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Arianna Huffington is no stranger to wanting to make the world a better place.
Her empathic reputation is renown and world-class. She continually demonstrates what it means to be a leader who puts humanity first no matter the circumstances. Huffington has been busy lately developing two unique partnerships with organizations to further her humanity-first ambition.
First, Huffington's organization, Thrive Global, a behavior change technology company, recently partnered with SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) and launched a mental health and wellness pledge.
Huffington divulged that in concert with Johnny C. Taylor, SHRM CEO, the two of them felt very concerned that employee mental health and wellbeing services could be de-prioritized as a result of worsening economic conditions and a challenging business environment. As a result, both Thrive and SHRM partnered to institute an organizational pledge for those investments to continue. Over 100 organizations have already taken the pledge.
"Because such great advances were made over the last two years," she said, "both culturally and in terms of offerings that companies made, it would be a shame to regress. We are seeing the mental health crisis being exacerbated, and we felt that we needed to double down on supporting employees in terms of their wellbeing and mental health."
Nearly 100 companies have signed the mental health and wellbeing pledge, including the likes of Walmart, AT&T, CVS Health, Levi's and Salesforce.
Huffington believes we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine how we work and live, to redefine productivity, and to recognize that when we prioritize employee mental health and wellbeing, we will improve business metrics.
She said, "It's not like there is a tradeoff between the two. When you make sure that your employees are feeling seen and heard and respected and you help take care of their wellbeing, that employee experience directly impacts customer success.”
Photo by Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for Lincoln Center
The second of Huffington's and Thrive Global's recent partnerships formed with customer experience and call center technology company Genesys. Together they recently launched Thrive Reset for Genesys, an employer-initiated stress intervention solution for frontline workers that is science-backed and designed to focus on the root causes of employee burnout.
Knowing that contact center agents hold one of society's most stressful positions with extremely high attrition rates to match, Thrive and Genesys put their heads together to help those in such roles.
Huffington pointed out in our discussion that it takes 60 to 90 seconds to course-correct one's mind and body from stress to a state of calm, from the sympathetic fight or flight stage of the nervous system to the parasympathetic. To help with that transition—after call center agents have endured those stressful moments—the recently released solution allows the employee to reset.
The tool enables an organization to embed the partnership's wellbeing tools directly in the workflow of the call center agent so they can de-stress, reset and recharge in real-time. An early pilot with a Fortune 10 retailer showed improved employee wellbeing and increased customer satisfaction.
"It's amazing to see the result that the tool has both on the stress of the agents and on the customer experience," remarked Huffington. "Because when you are stressed, how can you possibly be the best version of yourself? How can you possibly be able to deal with an angry customer or solve a problem when you are already in turmoil yourself?"
Arianna's response was potent when I asked what leaders might also be doing to support employees.
"We believe that when leaders take care of themselves, they are much more able to take care of their employees to be empathetic, creative, inspiring. But when they're depleted, running on empty and burnt out, it's much harder to lead from what is best in them. Role modeling is key because we are changing an entire culture that used to believe that burnout is simply the price you pay for success."
Furthermore, Huffington believes that empathy is crucial and indeed the fuel for an organization's business strategy. However, she doesn't think empathy should be viewed as a "warm and fuzzy" quality but rather something that can transform an organization's culture.
Huffington's admission was telling. "If a culture falls apart, everything else soon follows, as I saw clearly when I was on the board of Uber," she divulged. "We need to recognize the importance of empathy in building a sustainable and caring culture, making it a priority. It starts with leaders taking care of themselves so they can tap into their empathy more easily."
Better words perhaps have never been spoken.
Watch the full interview with Arianna Huffington and Dan Pontefract below, or check out the audio podcast version via the Leadership NOW Series.
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Check out my award-winning 4th book, “Lead. Care. Win. How to Become a Leader Who Matters.” Thinkers50 #1 rated thinker, Amy. C. Edmondson of Harvard Business School, calls it “an invaluable roadmap.”
