Edward Jones’ Suzan McDaniel on Creating Social Connections in a Hybrid World

Roula Amire:
Welcome to Better, By Great Place To Work, the global authority on workplace culture. I'm your host, Roula Amire:, content director at Great Place to Work. Suzan McDaniel:, Chief HR Officer at Edward Jones joins me today to talk about how Edward Jones has approached bringing some of their workforce back into the office, and what they've done to make coming into an office more rewarding. I love the personas they developed to help prepare their leaders, manage this transition with lots of care and empathy. She shared some great tips on how to equip managers so they feel confident when communicating decisions with employees, and I think you'll find that helpful the next time you're in a similar position. There are lots of great tips in this one. Happy listening. Suzan, welcome to the podcast.

Suzan McDaniel:
Hi, Roula. It's great to be here.

Roula Amire:
It's great to have you on. You are the Chief Human Resources Officer at Edward Jones.

Suzan McDaniel:
I am.

Roula Amire:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's safe to say that your time at Edward Jones has been quite the ride. And I say that because your first day was March 1st, 2020, right before lockdown. Were you in the office just a week or two before going fully remote?

Suzan McDaniel:
Yes, I was. And first of all, I also want to say thank you to you and Great Places To Work. This is an amazing podcast series for us to learn from each other and to share our experiences. So, grateful to be here today. It has been a wild ride. My family and I moved from Melbourne, Australia, halfway around the world February, 2020, and I started Edward Jones, as you said, March 1st. We were in the office, I think it was, Roula, three weeks, if that. And then everything shut down, including Australia, shut down. So, we got out literally just in time.

Roula Amire:
Oh, my goodness.

Suzan McDaniel:
We would've been locked in, if you will, during the pandemic. So, it's been so interesting coming to an amazing company of Edward Jones, meeting people virtually, building relationships virtually. We did. I didn't know anything different in Edward Jones, have had the privilege of working in virtual environments, previously. But it's been fantastic. My family's all settled now. That was a little bit of a wild ride as well, moving your kids halfway around the world in high school. Don't know if I recommend that to everybody.

Roula Amire:
They're still talking to you?

Suzan McDaniel:
They are still talking to me. And I tell them, if you've survived, you've thrived during the pandemic, meeting friends, you are set for life. That's about as hard as it gets.

Roula Amire:
Absolutely. New country, new school. Yeah. That's amazing. You've learned to expect the unexpected like everyone else. And you've experienced working remotely, working virtually as a new employee and now moving, to some extent, back into the office. So, that's what we want to talk about today. Where we work is still a hot topic. At Edward Jones, you have a mix. Some people are mostly remote, some come into the office a few days a week or every day. Tell us a little bit about that and what you're doing differently now, so when people come in, it is rewarding?

Suzan McDaniel:
You're right. We have a mix within our workforce. We have a little over 54,000 associates all over North America and they serve our 8 million clients, and take care of close to 2 trillion of assets, and help them achieve their financial goals. So, the majority of our workforce is in our communities, in our branch teams, and it's about a little over 40,000 of them, are financial advisors and our client team support members. And they have been, throughout the pandemic and today, face-to-face with our clients. They're leaders, they're pillars in the community and they're serving our clients.

We then have about 9,600 folks who work in our home office, in a home office and we have three. And those folks, we have said to them, our connection and our culture is so important, and you can make connections and you can build culture virtually, but it's so much easier when you are face-to-face. And so we have asked them to come in three days a week, preferably Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and that's where you organize your meetings to be face-to-face in there. We always have hybrid meetings because we have roughly 40% of them working remotely. And so, we do have a bit of that mix. And we do a number of things for both our remote workers and our workers, and our associates who are in the office. Some of the things we do for our associates in the office are really around listening to them about the little things that matter the most.

Roula Amire:
Let's talk about those. Give us some examples.

Suzan McDaniel:
They're big things and they're little things. We heard from our associates, "Hey, it's great that we used to do one-on-ones walking on the phone. Can we have walking trails?" We've got walking trails in some of our campuses. We have outdoor meeting spaces where you can get outside and be able to have meetings. We know that our parents often don't have time to cook dinner and a healthy dinner, and so in our cafe we have healthy meals for folks to take home to their families. We also know that folks want to have fun. So, one of the things we have is a pickleball court and in one of our locations, and cornhole. So that you can just take a break and be able to have a good time with your associates and your teammates.

And then we also have an associate committee that really looks after our associates in our home offices, and they make recommendations and things that are important to do for our associates. They get to hand out tickets. We have an amazing sports teams, if you will, in St. Louis and in our home offices. Arts community and different musical festivals, and concerts. And so they hand out tickets to our associates and their families to be able to attend these great events together. So, we listen a lot, we respond a lot. We invest also in our facilities that we have to make sure that they're collaborative, to make sure that they're new and that they promote that connection with our associates.

Roula Amire:
That's fantastic. And I ask that because our research shows remote employees are more likely to look forward to work than people going to an office at a typical or average company. So, supporting that in-person connection is so important. I love all the examples you shared. One follow-up, you mentioned all meetings are hybrid because you have 40% are not in the home office, in a home office, so that means there's a screen, so they can listen in. One thing I wanted to ask you was about ways to improve meetings and meeting times. I think you've talked to me in the past about, if there's a meeting and people are in the office together, in a conference room together, where everyone can join and then the times of day are important for meetings. I think those get back to your point about the little things. And so if you want to expand on that a little bit.

Suzan McDaniel:
Sure. Yeah. So, I think, we, at Edward Jones, in our home office again are like many companies where we have a mix of people that are remote and working in different communities. We've been able to hire an amazing talent base and access to great diverse talent by having national hiring strategy. And so then that means when we come together, we're going to have face-to-face and we're going to have remote associates. And so when we can, and we are in St. Louis or we're in one of our Mississauga or Tempe, we get folks together in a room and they take the meeting in the room. We've got cameras that look in the room and able to make you feel like you're really a part of it. And we also have associates that are on the Zoom screen. So, we do meeting protocols. We have, raise hands, we give heart emojis, we give thumbs up. We make it as interactive as we possibly can for our associates.

But that's I think just a way of being, for many organizations these days, to be both in-person and remote. Meeting times are important. We're across all four different times zones in North America and so don't start meetings too early if you're on the West Coast making sure you're ending meetings also at a reasonable time, so folks on the East Coast are not staying back too late.
Roula Amire:
And part of building that in-person connection, you mentioned listening to your people, your employees who know what they need. You mentioned trails, things that they want. Also, I think something you've mentioned in the past is, they want, make my life easier if I have to come in. What does that mean and how have you made their lives easier?

Suzan McDaniel:
When they come in?

Roula Amire:
When they come.

Suzan McDaniel:
Yeah. So, one of the things we did, I'm really proud of our associates. We have a very special culture at Edward Jones. It's a spirit of caring. It's an altruistic organization where we are here to serve others. And so, as we have come back into our hybrid activation, we call it, for our home office associates, we have our colleagues greeting each other, standing at the door, being able to greet them. We brought in some of the fan favorites, if you will, this company called Ted Drew's, which has amazing frozen custard and we brought that in. And so, it's those little things that are important. We also use technology, Roula. I think like a lot of organizations, a lot of times folks are really worried about, "Hey, am I going to be able to hear people?" Because there are going to be a lot of conversations happening. So, the tech teams have installed some noise canceling that takes out that kind of level of noise, so folks can really have more in-depth conversations. And so those are some of the things.

We've invested in our leaders. We know that this is really a leader led work that we need to do with hybrid activation. And so we've invested heavily in building our leader skills and capabilities, online platforms such as we call it Ed, it has great content that you can curate for any topic from Harvard, from Udemy, great content that folks can listen to on the go, in podcasts, [inaudible 00:10:21], you name it, at their leisure. So those are some of the things we've done with our leaders, who we know are so important to help make it easier for our associates. We also use data and segment our workforce, and understand different personas in our workforce, and what personas they may have and how they may feel about a certain topic. And then we help prepare our leaders for having great conversations with them on that topic. They practice together, they support each other, they give tips and tricks, in our town halls and our leader town halls. So, in addition to what we do for our associates, we're heavily invested in ensuring our leaders are prepared and able to have great conversations.

Roula Amire:
So, talk to me a little bit more about those personas. Can you share some examples or how and why they're developed, and how they're helping your leaders do better at leading?

Suzan McDaniel:
Yeah. So, let's take hybrid activation as an example. We knew that there would be a wide range of feelings coming back into the workplace. It's deeply personal. Coming out of COVID, seeing the impact that it's had on families, being comfortable working from home, getting time to spend with your families more at home. We know that. And so we leaned into that in a really big way, in a human centered way and approached this with deep care, deep empathy, and deep curiosity. But also conviction and confidence about our decision to have hybrid activation. And so we said, "Okay. We know everyone's not going to be super excited." There's going to be people that are going to be really fearful. Maybe you have a sick child that you fear, coming into the office, you might catch a cold like I have now and I'm on the tail end of one right now. So, you'll hear the raspiness of my voice. But not wanting to spread that to children.

So, we had personas of people that were more fearful about coming into the office. How to have that empathetic conversation with them? How to really understand what's driving that? And then we have flexibility within our framework of three days. Not every week it's going to be three days, and we don't have set work hours. And so how you have an empathetic conversation, to understand, well, help me understand what you're worried about, what's underneath that? How does that land for you? And be able to have one-on-one conversations with the leader and the associate. Some folks were super excited. So, we had personas about people who were like, "I can't wait to come back to work." Other personas were in the middle. I might've sold my car, I don't have a car. I might have moved residences. How do I think about this? So, we really tried to prepare our leaders as best we could, through these personas, through data and through lots of practice that they had with leaders, giving coaching and feedback on how they responded to a certain answer and were able to help bring in a colleague along.

Roula Amire:
Yeah. Let's talk about that. So, leaders are helping, so you develop personas and then help them practice communicating with employees in those persona groups. I don't know if those are talking points or just reenacting conversations. And you did that not theoretically, but you brought leaders together to practice with each other, to share tips of what's working or what's not working. What does that look like and any lessons learned for other listeners who might want to do this with their leadership or landmines to avoid things that may not have worked since you've been through it?

Suzan McDaniel:
Great question. So, we did a number of things as we looked at this and we learned a lot with our leaders. We did have practice sessions, we had coaching sessions, we have leader town halls where leaders get more information to be able to lead through. We have something called Decisions Unpacked, which is where we have conversations, real talk conversations about decisions, and why, and be able to really equip our leaders to be able to engage with our associates in the right way with feeling fully confident in the information that they have. We also ensure that we have influencers who we can use, and it's not by your title or your role, but it's about informal influencers in the firm. And we engage them in these topics such as hybrid activation and why it's good, and what it means. And also have, again, deep one-on-one empathetic conversations, not only with the leader in the lead, but sometimes senior leaders.

I've had dozens of conversations with our associates, who were really worried and concerned that they might be giving up flexibility. And then when we had the conversation, realizing that what they were really worried about was all within control and could be solved within the flexibility that we have today. But we did have some lessons learned through this. And hybrid activation, there are two that really come to mind. We had great change management plans, very well thought through. As I talked about, this is a deeply human topic around our hybrid activation, and we approached it with deep care and empathy, and just human centeredness. So, we had a great communication plan and we had it tiered, where we told a certain group of senior leaders, then our people leaders, and then having them go through that change and process it for themselves, first. We talked about put your oxygen mask on first and then leading through with our associates.

I think best laid plans, word started to leak and get out to our associates literally within six hours. I remember having a great conversation with our team who did a phenomenal job leading this through and designing it in the mornings around nine o'clock. By three o'clock they were like, "Susan, we need to meet. The word is getting out and we need to pivot." And so we pivoted very quickly. And that wasn't ideal for our leaders because we sped up the timeline and it put our leaders, honestly, in just a tough spot because they were processing it, but then having to lead it as well. But it was really important that our associates heard from us directly versus hearing grapevine or something else. And we wanted them to understand that we care, that this is important, this is critical for us in our business and the why behind it.

So, that was one lesson learned around trying to control the communications and ensuring things don't leak. The other great lesson that we learned throughout it, we had surveys that we did to talk about what's your work preference? Are you working on-site? At home? Hybrid? What would that look like? And that was for facilities reasons, to be able to plan accordingly. And we weren't as transparent as we could be that wasn't a commitment of how people wanted to work.

Roula Amire:
Oh, I see.

Suzan McDaniel:
That could be changing over time. And so I think lesson learned is be really careful in all your communications, read for the unintended, ensure that you're being [inaudible 00:17:18]. Now, we had shared this was for a period of time, but people recall, that they want to recall from that as well. And so we've spent a lot of time having to have really good conversations with our associates about what that was, why it's important that we work together to support our culture and what that looks like for today.

Roula Amire:
And to put this into a little bit more context, when you talk about the hybrid activation, that is, to be clear, moving from a primarily remote workforce to the office, three days a week-

Suzan McDaniel:
That's right.

Roula Amire:
For some associates.

Suzan McDaniel:
That's right. For our home office-based associates.

Roula Amire:
And what's the percentage of employees who work primarily remotely?

Suzan McDaniel:
So, we have about 9,600 in our home office and about 40,000 in our field. And so about 60% of our home office associates are hybrid, and they work within a one-hour commutable distance, which is how we define it. So, about 40% of them are remote and working from home.

Roula Amire:
Let's talk about employee well-being. We did a recent study and we found that psychological and emotional health hasn't budged over the last two years since 2021, regardless of where you work, and this is at a typical company. And that tells us that companies need to recommit to listening to their people and what they need. How do you know what your people need in terms of well-being, support and how have you responded?

Suzan McDaniel:
Yeah. I'm so glad that we're having this conversation. I believe mental well-being, emotional well-being is so important and we don't talk about it enough, and we need to talk about it more. It's part of everyone's life, and making it just as common in the conversation as physical well-being. So, we listen deeply to our associates and have a variety of different mechanisms that we listen from. We listen, formal mechanisms through engagement surveys, informal mechanisms. And we started to hear a theme around well-being and emotional and mental well-being, and needing to have more support for that. So, we invested. We invested in a center of excellence that's focused on the well-being of all 54,000 of our associates. And it's new, we're off and running this year, but we're so proud of the team.

They've done amazing work to deeply listen and to understand what matters most. We're starting with mental and emotional well-being. We have well-being warriors that are in our field and our home office advocating for well-being. We have resources that are available to all of our associates around. We've re-geared some of our incentives around our benefits incentives to be geared towards health outcomes versus just activities to help promote well-being. In addition, I'm very proud of the work that we've done with listening to our associates around our EAP, and understanding that it wasn't hitting the mark as well as it could be. So, we went to an RFP. I'm very proud to announce we have a great partnership with Headspace, who is world-class in providing counseling to not only our associates, but to their families. They don't have to be on our medical plan. It's available to all of our associates and their families.

There is available for them access to a health professional, mental health professional if needed, 24/7 through chat. So, it's three o'clock in the morning, you've got a big presentation or you're like me and have teenage daughters, things might be in their minds around just the normal stress of being a teenager. You can chat with somebody. You'll have somebody there to help you. Now, this is in addition to all the great counseling classes and counseling sessions that you can have up to amazing work on meditation, and well-being, and podcasts that you can also take. So, we heard them, we listened to them. We have more work to do in this space, but very proud of focusing on mental and emotional well-being. In addition, there's a few other areas that the Well-being center of excellence focuses on, in addition to this too, physical well-being and our health, our financial well-being, being a wealth management financial services company, and social well-being, which we also heard through the pandemic was really important. Where people were feeling isolated and how we could bring them to come together more often.

Roula Amire:
What advice would you go back and give your younger self?

Suzan McDaniel:
Oh my goodness. Where do I start? There's a lot of advice in there. So, there's probably a couple things that come to mind immediately. We were blessed and we had Cynt Marshall come and speak with us. She's the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks. She is incredible.

Roula Amire:
We love her. We love Cynt.

Suzan McDaniel:
An incredible leader.

Roula Amire:
Yes. She is.

Suzan McDaniel:
And she talked to us, Roula, about rubber balls and crystal balls, and how in life you know the difference between the two. And she talked about it. And I think I would give my younger self this feedback. There's always going to be a lot going on, but know what are things that's a rubber ball that if it falls or it drops, it's okay because it's going to bounce. And be really clear on your crystal ball moments. And those are the balls that if they drop, they shatter. Those are the moments that really matter as a mom, as a wife, as a sister, as an associate that you have.

And so really being clear on those crystal ball moments. The second thing I would tell my younger self, and I heard this, a colleague at my previous organization shared this with me, and it's a saying that he said to himself that I now say to myself all the time, and that is, when things are intense or there's always going to be a lot of good things that are going on, hold it lightly, don't hold it tightly. And that would be the advice I'd have for myself around just, this too will pass, breathe, hold it lightly, don't hold it tightly.

Roula Amire:
How do you create a sense of well-being for yourself?

Suzan McDaniel:
Such a good question. I love to do a number of creative things when I'm not at work and I'm not very good at all. But I find that it quiets your mind and you focus. So, I love to paint and paint acrylics. Again, I'm not very good, but love to paint, particularly flowers and things like that. I love to cook. My husband and I love to cook, particularly on the weekends. Our family favorite is paella, and cooking paella-

Roula Amire:
That's a hard dish to make.

Suzan McDaniel:
It's surprisingly easy. Once you get it all together, you just let it sit there. And the hard thing is to not stir the rice, which I'm terrible at. My husband, Eddie, is like, "Stop stirring the rice." But it's delicious. So, we love to cook together. We also love to work out. Lifting weights I think is great, pushing yourself, challenging yourself. We love to travel and see all different parts of the world. Having lived in Australia, we got the travel bug living over there. And so those types of things are really important. Also meditating, being mindful, giving gratitude. I have a yoga mat in my office that I will meditate during lunch and just relax, and just ground yourself, breathing, all of those good things. So, I think it's so important that you take care of your total well-being, total self exactly, Roula. And ensure that you're balanced on all fronts.

Roula Amire:
Is there a book or podcast you'd recommend to your peers?

Suzan McDaniel:
Yes. There are many too. You're quick to answer.

Suzan McDaniel:
I know.

Roula Amire:
Curious.

Suzan McDaniel:
I'm a huge Brené Brown fan. I love her research. I love that, I'm a data nerd as well, and so I love that she's backed in research. I love her authenticity. I love her realness. So, any of her podcasts, I think, are phenomenal. And she explores lots of different topics outside of leadership. I think she's just tremendous, Dare to Lead is a fantastic must-read for any leader. Simon Sinek is also an amazing storyteller and orator, and also backed in great research. So, those are some of the things that I'd recommend. This podcast, of course-

Roula Amire:
Thanks Suzan.

Suzan McDaniel:
And the Great Places To Work. Always learn and listening to the different podcasts from different folks in CHROs, and taking those golden nuggets with me.

Roula Amire:
Has there been a challenge you face in the last year, either personally or professionally, and what did you learn about yourself?

Suzan McDaniel:
That's a good question. And the last year is within my first year of being a CHRO. So, there are lots of challenges and lots of things I learned, but probably the one that comes to mind immediately is just making the really tough decision around our hybrid activation. As I said, it is so personal and it's about families and their lives, and we care about our families deeply. And so that decision we did not take lightly. We had guiding principles. We debated it as a leadership team and we made the decision. The learning from it is about how you can hold and show up with deep empathy, with deep care, with deep understanding, and curiosity around people's lives, but also showing up with deep confidence that we can do this. We can do tough things with deep conviction, that this is the right thing for our business. And so I learned about how you balance all of those things in the same conversation and connecting with our associates, and really explaining the why behind this. The benefit, the value, the enablement of our culture, and having everybody see themselves in this journey.

Roula Amire:
I can't think of a bigger challenge that any workplace is facing now, other than where employees work. So, thanks for the learnings. Thanks for your insights. Thanks for joining. It's been a great conversation.

Suzan McDaniel:
Thank you, Roula. It's been awesome spending time with you and really appreciate everything that you and Great Places To Work do.

Roula Amire:
Thank you. A five star rating, write a review and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. You can stream this and previous episodes wherever podcasts are available.