Workplace readiness through authenticity

Reflecting on the ingredients for workplace readiness, one executive emphasised the importance of imbuing clarity, transparency, and creating a safe space.

In a recent HR Leader podcast, Beth O’Callahan (pictured), executive vice-president, chief administrative officer, and corporate secretary at NetApp, told HR Leader about the market’s cognisance of the need to evolve leadership approaches, what constitutes good leadership in the current climate, and how her approach has evolved in recent years.

Overcoming the challenges of change

O’Callahan said that organisations that bring their employees along the curve of change “will remain the most resilient”.

She noted that organisations are challenged with providing employees with psychological safety while “taking employees along on that journey” to keep them productive and adaptable to any changes that the company will go through.

“The companies that are the most transparent with their workers, continuing to garner the trust of their employees, will be the most resilient,” O’Callahan said.

Good leaders can “motivate people to be more than they can see for themselves and really bring out the best in their employees to drive better performance for them individually, career growth for them individually, but on a larger scale.”

Global shifts leading to leadership changes

For O’Callahan, following the pandemic, leaders have recognised their role in making sure that there is a wellness component to the employee-employer relationship, “ensuring that we are actually looking out for each other as humans and not just as employees.”

She said that through this time, it allowed leaders to recognise that flexibility and productivity could coexist.

“I think at the heart of that means leading by example, being authentic,” she said.

“Making sure that we are creating an environment where employees feel that it is not just safe and encouraged to use AI and develop their own AI skills helps counter the fear that… a lot of employees may have, about AI taking their jobs or having a negative impact on the workplace.”

O’Callahan said that reassuring employees that AI is meant to improve jobs, not remove them, and seeing their employees as the AI talent workforce of the future “really create trust within their employees, but also create opportunities for employee development and ultimately better outcomes for the company”.

An AI safe space

Leaders who incorporate space for wellness in conversations with their employees, while maintaining a respect for privacy and personal circumstances, will be successful, O’Callahan said.

“Giving people the time and space to express that if they want to and be able to come forward, first of all, adds depth and dimension to the employee-employer relationship and I think creates a more inclusive environment,” she added.

HR managers must be as open and honest as they can about navigating the developments of AI, O’Callahan said. She emphasised that HR departments must also confront AI as an unknown that everyone is going into together.

“We all have a responsibility to make sure that we all feel there’s room to experiment, that we have the opportunity to make mistakes and try out,” she said.

She added that workplaces should create a culture that encourages people to take risks, while implementing policies that allow the ethical and transparent use of AI.

HR has a role in “making sure that the organisation’s culture is strong and driving the right outcomes that the business is looking for… to ultimately support the health of the organisation and support leaders in driving better results with their teams,” she said.