Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:03 Hi everyone. I'm sweet boo.
Speaker 2 00:00:06 And I'm Dr. Diane Hamilton. Welcome to leaders, playbook a show about how to drive transformational impact in your organization.
Speaker 1 00:00:13 We talk with innovative thinkers across various sectors to hear about the best tools, resources, practices, and strategies to help you and your team reach the top of your game.
Speaker 2 00:00:25 So sit back and relax. We can't wait to share our leaders' insights with you.
Speaker 2 00:00:35 Hello everyone. I'm your host, Dr. Diane Hamilton, and I am the CEO of 10. I also serve on the board of advisors for the global mentor network. Thank you for joining us. But today our guest is Joan Burke. As the chief people officer at DocuSign, Joan leads the company's global human resource function. She also leads the DocuSign impact foundation. Very interested in hearing about that. And she has more than 25 years of leadership experience in designing and implementing innovative results, oriented HR programs and best practices. We are honored to have Joan here to talk about what they're doing at DocuSign to build a culture that embraces environmental, social and governance ESG is it's well known. Welcome, Joan. It's so nice to have you here.
Speaker 3 00:01:20 Thank you, Diane. I I'm really honored that you asked me to be part of your program. Happy to be here today.
Speaker 2 00:01:25 Well, I was really looking forward to this as we talked a little before you and I have been in different circles together and different things that we've had a chance to sort of connect, but not on a deep level like this. And so I'm really looking forward to our, our chat today, and you've reached this really wonderful level of success at DocuSign, which I'm obviously a big fan of. And I would love just to hear your backstory of how you reach that level.
Speaker 3 00:01:51 Well, you know, it's interesting. I've been here for five years now and I was talking to some folks recently and said, yeah, I've had a very long career in human resources. And I was thinking about sort of like the beginning and sort of like DocuSign where we are today. And I said, you know, I started my career at John Hancock financial services, a company whose brand is an iconic signature, the John Hancock, right? I've now found myself at the company that has pioneered the electronic John Hancock. And when I think about how far we've come as a, as, as, as a society and sort of like how wonderful now that signing agreements and documents is so easy. So what led me to DocuSign, of course, I had worked for the CEO, Dan Springer at another company at responses. And, um, he actually I'll tell you the story called me up outta retirement five years ago and said I needed chief people officer. And I said, Dan, I've just moved to New Hampshire. I'm retired, I'll give you names of people. And lucky for me, he kind of didn't take, didn't take that answer, uh, that, that he got me outta retirement and has, it's been wonderful to be part of this organization. And the five years I've been here, we've grown, you know, fourfold, we've gone public, we've added so many new products. We've just really exploded as an organization. And we have a, have a lot of purpose and value. It's a company that's very values driven.
Speaker 2 00:03:12 It really has changed the world. It's such a great company. And it's interesting. You mentioned the Hancock thing, cuz I noticed I signed like the little H like Hancock on cuz of Hamilton <laugh> and I was thinking about that. I looked it up one time and I didn't realize that that was where I got it from, but John Hancock does that. Right. It's above
Speaker 3 00:03:29 <laugh> and of course I wanna say John Hancock is a big customer of DocuSign.
Speaker 2 00:03:34 Oh, that's good to know. That's good to know. Well, I think everybody is, I think about it. Uh they're they're so well known and it's just hard to imagine anybody who hasn't used DocuSign and I imagine it was a company worth coming back out of retirement for, for sure. You certainly, and you know, and we talked about some of the things we're gonna talk about. I mentioned in the introduction that we would chat about ESG, cuz it's such a hot topic and it's interesting to come at it from an HR people perspective because you know, ESG criteria are standards for companies, behavior to safeguard the environment, manage employee relationship, handle executive, pay controls, shareholder rights. There's just so much to it. It's a huge area. So I kind of wanna start with the environmental considerations because there's a big spotlight on that right now. So I did a little research on DocuSign and I saw that you live by three values, trusted, loved, and responsible. I love that. I wanna hear more, a little bit about that. And what other companies that you know, what you've learned from your other companies that you're and your, what you're learning from DocuSign in that respect?
Speaker 3 00:04:33 Well, you know, when we came up with those values, which was about three or four years ago, you know, we really wanted to sit down and say, what is a differentiator for DocuSign? Like why does somebody wanna do business with DocuSign? Why does somebody wanna come and work for DocuSign? And we really went deep and thought really long and hard and said, this is the three things we stand for. I think the loved part was really the most unusual part. I don't know any other company that has had love and as part as their, their, their trust. But the reason why that's so important to us here is because every one of us at DocuSign can tell a story, what we call our docu love story, where you say to somebody I work at DocuSign. And the first thing they say to you is, oh my God, I love DocuSign.
Speaker 3 00:05:14 I just bought my house at DocuSign. I just signed my awful letter on DocuSign. So they are really the three guiding things about, you know, trust is really about making sure that our customers have trust in our business and how we do business and that they feel secure and that the actual DocuSign product is what they can trust responsible is about how we show up in the world. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. And then of course is love is, is how we show love to our customers and our employees. And you know, on the environmental side, on the responsible side DocuSign, fortunately I would say is a company that just the sheer nature of what we do in our product is great for the environment. You know, we save paper, paper, saves, trees, trees saves forests. And so we're really proud of that.
Speaker 3 00:06:03 And we tell customers when you use DocuSign, you're actually doing a lot for the world. And we have a initiative here that I think you're probably familiar with called DocuSign for forests. And it is sort of our signature cause inside DocuSign. It's one that when I talk to potential candidates about who we are in the world, and I talk about DocuSign for forests, it's like, I can see people's face, light up and say, I gotta be part of this. I've gotta be part of this organization that fundamentally the work they do is doing it. And then they're actually putting a lot of other resources behind that in terms of philanthropy and foundation and money and ways in which we support the world's forest. So, you know, I've worked in organizations that have had causes and you know, oftentimes they're great, you know, like who could argue with helping underprivileged kids on their pathway to college, but that doesn't necessarily have a connection with a, a marketing software product where what we do is directly related to, to what we wanna do for the world.
Speaker 2 00:07:09 Yeah. I it's just really changed everything to be able to have a, a digital footprint and have it save so much of the environment. And that's a huge thing. I mean, everybody's focused on how they're doing business right now and how they're coming to work and are, are they coming to work? Are they doing hybrid? Are they doing actual workspaces are, are they're flexible arrangements and that's changing how much the environment's impacted as well. I mean, is there a gas being used going to work is, you know, there's all these different factors. How are you guys dealing with that whole hybrid not hybrid kind of situation?
Speaker 3 00:07:43 Yeah. So we've been in a hybrid situation where, you know, we'vely told our employees a while back that when it was safe to open up our offices and of course now it is our offices are all open that they really wouldn't be required to come in more than more than 50% of the time. And they might be able to come in less than that. And we've been really monitoring what that has meant, you know, and we've been looking at patterns of people coming in. And while I would say there's, there's, it's increasing over time. It's still not a very high occupancy. What we're seeing Diane is that people come into the office and use the office more as a collaboration space, more to get together with their teams more to sort of see each other. So as a result, you know, during the pandemic, we hired four to 5,000 more employees, but have taken on no additional real estate because we don't need to take on any more real estate.
Speaker 3 00:08:37 And as we think about, you know, leases that are coming up in some of our places, we're really reevaluating whether or not we wanna keep as much space as we have. So that automatically cuts down on people driving to work and consumption. You know, we saw of course, like most companies, almost no business travel for a couple of years and while that's coming back a bit, I think we wanna be very thoughtful and careful and make sure we don't all just get on planes, you know, which is a, a terrible waste, you know, of resources. And instead, you know, use, use the tools like we have today, use zoom to be able to sort of like meet and work with each other. So we're trying to figure out what's the right balance of teams coming together and maybe which may require certain people to fly in. But at the same time, you know, use zoom and use these technologies when it is appropriate as a way to reduce our carbon footprint and you know, employees get it. They totally, absolutely get it. They understand. They're like, you know, let's not spend as much money on real estate. Let's not spend as much money on, on travel costs.
Speaker 2 00:09:43 Yeah. It's, it's a huge cost. And I think of just the jobs I've had and what you were saying as of when I was in lending, just an sure amount of paper wasted on fax machines was crazy, you know, but when I left that industry and went more of into online education and different aspects, I, we got used to working virtually and then we would get together certain times of the year for our meetings and stuff. So when you're mentioned that the office is kind of a social gathering place, I get that bullpen in mind, you know, as a sales rep, we would all get together in the bullpen and share our ideas, but then maybe we were in real estate and we weren't in an office most of the time anyway. So I think a lot of industries are kind of going that way and it's gonna be really fascinating to see the impact from all this and with gas is priced the way it is. I'm sure you, your employees are not too thrilled to drive in any way. Right.
Speaker 3 00:10:34 They're not. And, and there's still a reluctance to get on public transportation, right? There's still a number of people who are feeling not quite safe from a COVID perspective. So you're right about that.
Speaker 2 00:10:43 I think there's a lot though to getting people together in some respects. And so I, I like to hear that people are trying to think outside the box to do that. And, and as the social aspect of the S of S ESG, I, I can't tell you how many times I've heard people are hired for their knowledge and fired for their behaviors, because there's so many issues when you have social interactions, how you interact with people, not just your employees, your fellow employees, but your suppliers, your customers, whoever you're, you're talking to all during the day, you have to have this ability to interact well with people. So when I read in your bio that you, you do all these things, you have this DocuSign impact, I'm dying to know more about that. What kind of training at DocuSign do you do to ensure good relationships with all groups?
Speaker 3 00:11:30 Yeah, so certainly there's a lot of what we call trust training that, that, that is required for employees. And these things like code of conducts and in water expectation is, is about, you know, certain behaviors, you know, sexual harassment prevention training. So we do all of the things that you would, you would expect. But then we do a lot in the area of, I would say what we're doing our training is really, this goes into the diversity piece too, is really making sure that there's an inclusive aspect to it too. And that there is sort of an awareness and an understanding of different groups and how we need to show up and sort of our sensitivity to those groups, whether they be employees, as you say, whether they be, whether they be customers. And, you know, we found that by weaving that and making that a part of sort of everything that we do, we're just delivering that message over and over and over again to people about how you should be showing up as a DocuSign to your colleagues, but also to the broader world.
Speaker 3 00:12:26 And I will say another thing that we're doing, which is not quite what you're asking about, but it is a challenge is we're trying to help support managers who now are managing in a very different environment. They're managing people who maybe some are completely remote somewhere in the office, some are not. And so we are really working hard to sort of, you know, upscale our manager so that they know how to show up as a people manager and support this hybrid team of theirs and still get the kind of productivity and the results that we're expecting.
Speaker 2 00:12:58 Well, that's really interesting to me because up skill, you know, there's so many skills and I'm always curious what kinds of things people are focusing on just being a behavioral expert. I focused on emotional intelligence, a curiosity and perception, or my main focus is, but you know, that soft skills kind of squishy area is so big. Well, what kind of upskilling do you focus on? I mean, how do you choose?
Speaker 3 00:13:19 Yeah, well, you know, we pick something for now, right? Uhhuh and the talent development. Team's doing a great job. And our theme is around resilience. And with resilience is sort of helping people through the whole change management process and how to be successful in change management. And we're coming up with a number of different what I would call more sound bite kinds of things, and places for people to go to reinforce resilience. We're gonna be kicking something off in a week or two, and we're starting with a panel of the executives and dance. Our CEO is one of the people that's on the panel talking about resilience in his experience with resilience, because I actually think now with what's happening in the world, what we've gone through, as well as how we're dealing with the great resignation what's happening in the markets, Warren in Russia, if ever time, we needed to learn how to be resilient. It is now
Speaker 2 00:14:12 It, it is. It's a really challenging time and you've got community issues. People are standing up for certain things they want, they expect certain things. You've got supplier standards. You've got all these things to deal with that companies. I don't think a lot of people think about that companies have to deal with. I mean, when you are training your leaders to be resilient or whatever you're training 'em to do, you, you've also gotta train them to have interactions with these outside forces, these social forces, what are some of the biggest challenges you face with like maybe either finding suitable partners or dealing with difficult customers or what kinds of things do you have to deal with in that respect?
Speaker 3 00:14:50 I don't wanna say everything is hunky door here, DocuSign, but I don't think about sort of like a, I mean, clearly we'll have some customer issues. Mostly those are related to sort of service things where a customer feels like they're not getting the right service, but by and large, it gets back to sort of the docu love. So I mean, people, people are really, our customers really do love us and it's, it's wonderful to be in that situation. I mean, I would say some of the biggest challenges that some that we have that people managers have is how to support different opinions among the employee base. We're 8,000 employees. So, you know, we've got all kinds of people who work for us of all different political parties, you know, some who feel like they wanna make sure the company doesn't become too political and doesn't take positions on things.
Speaker 3 00:15:35 Other employees who feel very strongly about a lot of, have a lot of passion around things that they believe we should take a position on. So what we try to do is sort of like, you know, is sort of like thread the needle on what are the things that we do wanna stand for and we do wanna be public about, and what are the things that we think are areas we probably shouldn't navigate. And so helping managers sort of think through that with their team, as, as issues come up, it's a challenge. And you know, that's why the HR, I, I have a whole lot of fabulous HR business partners, you know, and their job is to work with their client groups and make sure that they're doing everything they can to support the leaders of that group and, and the employees of that group to make sure that we're doing something that is appropriate for DocuSign at the same time, addresses the issues that are, that are relevant to people that are like real in real time.
Speaker 2 00:16:27 Well, there's so many issues that are so hot topics right now. I mean, we know everybody's talking diversity, inclusion, belonging, all these issues that everybody was wanting to be on top of sometimes it's, I see companies come up with either, you know, their value statement or mission statements and different things that, that, that include certain things. But how do you actually do that? What kinds of things are you doing to improve diversity inclusion and belonging?
Speaker 3 00:16:57 So about five months ago, we hired our first chief diversity and engagement officer. We always had the function, you know, but it was a function. So we hired our first and she's just terrific. She has a great background, worked at Microsoft and Pfizer, a number of different companies. And that was in itself as something that employees said, oh, my, this is really, they thought we cared about diversity inclusion, belonging, but now it's like, okay, we know you really do, because you've got one person who you're, who is gonna sort of like, make sure and hold the company accountable and all the leaders accountable for this work of diversity inclusion, belonging, which is not never one person of course. And she's had an opportunity to sort of like build out her team with a couple of really strong professionals. So I think that was one really important thing.
Speaker 2 00:17:47 That's a really important thing know because that just, that just shows you put your money where your mouth is, that you really intend to focus on this. And I think sometimes things are footnotes for companies and, and that's a huge, huge statement. I'm curious, you said she worked at Pfizer since I came from master Zeneca. And you know, I think about some of the things we had there, they had a lot of health and safety programs there. I remember. And do you include things like that with somebody like her or does somebody else handle those and what kind of programs do you offer to your employees?
Speaker 3 00:18:18 I will separate health and safety. Right. So I would say on the health side, that is definitely part of our benefits program. Right. And actually during COVID, we did something a lot of companies did is that we wanted to really support and some other way, it's not under diversity, but it is under HR to support our employees sort of like, and all the stress and mental health issues they were using. So we did a standalone mental health benefit. You know, some of it was already covered under our group medical program, which has been very, very, very popular, right on the safety side, a lot of what happens, sort of physical security, physical safety that actually resides in our trust and security group, um, who is really responsible for all of security. And so they think about that from again, from our offices, you know, from, from sort of the entire employee experience from the safety perspective, I would say under the diversity piece, something other things that we have recently put in place is we published our diversity numbers.
Speaker 3 00:19:15 They're on our website, we've set, you know, three or four, five year goals. And we also, for the first time, this year included our diversity goals in our corporate incentive plan for our executive team and our executive team are the people who report directly to the CEO. So they will, one of the factors about their bonuses or our bonuses next year will be, did we achieve certain goals that we set out to do? And that's gonna be things around increasing diversity in our workforce with particular emphasis on women and underrepresented populations. How are we doing in terms of improving our inclusion scores, which we manage on our employee engagement survey. So that was an important big statement just to say, we're gonna hold ourselves accountable and it's gonna impact pay.
Speaker 2 00:20:05 Well, I think that that's really important as you're talking about these executives and how much transparency we have. We, we get into the governance end of things, because that's more complicated. We're talking about, you know, leadership, executive pay, internal control, shareholder rights, all these things come into this area. And you and I had talked a little before this about like, who do you put on the boards? Do you have an HR person on there? Do you have women on there? Do you have just, how is your, your board set up to handle the HR kind of related issues? Cuz I've had people I've interviewed that I've asked this question and some people will say, well, you have a consultant and they deal with that kind of thing. You don't need somebody on the board. Other people are adamantly opposed to that. They say, no, you definitely should have an HR person, but there's only certain number of places on the board. And, and if you put somebody in HR on there, we gotta kick somebody off. Do you think you should add people to the board? Do you think you should get, how do we deal with this?
Speaker 3 00:21:01 This is a really interesting question. And I will tell you what I've seen. First of all, I think about the DocuSign board, we're very diverse board of, of the nine members. You know, there are five that are women or underrepresented minorities and that's been a, that's been very intentional. And it was very important when we, when we put our first black member of our board from about a year ago. And you know, our, our black employees were saying, finally, we see somebody at the senior levels and in a very important role. So one of the things I've seen over time, Diane, if you and I were talking five years ago, I would say nobody, but nobody is talking about putting HR people on boards. It's like just never happened, right. It just wasn't a function that people, you know, thought was that important. What I have noticed is that we've, I I've noticed more private companies who are enlightened are saying, you know what?
Speaker 3 00:21:54 I don't have anybody internally who was senior enough to help me with these issues. I could use somebody and more private companies are putting people on boards. I would say it's still a bit of a, I guess I would use the word struggle for public companies to think that way precisely because of what you've said. There's so many people on the board, you don't wanna kick people off. And in private companies, depending upon their size, they may have that most likely have a chief people officer internally who has the kind of expertise that these private companies do not. So of course I am a hundred percent all for all in and think companies should. And I would say there's definitely a growing enthusiasm for it. As companies realize my God, the people part of this is hard and we've gotta get it right. And, and especially in tech, right? People have so many options to go work. Different places that keeping and attracting talents, you know, is really, is really kind of job. One
Speaker 2 00:22:52 That is really a challenge. I, I remember when I wrote a brand publishing course for Forbes, and we talked about how, uh, all the CMOs were together, talking about how people can go now and get experience in another company, but we'll welcome you back. And that was something I never saw in the past. You know, you see some of these changes in how companies try to, if you can't retain them now, maybe you can get them back later. But I think it's gonna be interesting to see what everybody's codes of ethics now, state, because there's such a change in the world. I teach so many courses that have ethics or even an entire course of dedicated to ethics and even companies like Enron had a code of ethics, whether they followed it or not was another thing. But how do you determine your code of ethics and how do you make sure that people are actually abiding by it?
Speaker 3 00:23:39 One of the things we do is that it's actually part of our trust organization. And in terms of educating people say, it's just every employee in this company has got to take a course in duck on ethics every year. It's not like you walk in the door, you have it when you're onboarded and then you forget about it. So we really make that front and center. You go on our website and you will see our ethics. You will see, you know, exactly what we stand for. We have a whistleblower line, right, where we're very transparent about the whistleblower line. If you have something that you feel like you can't come forward with, you know, because you're worried about retaliation or you're just worried, there is a way for you to get that information to the right people in the organization. And it's, you know, our internal auditors on our audit committee who manage the ethics line.
Speaker 3 00:24:26 So I think it's about continuing to remind people about why ethics are important, what this company stands for. And then it's taking hard actions. You know, for example, if you find even a strong performer, you know, who has violated a code of ethics, you know, we've got an internal process to sort of like do investigations. And you know, if that person has really done something egregious, it's firing them, even though they may be a top salesperson or they may be a top developer, I'm, I'm just using those right examples. I'm not saying sales people and developers are not ethical. I'm just losing those right.
Speaker 2 00:25:02 Wait.
Speaker 3 00:25:02 So companies have to put their money where their mouth is. They just have to, because others are watching, right. If somebody is being unethical, it isn't happening in a vacuum. People around them are seeing it and they know it. And they're waiting for leadership to make sure that take the right action.
Speaker 2 00:25:20 It's definitely a time where you get held more accountable. I remember I was in the mad men days where my leaders would do all kinds of crazy things. I don't see that anymore. And I I've worked in these industries where they have security issues and things that we have to have training in, in education that's PERPA. And in, in medical, you have HIPAA and you have all these different guidelines that you have to follow. And I'm just curious in, in your industry, it's, you, you must deal quite a bit with security problems. You know how to keep everything safe. Cybersecurity is a topic that comes up a lot in courses I teach cuz some of 'em are, you know, technology students. And how do you deal with that cyber security? Do you have a whole separate section now? How, how is that handled?
Speaker 3 00:26:06 Well, we have a whole separate team on that, right? Our security and trust team, you know, is all over that, you know, and, and, you know, being, being a company where our customers have to have faith and trust in us, which is why that word trust is part of our, part of our values. It's like if we lose that, then we've lost our brand. And it's so interesting. I go back to my John Hancock days. It was exactly the same thing there people had to trust in a brand that had like that an iconic signature that whatever we did, they could trust that it was gonna be ethical. It was gonna be right. And so we've got a whole team of people whose job is, you know, to, to make sure that our systems and our programs and our communication to our employee base about the, the importance value, that's their job. Mm-hmm
Speaker 2 00:26:57 <affirmative> well, there's some great case studies of companies that have had security issues, Tylenol, for example, you know, when they were poisoned and things happened to them and the way they handled it was just exemplary. They got out and ahead of it. And do you have proactive plans for like here's what happens when, if we're breached or here's what, you know, how do you deal with that?
Speaker 3 00:27:19 First of all, you're absolutely right. The reasons why I think Tylenol and J and J years ago really withstood some, a really painful situation was because, because they live by their values, right? They, they went back to their values and said, okay, this is exactly how we handled the situation. And I think, I would say that's exactly how DocuSign thinks about things when we're faced with a really difficult dilemma. The answer is in the values. And even if it means we lose some business, even if it means, you know, we need to, the reputational risk is too great. Let's talk about an example of a company that completely blew it years ago. And it was Audi, right? When people, people were, they were saying it was user Eric, these cars were accelerating people with their brakes on, and Audi was saying, not us, not us.
Speaker 3 00:28:08 They had a long rollback to be able to sort of gain the reputation. So on our trust side, we absolutely have, you know, sort of, sort of a, a playbook about here's when we have an outage, you know, how we deal with our customers, how we inform our customers, how we ensure to our customers that we're on top of this, which is completely it's communication, communication, communication. And I think customers will give you the benefit of the doubt. If you show up in a way that is on their side and intentional to try to fix
Speaker 2 00:28:42 Issues. I, I think that's so important. And I can remember interviewing a woman who wrote a book on values on my show. And when, as you were talking about that, it came back to me that she said she, in, in their meetings, that they would talk about whatever they were talking about and they would tie it in, does this tie into our values? And it came up in whatever decisions or whatever major things they talked about. They, they analyzed it to see if it aligned. And that's exactly what you, I hear you saying that if you have this major issue, this major situation, go back to your values. And that's such a huge point. And as we talk to, you know, talk about ESG in general and the training and preparation that you have to do to just handle some of these challenging situations, what was the most challenging thing that you think you've dealt with? I mean, I'm sure COVID ranks up there with some of the things, but what advice would you give to others listening about what you've learned through trial and error and what situations do you think you can help other people with based on the trials you've had?
Speaker 3 00:29:40 Well, yeah, I, I, I would have to say COVID is absolutely up there. Yeah. In terms of having us and, and, you know, let's face it, HR people were really, you know, they really, in my opinion, most of them, I know really met the moment where we were asked to overnight find ways to help the employees, this company, and the company continue to do business. And there was no playbook for this. I mean, I have been in human resources for way more than the 25 years that you talked about. And I will tell you, I've seen tremendous amount of things in HR. I have never in my life dealt with something like this. So the hardest thing I would say was the people aspect of it. Uh, every HR professional I talk to will talk about during that period, oftentimes feeling like how do we keep our employees safe?
Speaker 3 00:30:32 How do we keep our employees healthy? How do we make sure the business is still functioning? And people are being productive? What are the tools we need? What's the support? What is the benefits? And, you know, at DocuSign and like most companies that I know, we took a pretty much, a very compassionate point of view. So for example, we did a couple things. We had a program called DocuSign cares when this first happened, we allowed, you know, we had a at home tech allowance for people who never worked at home and suddenly needed the, whatever, you know, peripherals and needed a chair. Well, you know, and so they could expense it. And then it became clear that beyond that people needed more support. So we did a program called DocuSign cares. We did it twice. And basically we said, you can expense up to a thousand dollars for anything that helps you get through this. It could be, your kids are driving you crazy and you need to go buy them video games to go like, sit the corner, go buy and video games. We were very, the only thing we wouldn't let people do is to buy a gun, right. Those other
Speaker 2 00:31:36 Per year, or how, what, what was the thousand dollars
Speaker 3 00:31:39 We actually ended up, we had two programs. So we had one that lasted for like six months. And then we put one in again, because it realized my God, this is lasting mm-hmm <affirmative> right. We thought when it happened in March 15th, I thought would all be back in the opposite a matter of a couple of months. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so, you know, making decisions and informing our teams and keeping them, I, I don't know any other thing that I've done. That's been more challenging in my, in my entire career.
Speaker 2 00:32:02 I can't imagine either. Yeah. It it's been a time. I, I I'm curious. What kinds of things did people buy that they found the most helpful? Did anybody share like successes of what worked for them?
Speaker 3 00:32:11 You know, it was so deeply personal that, you know what we said, even we, you could even buy a, you know, a jumpy house for your kids. It, you know, whatever. Yeah. A lot of people used it to help support family. Like if they had parents yeah. Who couldn't get out, they might have food delivered to them and they could expense that. So a lot of it was in the caregiving area, around, you know, people in people's families who needed extra support and the employee had a, felt a responsibility to, to support them.
Speaker 2 00:32:41 Is there anything you would suggest if, for companies who were listening to this that just don't have a budget for something like that, that would be helpful in a time like that?
Speaker 3 00:32:49 Well, you know, one of the other things we did, which may be, which may work for folks is we realized that people were so stressed out and burned out and they would talk about being on zoom is that we put in sort of shutdown days. Right? So once a quarter, we would just, we've got one coming up, actually in the 4th of July where the Friday before it's a shutdown day. So we get people like a four or five day weekend, which we never did before, but we decided to start to do it. COVID and it's been very, it has been very popular, is like a shutdown week over Christmas. Now it's challenging for our, for our customer support team. So we've gotta find ways. I mean, they've gotta, they've gotta work. There are some people that do to find other ways to kind of give them a benefit and a perk later on that kind of, you know, helps with that. But again, it's like paying attention to what people need is what I found the most important thing. And it was about listening.
Speaker 2 00:33:43 Do you do surveys to listen to those kinda issues?
Speaker 3 00:33:46 Absolutely. We do. We do engagement surveys, you know, every six to nine months. So we have a lot of important data from our employees and what I noticed over time, Diane, as we were going through COVID is that people's point of view actually changed. And I started to see that people were more like, you know, well, I miss my colleagues. This is kind of working for me working from home. And what, when people in earlier on might have said, okay, when it's time to go back, I'm looking forward to it. Maybe not as many days, then we started to see later on people saying, well, I'm looking forward to going back, but maybe one or two times a month. So how people, you know, as they manage through COVID and the way they worked, their point of view about work and how they want to show up for work changed.
Speaker 2 00:34:36 Yeah. I I've seen a lot of that and I, it, it's gonna be interesting to see the final if there is ever a final, but the next transition to whatever is the new norm of how people work. And I don't know if it will be as fixed as what we saw in the past. I think it's gonna be so different for each company and each industry and each position. And, you know, but I think these are such important issues that all kind of fall into this ESG category. Was there anything that I didn't ask you that you guys are doing at DocuSign that kind of falls into that, that you wanna share? Cuz I think everybody's here to learn tips and tidbits.
Speaker 3 00:35:11 I think this, this whole creating a sense of community during this period. And we've like I said, we've hired so many employees. So it's like, what do we do to make sure they feel connected to the DocuSign culture? We rolled out a platform called DocuSign connections at an allowed employees to have peer coaching and allowed them to sign up for mentors and stay connected to people. We didn't talk too much about our DocuSign impact program, but that is our volunteer program. It's our giving back program. And during COVID we had to find ways to allow people to participate in impact programs, giving back to the community. We had to get very creative about how to do that and do that in zoom. Now, fortunately, we're able to come together when it's it's safer. So we're seeing companies, employees come together and they do things like plant trees in urban areas and impact is a way for people to feel like they're meeting with their colleagues, they're creating a sense of community.
Speaker 3 00:36:11 They're living the DocuSign values and they're giving back to the local communities where we work. And another thing I just wanna say is obviously during this period, there were no holiday parties, right? So the budget we spent in holiday parties, we completely redirected to our impact and we would have local employees nominate a number of charities and we would just make the decision about, you know, what we thought were the most connected to our, our, our goals for impact. And we donated the money to charities rather than, you know, not spend it or, and I'll tell you something why I don't know for sure. I think that trend is gonna continue. What I don't, I think the big holiday part is over. I may be a hundred percent wrong. I maybe like an old foggy here, but I, I don't think that's coming back.
Speaker 2 00:37:01 Did you, did they do the, you know, the giving and the all that during work hours or on their own time
Speaker 3 00:37:08 We give volunteer time off. So they do it during their work hours that people get an upper volunteer days. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:37:14 Well I think that would be very meaningful to me. I know. And I think sometimes, you know, I, I could remember being in sales, they'd offer us incentives that sometimes weren't super motivating to me. I didn't wanna go to a basketball game at night and that would be what the <laugh> my, my big reward would be or whatever it was, you know, and I liked it, but I didn't wanna go out at night. And, you know, sometimes we had to find out what people really want at further incentives. And I could see that that would be a very rewarding, fulfilling thing to do. And I, I admire what you guys are doing at DocuSign. And I was so excited to have you on the show today and I, I really appreciate all your time, Joan, this has been so great. Thank you so much for all your insights.
Speaker 3 00:37:54 Diane's been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting
Speaker 2 00:37:56 Me. Oh, you're welcome.
Speaker 1 00:38:02 We always love to hear from you. If you have any questions or comments, head over to gmn.net and say, hello, that's where you can also sign up for our monthly newsletter and our blog on transformational leadership. Also be sure to follow global mentor network on Twitter and LinkedIn. And don't forget to head over to wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe for more tips to elevate your impact while you're at it, leave a rating and a comment. It helps us to keep improving the podcast for you. See you next time for another episode of leaders' playbook.
