welcome, everyone. Let me tell you a story about a team on the brink. They were drowning in performance issues, database contention, constant outages. And soon that frustration started to point inwards. You know, they started to finger-point, trust began to erode, and soon collaboration took a back seat.

But in the midst of all that turmoil, there stood one individual. His name was Uma. Now, Uma was the kind of person who just wasn't a teammate — he was a catalyst for change. You know, he was one of these guys that would always go the extra mile. But the thing about him is that he would also inspire others around him to do the same.

Now, Uma did something simple yet profound. When it came to these performance issues, he introduced a logging system, and he showed his teammates how to do it. So every anomaly, every error was exposed in real time. And with this newfound visibility, he was able to empower his team to act.

Now at first, as you can imagine — when they sent it to prod — the noise was overwhelming. It was daunting. There were so many errors. But as you know, as they corrected issues, the signals got weaker and weaker. So their mean time to detection actually went from hours to seconds, and their mean time to recovery was cut in half. He transformed that group of besieged individuals into a group of problem-solvers. And that was all because of the power, passion, and engagement of just one person.

Now imagine if your workplace and your teams were filled with people like Uma. What would that be like? Imagine an environment where every person is inspired, every idea is valued, and every team is engaged. Does that sound like an outrageous goal? Maybe. But it's entirely possible.

This is what we call employee engagement. We're going to explore practical ways that you can cultivate this level of engagement within your teams.

Now, as Gene mentioned, I did a talk last year at this conference that highlighted my co-presenter, Dr. Mary Hayes's research. And I'm so happy that she was able to join me this year, as she has so much knowledge to share with you, as she spent decades researching this topic. So I'm really excited for Mary to present to you.

Also, seven months ago I was promoted, actually, to Vice President of CRM at ADP. And I can tell you that the talk I did last year and the talk I'm doing now, definitely the principles that I've learned have influenced that progression in my career. And really, it's about cultivating teams, it's about building trust, and it's about continuous improvement. And in my new role, I'm responsible for all the CRM systems globally at ADP and the technical delivery of them.

So let's get excited today as Dr. Mary Hayes and myself are going to dive into the levers of leadership you can use right now to increase your employee engagement.

First, a little bit about ADP. ADP is a Human Capital Management company. We do everything from hiring to retiring. So we do HR services, talent, time management, payroll, HR outsourcing, and benefits. We have over 1.1 million clients worldwide. We pay over 42 million people. And in fiscal year 24, we moved $3.1 trillion in client funds.

Mary, would you like to tell us about the ADP Research Institute?

Dr. Mary Hayes

Of course, Chuck. So who is ADP Research? We are data at work. ADP Research Institute is the global thought leader on market research. We create a monthly National Employment Report, Pay Insights Report, as well as a quarterly workplace report called Today at Work, which blends ADP's extensive data — representing 25 million people — and a monthly sentiment survey of 2,500 working adults in the US.

So let's look. Here are the first six issues. They combined research and stories from the employee data, payroll data, and merge it with the sentiment data. The stories are robust research shared at the practitioner level of engagement.

Today I want to share a little bit about my research. There'll be four slides in succession that talk about work location, team membership, best team membership, and then trust all combined. Where is the sweet spot? It's for the employees who have the best of both worlds.

As you can see, hybrid workers have an edge on engagement at work. Hybrid workers are 1.7 times more likely to be fully engaged than office or on-site workers, and one-point-times more likely to be fully engaged than remote workers. Given the robustness of our dataset, it allows us to dig in and discover what may be happening in the workplace for these workers.

Work can be lonely. It can be better with teammates. So most work happens on teams today — at least it should. In every instance of the work location, engagement is made better by team membership. In the hybrid location, those on a team are 2.8 times more likely to be all in than those who are not on a team. And three times more likely in the office than those who are not on a team.

But we didn't stop there. We wanted to know more about our respondents — was their best, their primary team, the best team they've ever been a part of? Let's see the difference.

There are significant differences when a person can say it's the best. The differences for all three work locations is staggering. For the office, the difference is 10.5 times more likely if I can say it's a best team. Seven times for remote, and seven and a half times more likely to be all in.

So at this point, we know hybrid wins. Being on a team makes a difference. But not just any team — it's the best team. But what about the leader?

Sometimes leaders cannot control the location for their workers, but we can build on building teams, developing best teams, and building trust with our teams. The differentiators are being on the best team that has complete trust in their leaders. Office on-site workers are 4.4 times more likely to be all in when they're on a best team and have complete trust with their leader. Remote is 4.6 times, and hybrid is 3.8.

Leaders need tools to build the trust, and here we are to introduce you to the Levers of Leadership, which can do just that.

These are the eight items. They're contained in a tool called the Engagement Pulse. What is engagement? Engagement is defined as the emotional state of mind that causes people to do their best work sustainably.

In the traditional model of the measurement of engagement, the organization deploys a yearly survey to gauge the engagement of the workforce. HR rolls out that census to all the members of the organization. The data's collected, analyzed. Six months later, it lands on your desk — and you don't even know who was on this team.

About 15 years ago, me and my colleagues decided we needed to change the model, because it was wrong. The only person within an organization that can impact engagement is the team leader — the primary leader. Let me emphasize that again: the only person that can influence engagement is the team leader.

So we flipped the script, making leaders responsible for the people they lead. Here are the eight items that we came up with to put the knowledge in the hands of leaders. Each item can be thought of as a lever that's pushed or pulled to help team members be more engaged. They're divided into two groups — the We's and the Me's. The We's are why we join an organization. The Me's are why we stay. They're grouped into four concepts: Purpose, Excellence, Support, and Future.

And let's look into these levers and dive into them.

The first two items that you see here are mission and expectations. Mission, for us, is why a company does what they're doing — the big why. The little why is the expectations about what employees should be doing at work.

Research reveals that there's a strong connection between being enthusiastic about the mission of the organization and wanting to recommend the company. When employees have clear expectations, they self-report higher levels of productivity.

Chuck, can you explain the playbook for us here?

Charles Lafferty

Sure. And I think you saw a couple of companies come up here and put their mission on the screen. So first, what a company has to do is clearly define their mission and then share it with their folks. Local leaders need to frame that mission around their team's work. So for example, I work on CRM systems at the company. We don't run payrolls, but we sure do interact with thousands of clients every day through the CSRs.

In terms of "knowing what's expected of me at work" — companies need to clearly define the behaviors and the roles of the folks in their organization. So for example, for software engineers, it's like Senior, Lead, Staff, etc. — and give folks an actual career progression guide. Local leaders need to meet one-on-one weekly with their folks. Clearly define expectations, the roles, the objectives, and the priorities for that week.

Mary, when we look at these two items, which one should we look at first?

Dr. Mary Hayes

That is a great question. The best way for me to answer that question is to tell you a little story about my son, Christopher. When he started high school, at the end of the first semester, he came home with his report card. I glanced at the report card. He had four A's — math, science, social studies, and English — and a D.

As a parent, Chuck, which grade do you look at first?

Charles Lafferty

I would look at the D first, Mary.

Dr. Mary Hayes

Well, I would say this is where we do something a little bit different. We look at the A's. What can we learn from the A's?

Christopher and I sat down and discussed what he was doing right with the grades, and we take what we learned about his study habits, decades of learning in those subjects, and translate that to the Spanish.

When we look at survey items, we can do the same approach. Look at where we're succeeding with our teams, and use that to investigate the lower items.

The next two items are — nope, nope, went backwards. I think — wait. Oh, sorry. Yep. These next two items are Excellence, and they're referred to as values and strengths.

We left the word "values" up for interpretation. It was done on purpose to allow each respondent to understand the meaning for themselves. For some, values are tied for work ethic — how an employee feels about supporting each other.

Chuck, let's talk about the playbook for these items.

Charles Lafferty

Yeah, let's talk about excellence for a second here. To know if you're surrounded with people by your values — the first thing that the enterprise needs to do is actually define those values. I've seen this from a couple of companies where they actually have a list of values. Those senior leaders in your company need to then role model those values for the rest of the organization. The local leader needs to take the team's priorities and use those values amongst the teams into the working agreements. How are you going to know if someone shares your values unless you talk about them? So have that conversation with your folks. Say, "what do you value on your teams?" Then put it inside the team's working agreements.

In terms of using your strengths every day at work — an organization needs to allow people to discover what their strengths are. Mary actually taught me a simple way to do this: next time you're working, put a notepad next to your desk. When you discover yourself in a flow state, just write down what you're doing. That's going to be one of your strengths — time is going away and you're loving what you're doing. Take that information, share it with your manager. Now it's the manager's job to align those strengths to the daily work that you do. That's going to create more engagement, that's going to create better outcomes for your teams.

Mary, can you tell us about a time where you learned about using your strengths?

Dr. Mary Hayes

Oh, yes. There are many days that I lose hours with numbers and data doing research. It's definitely my flow state. But there is one area that makes my day go slow and fills me with dread: expense reports.

Yes, it is numbers. But I procrastinate.

At one of our team meetings a few years ago, we were discussing what drains us, and I talked about how much I loathe doing expense reports. One of my teammates said, "that's weird. I love them."

A match was made. I asked her, "would you mind doing that for me?" And she was more than willing.

If we don't talk to our teams about our loves and loathes, we suffer in silence. A simple exercise would be to take a piece of paper, have your team members carry it around. On one side it says "loves." On the other side it says "loathe." As a leader, this can make a difference by helping the team match their strengths together.

These next items are for Support. At the beginning we learned that teams are important and that the best teams play an important role in engagement. As leaders, it's important for us to foster a climate of teamwork, support, and recognition.

Chuck, what can a practitioner do here?

Charles Lafferty

Well, I know when I feel supported, I feel more engaged. So the enterprise needs to set up ways for people to connect either virtually or in person. And the idea here is, create things like business resource groups — BRGs. Find ways that common people with common backgrounds or ideas can get together and celebrate.

Local leaders can create a culture of open and honest sharing of concerns and feedback. Basically, to build trust and feel like you've got someone's back. Just do stuff for other people. It's as simple as that. I believe organizations are just a network of commitments amongst each other, and that's how you kind of build an organization out with trust.

"I know I'll be recognized for excellent work." This one's kind of tough because — some companies can't give a monetary reward every month or every quarter to everybody. So enterprises need to establish a recognition program and even peer recognition, and highlight employee success stories like in town halls. Local leaders need to provide immediate feedback and recognition for performance conversations, to feel like the manager's paying attention to them.

Mary, why is recognition so important?

Dr. Mary Hayes

The key to this item is not the recognition. It's the "I know."

Let's unpack that. Looking around and knowing your leader will give you credit — and your teammates — that they deserve is key, and possibly more important than the recognition itself.

We are at a unique place in history where there's five generations of workers on your team. With this in mind, recognition needs to be tailored or personalized. Asking our teammates if they want public or private recognition is a place to begin. The key with all of these items for these levers is to talk to your teams and hear it from their point of view. It'll go a long way to building trust.

The last two items that we'll cover today will deal with the future. We tag them as confidence and growth.

The first item helps workers feel secured that the company will be around and that they will have a job. The second item is about the individual and where they see a path to grow with the organization.

Chuck, how do you see these working?

Charles Lafferty

Yeah, I mean, as Mary said, you want to know that your company's going to be here tomorrow. So clearly communicate the company's vision and future and market advantage. This is what your senior leaders should be doing throughout the company. The local leaders should be showing how the individual's work aligns to that future vision. That's going to make me want to stay longer at that company.

In terms of feeling challenged to grow — this is the one that I love the most, because I love being challenged myself and I love to challenge the folks around me to be a little bit better. So large organizations can enable learning platforms for the company to use, and a career progression path. So people could be just out of reach of the next goal, and then give them a chance to try and reach it. Local leaders should be fostering growth culture by using growth language. We've always heard these things like, you know, "there's no failures, there's only learnings," "there's no setbacks, there's opportunities." And use those learnings and sharings, and then create achievable goals for people. Goals can be simple — as simple as "read a chapter of a book," "go to a conference," "get a certification."

As a matter of fact, I do have one very quick story here of a time where I needed a team lead. I needed someone to step up. And I knew a person — I knew they would do a great job. But when I offered them the idea, they came back and they told me, "I don't think I can do it. I have self-doubt. I don't think people are going to listen to me. I don't think I'm going to do a good job. I'm not going to make good decisions. I'm going to ruin everything."

But it turns out, when they actually stepped up and did it, they even surprised themselves. Their outcomes were really great, and they were terrific at the role. They were challenged just a little bit to grow. I noticed that when I do this with folks — when I ask someone to step up, they usually do it.

Mary, what are our next steps here?

Dr. Mary Hayes

Of course, Chuck. Let me step back a second and tell you a little story about my grandson, Miles. Ah, isn't he cute?

Recently, my darling grandson Miles is running a temp of 101 — which, given his age, is relatively high. I asked my son and daughter-in-law what they were doing to help to bring it down. My son said, "they just took his temp and are waiting."

As a grandparent, I bit my lip, and I said politely, "it's not enough to measure. You must take some action."

I think about how this is similar to survey items. It's not enough to measure and wait. As leaders, we need to take action. For Miles, the action was to give him some medicine to help. As a leader, think about your medicine as a team.

You just use these eight items for your team. But you can't stop there. It's not enough just to ask. Don't suffer from inaction. Asking the question is not enough. Measuring is not enough.

You can start by setting up four meetings to discuss these items. Cover Purpose, Excellence, Support, and Future. Focus on two questions at a time. Listen to your team and discuss. Find the medicine to treat the fever. If your teammates are not feeling supported, do something to build teamwork. In six months, try the process again.

As a leader, it's not enough to measure. You must be the medicine to get your team to feel better.

Charles Lafferty

There are so many more things that I want to share with you all from the ADP Research Institute. They have data-driven, actionable insights you can use to improve your organization. The first QR code up here is to the ADP Research Institute. The second QR code is Today at Work magazine that Mary talked about a little bit earlier.

Teaser: did you know that there are less software development roles now today than there were in 2018? It's a big, big item to think about. Please go and check this stuff out. It's going to help every leader in the audience. Everyone here is a leader. But to every leader in this audience, your mission is clear. I want you to go out, I want you to engage your teams directly. Discover their passions, discover their strengths — what fuels their drive every single day. Connect those passions to their work. And you know what? There's probably already people in your company that are already energized. Just use their energy and spread their ideas like wildfire throughout your organizations. The potential here for greatness is immense, and you can all go out and unleash it.

With that, I want you to go out and build exceptional teams. Be the best leader you can be. And thank you for your time. Thank you, Mary, too. Thank you, everybody.