From Strategy to Impact: The HR Leader’s Role in Shaping the Future

[00:00:00] Mo Fathelbab: Welcome to today's episode of People and Strategy. I'm your host, Mo Fathelbab, president of International Facilitators Organization, People and Strategy is a podcast from the SHRM Executive Network, the premier network of executives in the field of human resources. Each week, we bring you in depth conversations with the country's top HR executives and thought leaders.

For today's conversation, I'm excited to be joined by Susan Podlogar, former CHRO at MetLife and independent board director. Welcome to the show, Susan.

[00:00:38] Susan Podlogar: Thank you so much, Mo. Thank you for having me. What a pleasure to be here.

[00:00:42] Mo Fathelbab: Great to have you with us. So Susan, tell us about your career journey and what brought you to the field of HR.

[00:00:48] Susan Podlogar: Oh my goodness. such a lovely foundational question. I am, I'm a ninth child in my family, and so I started HR at the age of three. And I learned about teaming, I learned about competition, I learned about alliances. You know, I learned all these things about hierarchy and you know, I just felt like the entire time it was how my, our parents raised us was finding the beauty of each child and what are the gifts that they bring.

And I fundamentally. Believe in the beauty of the human spirit and that everybody has unique gifts. And so if I could bring that into my profession and the way that I worked and make people's lives and, the way that they work, more purposeful, more profound, more impactful, that gave me great joy.

And so. Started my career in varying industries, consulting, healthcare, financial services. And fundamentally what it all came down to is I really wanted to make impact on some of the most pressing issues that the world is facing today. So majority of my time in healthcare, I'm on two healthcare boards as well as, working in financial services.

And I just love the complexity and the, you know, the human. Behavior, you always have something new. you can't predict it. And so that challenge was always something that was always at the forefront of me. How do I impact that? And how do I make lives of employees better as they walk in every day to work?

[00:02:25] Mo Fathelbab: Well, what a beautiful family you've come from because, too often I hear different stories. One of nine, I got lost. one of three. I was in the middle and always challenged. But, the fact that your parents recognized each of you for the beauty in you is just, it's a wonderful vision.

[00:02:44] Susan Podlogar: I was very, very fortunate.

But one thing I did learn as the ninth, I hated hierarchy. And so I brought that all the way through my career because if I had waited to be, you know, the in birth order as the ninth, I would've never spoken. I would've never eaten. So I am not a hierarchy girl.

[00:03:01] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah, I love that as well. Well, thank you. So let's talk about your time at MetLife.

What are some of the biggest lessons you learned, during your tenure there?

[00:03:10] Susan Podlogar: I, I think, you know, I was there for, seven years in a varying cycles. I mean, you, go through something like COVID, right? You go through different financial cycles as well. What I, if you bring down the truth, I think that companies are at.

Their best when their employees are at their best. And that's, and employees are at their best when they're seen. They're heard, they're valued, they're recognized, and they're valued for who they uniquely are. And I think when those conditions are true and you have a very differentiated strategy, you have relentless focus on, execution, that's when you get.

The ultimate in productivity as an organization, and you actually can do more collectively than you do individually. And like I said about hierarchy, I believe fundamentally that the best companies do not run by hierarchy. The best companies run by the collective wisdom of all, because everybody is there in a different position, having a different contribution, different impact, different perspective.

And everybody has a unique role to play. And so if you harness all of that, that's when you get ultimate productivity of a company.

[00:04:26] Mo Fathelbab: And I love that as well. And, it just resonates with me deeply. how do you ensure that folks that are brand new and junior positions actually believe that and feel that in terms of not just saying, Hey, this is same, old, same old, and just, word fluff.

[00:04:45] Susan Podlogar: I think for us, and, for me, it is the moment you enter and even before when you're interviewing, you should feel that culture and, the culture that we instilled was this culture of care and it was a culture of care that, listen, we're gonna set you up for success. We wanna make sure you have the right resources.

So we had a survey called My Voice, and the highest rated question was, I believe action will be taken as a result of my input. And we had over 11 points over benchmark and on my voice we had over. Every single question had exceeded Glint, which is the company that we had their, benchmarks. And in fundamentally, I believe it's because we said to the employees, we will read every comment.

We read over 80,000 comments. Every single, if I always felt, if employees gave us the grace to give us a comment and give their input and give us their perspective of what they see, we need to, read that, understand it, and then incorporate that into our action plans of which we did over years to the point that when I left, our engagement kept going up and in fact, the company said.

What's going on? Because we see companies going down in engagement. You guys keep going up and I fundamentally believe it's you will listen to your employees and you value your employees, and once you do that, they'll continue to lean in for you.

[00:06:12] Mo Fathelbab: So, our topic today is mental wellbeing and, obviously one of the challenges that HR leaders face is hiring.

so as we look at hiring and onboarding and wellbeing, what comes to mind for what has mattered to, you and to MetLife, in that journey?

[00:06:32] Susan Podlogar: Hiring is kind of the beginning of the pipeline, right? You need to really look for unique sources, unique talent, and you need to do this through a lens of knowledge and analytics.

And what we ended up doing in HR is we started looking at these key critical positions and using and scraping data to find out where is not. The position now, but where is it going? So for example, our actuaries, our actuaries really deeply, educated, having to go through series of tests in order to, be able to become an actuary.

Very, very extensive. But when we started scraping data to say, where is this date? Where is this job going? AI came up. Analytics came up, collaboration came up, and so we started having to shift our hiring profile to look at some of those backgrounds. And if we didn't have those in the backgrounds, we actually incorporated that into our training programs as well.

And I think the other side on hiring is just, again, looking at this changing landscape out of COVID. We tried different models and you know, are people hybrid? Are they virtual? Are they in the office? And one of the positions that we put virtual. Was our, claims, our customer service. And at MetLife, these are people that are dealing with death.

Somebody who had just died, and there's somebody who's coming in for a claim or somebody with a disability. And so we had these people fully virtual, which was great for them. They, it met their personal needs. However, they didn't connect right away into the organization and have. Somebody that they could go to say, Hey, listen, I've just had a really tough call.

Can you cover for me? And so what we did, and we were finding, we had a lot of turnover in those beginning, beginning, months. What we ended up doing is bringing pods together of people that they could connect with and they could build their own sub community within the organization so that they had peers to connect with.

And once we did that, that connection into the organization, turnover went down. How were those pods structured? Yeah, so the pods are structured, so, so a new class would come in. And so they would just have like, these are the 10 folks that you have that are connected with you. And so then they would have their own sub, you know, breakouts, things like that through training so that they were able to connect.

And then they were also connected through instant messaging. So if somebody needed to take a break, they would just instant message another person. Say, listen, I just had a really tough call. I need to, time out for a few minutes. Can you cover for me for the next call? So it was that real. And what we find, and you've seen it in the research.

Peer-to-peer interactions. It's where the greatest trust is in organizations. And so building those connections peer-to-peer, 'cause it's someone like me and so they're connecting with someone like me.

[00:09:19] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah, I love that. So why is addressing mental health and wellbeing so critical and often so difficult?

[00:09:29] Susan Podlogar: You know, you see wellbeing going down, mental health going down, stress, anxiety, going up. And again, this is this, no one is immune. This is at, all levels from entry level to C-suite. This, anxiety is coming into the workforce at an accelerated pace. And when anxiety comes into a workforce, it is impacting productivity.

And there was a study from Cigna that said loneliness alone is costing the US economy $406 billion annually. I mean that's, and you see other studies in terms of loss, in terms of, what businesses specifically are and when you look at it. And why is it so impactful? Because it impacts, it impacts the engagement.

It impacts the intent for to stay. It impacts. Satisfaction. It increases absenteeism, you know, physical health. You know, people don't see physical health and mental health, you know, related. They, are. Right. And you know, the, I think it was in Integrated Benefits Institute, did a study in 2024 and found that.

Workers that were lonely were two times to miss work due to illness and five times more likely to miss work due to stress. So this is, it's not, it's, a business issue. There's a macro business issue, but there's a micro personal issue. People are spending eight, 10 hours a day in their work environment.

They will spend more time with their coworkers in and their employers than they are with sometimes their family or their friends. And it's hard because it takes knowledge. How to address it. It takes energy, it takes time, it takes intention, and it takes care. Make sure your C-suite is talking about wellbeing, mental health, role modeling,

[00:11:26] Mo Fathelbab: and then on a micro level, how do you suggest managers, leaders really lean into that and what are some practical tips you can give them to help get to know each person at that level, so they could really be supportive?

[00:11:40] Susan Podlogar: I think it's, a couple things. I think one is just sitting down and having the conversations with them. First, training the managers. These are the types of questions you should be asking your employees. You know, what is it? Where are you in your career? What things that are left undone for you?

What would you like to learn? Where do you see these strengths? What projects did you really like over this last quarter? And why did you like them? What did they bring out in you that you really felt energy? Where did you get your energy, you know? Really re replenish and where did it deplete? And so understanding and looking back at some of the things that they've done to say, okay, where is it that you wanna go and how do I tailor where I can in order to meet that?

And something like a talent marketplace is a beautiful way to get those experiences out there because they're just. Quick hits. It's only like, okay, two hours here over the next two weeks, four hours here for the, you know, for over the next month. Those are ways that you can find those development areas and the, and what the employee really wants.

And the other thing that we did is through our talent marketplace, we actually put out a, project and said. Who has coaching experience? because we wanna do internal coaches, we use external coaches for certain con certain, you know, reasons. And we wanted to use internal coaches and really test this.

And we ended up getting between HR and outside of HR 150 coaches across MetLife, trained on the basic fundamentals of coaching. What we did is we had 150 coaches in 16 languages deployed across MetLife, and so the. My vision was any employee who wants a coach, again, we're here for you and get access to that coaching because navigating that, you don't always see what you don't see, right?

You don't know what you don't know. And these internal coaches, what they were able to do differently than external coaches is look at what resources MetLife had, how to navigate through MetLife, give some of that input, and so. That's another way that leaders don't always have to do it all on their own.

They can use resources that are available within the organization.

[00:13:58] Mo Fathelbab: And what training would you suggest for leaders to brush up on their skills and, really being able to listen to their employees so closely and be so focused on their wellbeing?

[00:14:08] Susan Podlogar: Yeah, I think there's, two, I think they're the formal programs that you put through, like the fundamentals of leadership.

We had some fundamentals of leadership against our, you know, competencies of leadership competencies. So every leadership competency we would have a training program. So formal training is, great. The other side, which is, almost role modeling, not, formal training, but one thing that the the, CEO did beautifully within the organization is not only took senior leaders in the organization and the vice presidents in the organization.

He took all managers and on a quarterly basis, really talked through some of the things they should be paying attention to. How are they connected into the strategy? How is the work of their team connected into the strategy with use cases and, examples? And so it's, that of that, how do you fit in and communication wise.

The formal training and then the feedback from the employees. So we did, you know, a 180 feedback process, so employees were able to give feedback to leaders on those competencies. Again, not for performance, but for development purposes. So it was a three-pronged approach.

[00:15:22] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah. Susan, how have you seen mental health and wellbeing characterized?

Addressed over the course of your career, have you seen a change, say from 10, 20 years ago to today?

[00:15:37] Susan Podlogar: Yes. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. We're not where we need to be by, any means. I, I believe that it's, now talked about more, it's more accepted. listen, it, this, we've always had these issues, you know, with within workplaces where people felt stressed or they had anxiety or they were dealing with an aging parent or, you know, had kids at home.

It was just not, it's just things that we dealt with, right? You held in and you did it, and it was, you know, the stoic kind of thing. We did no favors to anybody. And I do think by bringing this out and having conversations and giving support for, employees, that we're able to again, get really look at the broader productivity of an organization because it's, through care for every employee.

And you know, I've. Seen the needs change over time because the context changes over time. What we did in COVID is differently than what we're doing today, right? These needs are gonna change and you just have to be flexible, have the right resources available for your employees. And again, offer the programs, understand that they're uniquely personal.

And that's another area that I think is shifting is that because of technology, we are able to do things more personalized. You know, AI is, able to personalize a lot more than in the past. We've had to just put big programs in place, come and utilize them. That was kind of the equation. Now we can get to not just that macro that I talked about, but we can get into the micro where a leader can start to really look at the individual to say, how am I addressing this culture of care?

How am I addressing the wellbeing of my employees? Because an employee that's strong, that's resilient in their mind are gonna be strong and resilient in their productivity for their professional life and for their personal life as well.

[00:17:38] Mo Fathelbab: So lots of great tips and tools. can you think of an example where, a situation was not handled well as it relates to an employee's mental health and wellbeing?

[00:17:50] Susan Podlogar: yeah, I mean, I think, you know, where I would say where it's not is, Where an employee was looking for some flexibility that we were not able to give at that time because of the role. Right. And is it not that it wasn't handled well, it just, it couldn't be accommodated in the way that it needed to be accommodated of what the individual would've wanted.

And so in those situations, you know, looking back, could you have looked at maybe a different position over time versus. Not being able to, support, you know, the flexibility that they needed. But I've seen other side on the flip side that the position was one that we could say, yeah, you need flexibility for this period of time.

We can do that. Right? But there are some positions in an organization that you just need to have core and in-person and present with a fixed schedule.

[00:18:42] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah. Thank you. Last question, Susan. What's one piece of advice that has shaped your work or life the most?

[00:18:49] Susan Podlogar: So I would say, if I can give two, one is, my first boss, he said to me, I'm sitting in this cubicle, right?

And he, says, Susan, I think you're gonna do okay in your career, and I want you to measure your success, not your success. Your success should be about who do you develop? Who do you help grow, and who do you help get to the next level. So I've always, always carried that on my shoulder, like, listen.

And then the other side of my shoulder is probably my father. that was always, listen, you earn your keep every single day. You can never get complacent. Keep your nose to the grindstone, but don't forget to balance mind, body, and spirit. And that's where I learned it the most, is from my parents' servant leadership, mind, body, spirit.

[00:19:40] Mo Fathelbab: That's where we'll end it for this episode of People and Strategy. A huge thanks to Susan for your valuable insights. You can follow the People and Strategy podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a real impact on podcast visibility. Sophie enjoyed today's episode. Leave a review to help others find the show.

Finally, you could find all our episodes on our website at SHRM dot org slash podcasts. Thank you for listening and have a great day.