Narrator: Wellbeing, career agility and cutting edge technology are essential to shaping a remarkable employee experience from onboarding to retirement, yet the responsibility doesn’t end at the workplace. Forward-thinking. Leaders like Ginnie Carlier also champion initiatives that support fulfillment in employees personal lives.
Ginnie Carlier: I wake up every day and think about how can I create extraordinary experiences, for all of the people, in the Americas. And I, you know, and I think about how do I bring extraordinary experiences in terms of not just in their work life, but also in their personal lives as well.
Narrator: Ginnie is the vice chair of Talent for the Americas at EY. Here she leads the America’s efforts to create exceptional and transformative experiences for nearly 98,000 people in 31 countries. During her tenure with EY Ginnie has worked around the world in several key roles, building and leading high performing EY teams on three continents. In this episode, Ginnie and host Nicole Alvino discuss strategies for creating extraordinary experiences, the evolving role of AI in the workplace, and the importance of empathy in leadership. On Cruising Altitude, we talk about employee experience lessons from leaders at companies with over 30,000 employees. A lot like reaching, cruising altitude at 30,000 feet. Things look a little different when you’re managing 30,000 people. On this podcast, we bring you insights from the leaders who inhabit that rarefied air. Today’s episode features an interview with Ginnie Carlier. But first, let’s hear a word from our sponsor.
Narrator: And now your host, Nicole Alveo, CEO, and co-founder of Firstup.
Nicole Alvino: Hello everyone and thanks for joining us on Cruising Altitude. I’m Nicole Alvino, founder and CEO of Firstup, super passionate about ensuring that every worker feels connected and engaged with their employer. Firstup is a SaaS platform used by 40 of the Fortune 100 to provide an exceptional employee experience for every employee. When we do this, we retain and grow our people and increase efficiency and adoption of organizational initiatives, all part of driving a high performance culture. So our mission today is to help you learn about how we can retain top talent, improve organizational culture, and drive your business outcomes. So welcome to today’s episode of Cruising Altitude. I am so excited to have Ginnie Carlier with us. She leads one of the largest talent organizations at ey, close to a hundred thousand people, I believe, in over 30 countries. So we are in for a real treat. Uh, welcome Ginnie.
Ginnie Carlier: Thanks, Nicole. It’s great to be here.
Nicole Alvino: So I always start these podcasts with having people, share three fun facts. It’s also how we introduce new employees to Firstup. So I’d love to learn a little more about you with your three fun facts.
Ginnie Carlier: Yeah, these are always hard for me because I’m always sit there and I pause and think, oh, I’m not really that fun. But, three fun facts. I love surprises. I love surprises in all forms. I love to surprise people. I love being surprised. I love to travel, especially adventurous travel. I actually, one of my more recent, travel ventures was driving a tuk, took across India, 3,600 kilometers.
and I have a deep admiration, some might call an obsession, for Navy Seals.
Nicole Alvino: I love those. Those are all great fun facts. So how is one of the surprises related to one of your international travels?
Ginnie Carlier: one of my travels, I actually was stuck. I’m not gonna say who, but I was stuck and I met, I. An Oscar winning actor in a restaurant, and he gave me a ride on his private plane to halfway to where I needed to be, but he certainly got me unstuck in the situation.
it was a very serendipitous, very fun, exciting, like just interaction, that I didn’t expect.
Nicole Alvino: I love that. And slightly different than took, took, but you know,
Ginnie Carlier: Yes.
Nicole Alvino: you got from point A to point B in a very, very fabulous way.
Ginnie Carlier: Yeah.
Nicole Alvino: I love that. Well, good.
can you please share with us about your role at EY and also a little bit about EY as a company for those who are less familiar?
Ginnie Carlier: Yeah, absolutely. so EY as a company is,it’s a global professional service organization, multidisciplinary firm, our foundational services, our audit and tax. But now we have a large breadth of consulting service. That range from just core type of managerial type of consulting all the way through financial consulting, through to mergers and acquisitions.
Really thinking about taking a corporation from, transform to transact or transact to transform. so, very much a multidisciplinary organization. We are 400,000 people strong globally. and we operate in over 150 countries. my job is I’m the vice chair of Talent for the Americas.
That includes North and South American Israel. and my responsibility is to really, I wake up every day to. and think about how can I create extraordinary experiences, for all of the people, in the Americas. And I, you know, and I think about how do I bring extraordinary experiences in terms of not just in their work life, but also in their personal lives as well.
So I also think about what are the things that we can do for their extended families, for those in their households. and so I, you know, I oversee everything from recruiting. All the way through to when someone either retires from EY or moves on to, another part of their career progresses into, you know, further into their career.
So I get to have the benefit of having an impact throughout their experience while they’re at ey.
Nicole Alvino: I love that. What a great. A great span from hire to retire. And what are some of the things that you think about that make up an exceptional employee experience?
Ginnie Carlier: really I think about the promise that, we make to, our employees. And when you sort of step back and you look at the workforce today, I mean it, the expectations that people have of their employer, very different than they were just five, seven years ago.
And this is really the first time that we’ve had. Five generations, in the workforce and the motivations and needs of each of those generations is very different. And so I think organizations that have really paused to think about what is the promise we’re gonna provide to these employees, these employees that show up every day, and give,their very best and their talents to, to us.
and stay engaged. What is our promise back to them? And that’s really the employee value proposition. And I think about EY and our employee value proposition of shape your future with confidence and you know, bringing that to life for them. And we’re doing that with kind of two. Commitments. One is around career agility.
when you talk to your employees and really understand what excites them, it’s the ability to have different experiences to evolve themselves as a person, as a professional. And so I always like to like, use like an illustration of, you know, think about providing the career playground. for your employees, like the career ladder is no longer the, you know, sort of the one apparatus that everybody wants to be on.
Like, yes, it’s important to continue to climb that ladder, but sometimes people just wanna jump off and go and master skills somewhere else. within the organization. So being able to provide that career agility to your employees is really important. And then also giving them the space to thrive and creating that time and space for them to develop and continue to feel like they’re investing in themselves, whether that’s.
The wellbeing of themselves and their teams. Whether that’s learning, you know, a new skill, investing personal time to learn a new skill, getting involved in the community, but creating that time and space for them, I think is incredibly important.
Nicole Alvino: Yeah, those are so many great things and we’ll, we’ll double click. I like the, the notion of the, the career playground, not just the ladder. So you can also do the, the swings and the slide and everything.
Ginnie Carlier: Exactly.
Nicole Alvino: I. Yeah. That’s great. So when we think about one of the pieces, and I know that you’ve, you’re thinking about five generations of people at work, which is a lot different preferences, different types of things.
I know you’ve also done a lot for wellbeing. Can you share a little bit more on what you’re doing there with wellbeing and you are also doing some innovative things tying to business outcomes.
Ginnie Carlier: yeah, there’s a lot happening. I mean, we’ve been on what I would say a,this wellbeing journey for well over a decade. I mean, this has been evolving for quite some time and, if I’m honest, it really got momentum I think during c and sort of really right post covid. And one of the things that, you know, we realized was that wellbeing.
It’s very much a personal thing and you know what is important to you with your wellbeing, Nicole versus mine are gonna, it could be very different and they all, it’s also very different depending on where you’re at, and what stage of your career or your stage of your life that you’re at. And so one of the things that we wanted to do was really start to make sure that we were personalizing as much as we could.
Benefits that we had, and we looked at what was important for our employees as we were sort of coming out of Covid. You know, we had learned a lot of things working during Covid. We wanted to kind of harness some of the greatness of the ways we worked before Covid and how do we bring those two things together.
and so we started to experiment. If I’m honest with you, We weren’t really sure. We had some employees telling us certain things that they needed from a benefit perspective. We have other employees telling us, you know, they needed certain things. So we started to experiment around. You know, a fund that could provide benefits to a person based on what they truly needed.
And so we started the, extraordinary youth fund, and that’s made up of really three components. a wellbeing piece, a connection piece. and a, benefit care piece and what it focused on was there. We all knew that everyone was, wanted to focus on their wellbeing, but recognizing everyone had those different needs.
We said, let’s create a fund where people can tap into what’s important to them. You know, sleep’s important. So if someone wants to use the funded by a mattress. Let them use the mattress. We recognized that gaming was a way for people to relieve stress. So we allowed them to use the fund for gaming consoles, gym memberships, meal plans.
So whatever was the need that the person had, the connection fund was, we were really trying to drive people to. Connect again, post covid. We had so many people who joined us during Covid and what was a way that we could help facilitate that connection? The other thing that we discovered was so many people became pet owners during covid and once like we came out of that and we were coming back together again, it was like, well, who’s gonna take care of my pet?
And so we created this connection fund that allowed people to use the fund for. Pet care as well as commuting costs. And then we had this benefit care, component where. You know, our people are having to not just take care of their young families, but also aging adults, in their family. And many times they needed this emergency backup care.
So really this extraordinary youth fund was just, was really a fund for you annually to use based on the needs that you had. so that was definitely one way that we were trying to be unique in our offering to our people.
Nicole Alvino: Yeah. I love that. And you touched on such an important point about personalization, because ev, everyone, to your point, wellbeing is different. What they needs are different, even types of benefits. One person wants a mattress, another wants a gaming console, and another wants to go to yoga. So you’ve got to be able to support all of those.
I really love how you’ve, taken that approach there. And you have something else that you discovered, the Vitality Index to measure wellbeing. Can you share a little bit more about what that is?
Ginnie Carlier: Yeah, so the Vitality Index really came out of a discussion that I was having with who is now our Chief Wellbeing Officer. and we were having this discussion about. We’re doing all this investment in wellbeing and wellbeing is so important to our people. Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a way that we could measure it and really measure the impact?
it’s having not just, on the individual, but the teams in which they work, and then ultimately, you know, on the business performance and how can we help leaders really. facilitate that, you know, really understand where their team is at from a wellbeing perspective. And so we started talking about wellbeing as a team sport.
and that’s, and that was incredibly important, to the adoption of the vitality index because we wanted to make sure that teams really rallied around. Each other and created team norms and behaviors that would really help individuals thrive in whatever their wellbeing needs were. And so the Vitality Index has really been this evolving measurement tool that looks at kind of two, two factors, experiential.
So really asking the person, how are you feeling? Do you feel stay safe, do you feel valued? and then operational type of measurements. PTO hours worked, things of that nature. And then that forms. 10 drivers and let me tell you, it started off close to 25 or 30 drivers and we eventually got to a place where there’s really 10 key drivers to help leaders to, you know, measure these and understand where each individual on the team is, but also as a team as a whole is from a wellbeing perspective.
And it’s led us to be able to have. Indicators, predictability in terms of when we predict highs and lows in wellbeing. and then also what are the consequences of those highs and lows. So when we’re starting to see low, how far are we to a place where, you know, engagement is gonna start to dip?
How far are we along that maybe we should be worrying about attrition rates going up. but what’s great is there’s this intervention, that happens as when the indicators start to change. There’s suggestions made to the leaders, there’s a way for the leaders to go in and say, these are things that you, actions you can take as a leader to help your team.
and so it’s been a real, success story, for us. And we’re finding that leaders and teams who really leverage. The information coming from Vitality Index have had greater success, on their engagement in terms of delivery, in terms of economics, just really any way that you measure the business.
And so, we’re gonna continue. This is certainly something we’ll continue to invest in and leverage.
Nicole Alvino: No, I love the fact that, you know, we do that to tying as it is a leading indicator, right? How your talent feels, how they show up. Then to, to your point, all of the other things downstream. It’s engagement, it’s ultimately attrition, it’s productivity, it’s new business. It’s all of those. Things and to be able to have some actual metrics to, to look at.
So you have some data and then insights and to your point, you can now be, predictive and then even prescriptive and saying, here, manager, here’s where you can go in to your point and intervene and get someone either help back on track. so I just love how you’re bringing data to this piece.
to just give more, more insight to the leader and the individual employee.
let’s switch a little bit. You mentioned something earlier around career agility. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what that means and how, how you’re really helping to harness that for your diverse, population of employees?
Ginnie Carlier: Well, you know, as I, said before, career agility is really about. How do you provide the experiences and opportunities that are so important to, professionals entering the workforce today and, and really you know, all professionals that are in the workforce today. I mean, you know, there wasn’t, you know, we did a generational survey and each generation said they were very much motivated by.
you know, exceptional experiences, different opportunities where they really felt like they were growing, both personally and professionally. So I think the ability to, when an organization can bring that to life and create those opportunities and those experiences, that’s the gold.
And I, you know, I, I think about. The generation that’s entering the workforce today. And I’m gonna take us to the AI conversation that, you know, you can’t escape, anymore. I mean, it can’t have a conversation where AI doesn’t come into, into as a topic and I think about this generation that is entering the workforce today.
I mean, they’re digital natives. I mean, that’s just what they do. I mean, I talked to my niece and she doesn’t do anything without, you know, consulting chat GPT first. And and it’s just second nature to her. and I think you’ve gotta be an organization that creates that environment where they can be free.
To use what is just second nature to them. And one of the ways that, you know, we’ve invested, and I’ve actually talked to other organizations that are doing things similarly, is what can you do from the very beginning to demonstrate to. Your candidates, so your future professionals, and then those, as soon as they’re entering, the workforce into your, and they’re choosing your organization to start their career, how can you demonstrate to them that you’re committed to this?
And, you know, one of the ways that we’re doing it is through what we call the Weavers, and it is a metaverse platform that is. it’s engine by generative ai and we start with. when people are on campus or when they’re leaving wherever, you know, their last, you know, stage of education was, and they’re entering the workforce.
They can enter the weavers, they can get recruiting tips. We have an avatar called Eve who provides feedback, to the candidate. Who can help them understand what it’s like to work at ey, what are the benefits that we have? So it’s a really, and it’s an interesting interactive way, but it shows our commitment to AI and really embracing,the digital and.
and this, you know, also through this process is we’ve created a digital twin of 12 of our offices where people can actually put in VR glasses and walk around the office and get a feel of what it’s like in the day to day in our offices and working at EY and I’m highlighting these things because they, you know, on the surface they might sound, okay, well that’s, that’s kind of.
Cute and I guess you interesting, but is there really a value there? But I think the value comes to show those entering the workforce that we are committed to this, and we are committed to ai.
Nicole Alvino: Yeah, no, I love,the concept and especially for the people, to your point,Those entering the workforce who are not just digital native, but AI native and that is part of just how they interact. So what are you doing to help folks who are learning AI for the first time in terms of, upskilling and those who are, need a bit more support from a learning and development standpoint?
Ginnie Carlier: Yeah, and it’s the question that everyone’s asking right now. I mean, I think the some recent, research that was done by LinkedIn, I mean it said that by 2030, 70% of jobs will either be outdated or replaced and. On the surface, you might think, okay, 2030, that’s a long time away.
But I mean, COVID was five years ago, and we still talk about it as if it was last year sometimes, right? It’s like this stake in time, and so 2030 will be here before we know it, and. But where we could embrace, we could think about that research and think, oh my gosh, that’s daunting. Or we can really embrace that as, you know, a sort of a case for investment and change.
And I really believe organizations who invest in and change and really focus on their learning development strategy are gonna be the organizations that win. In the workforce and because one of the things that we need to be thinking about is AI isn’t just, it’s not just a productivity tool anymore.
We, we talked about it as, as being all about productivity, but when you step back and you change the narrative around the employee experience, it’s a whole different meaning and. Yes, it is replacing tasks that people do, and for some roles it’s just replacing a few tasks. For other roles, it’s replacing a lot of what that person does, but AI has the ability to elevate that person, in a way that we’ve never seen before and in, in a way, in a time period that we never thought imaginable.
I mean, in, in just a few months, you can. Literally amplify or equalize a person’s skillset, if you do the right training and the right exposure. So I do think that we’re in a place right now where self experimentation is gonna be important. Organizations are really gonna have to embrace that. I also think that the learning and development that we create for people, we have to think about it as we’re also creating the content for ai.
So. The learning development is elevating the person’s skillset, but it’s also elevating the content in which AI is going to be able to mine and go, you know, and use in terms of like the instructions it’s given to, to help in whatever research or whatever task it’s trying to do. And I think that’s a really important, you know, thing for us to be considering right now is that we’re not just educating the human,
We’re also educating the AI or creating the content for the ai.
Nicole Alvino: Yeah, that’s such an important part to, to think about the, and yes, we’re making our people, you know, this notion of super workers or be able to do so much more with whether it’s ai, companions, agents, different types of things. Again, to your point, depending on the role and also the level of intelligence that we’re adding con continues to grow and as we’re we train the models.
They continue to learn. So I love thinking about the continued intelligence and how we, will evolve and evolve really quickly.
Ginnie Carlier: Yeah. I mean, anxiety comes with change and AI is just going to continue to drive more and more change and I always like to. To talk to the people on my team and say, like, think about, yes, AI is changing how we do the work, but we as humans are still there to define why we’re doing the work.
And I think that’s really important and that, you know, your subject matter expertise and the skillset that you bring, you are going to continue to be educating the. Other members of your team, but you also have to think about it as you’re also informing ai, from a content perspective. And think about the quality of what comes out from the work that AI does is based on the quality of the content that goes in and think of yourself as being the curator of that content.
And I think that that’s a much different message and a much different way to think about it in terms of like. to me, that is like a motivator to wanna continue to really invest in your skillset. and you know what? You can, you know what you can bring as an employee.
Nicole Alvino: Definitely. I love that, that, that putting humans at the center of it. I mean, I firmly believe that AI will unlock if we use the right way. Create better human connection for certain types of things and be able to, especially a lot of the work that your people are doing, it will shift and it will change.
And this notion of the people doing the work now are continuing to create the content, train the models, elevate what they’re able to do for, you know, internally and externally with all of your clients.
Ginnie Carlier: Yeah. And I love the, I love how you brought up the connection piece because I think there’s a little bit of a debate, you know, is AI going to, make it harder for us as humans to connect? and, I always use the example when, when I have this discussion with others.
Recently we went through a process where we had upward feedback. It’s, you know, something that we do, or try to do on an annual basis, and. I received the feedback and like, you know, human nature, like anyone, I was reading my, my anonymous upward feedback, and of course I’m, you know, I’m first trying to figure out who wrote it and in what context they wrote it versus what they were actually trying to say to me.
And it kind of dawned on me, I’m like, well, let me put this through, EYQ, which is our proprietary LLM. sort of our chat, GPT and I. Let me put it through EYQ and see what happens. And I asked it to summarize this, these leader strengths based on this feedback. And then I asked it to provide. Five recommendations with actions.
So true actions based on, where I can improve. And by doing that, it took all the emotion out of it. Like I actually, when I saw the 10 things that it summarized in terms of what this leader does well. it was incredibly heartening. Like I, you know, I, there was a moment of pride in how I was showing up as a leader, and then the actions actually became things that were very doable.
And then, you know, to the connection piece, I was able to take that output to my leader. The conversation was so much richer because I know how the conversation would’ve gone if I would’ve gone with the original raw data, it would’ve, I would’ve spent the entire time justifying it, you know, them trying to talk me out of, you know, like, oh, Ginnie, it’s, that’s not what they’re trying to say.
I think this is what they’re trying to say. And then this way, I actually was able to go with this information, and we had this great conversation about. Where I wanna take my career and how they can help me with these actions that we both agreed were really good actions and indicators on how I could improve.
And so I think it completely changed, the whole, feeling of the discussion. And so I think there are ways that you can create better connections, with the use of ai.
Nicole Alvino: I love that example. That is so, so, so powerful. And it just makes me think too with, especially right now, so much change, uncertainty, tumult in, in the world. So how do you lead in these times and how do you help your team and the teams that they’re leading, navigate.
Ginnie Carlier: I think you cannot underestimate the importance of empathy. when I think about the skill sets of the future leader, the first skill that I always say is I. empathy and this doesn’t take a wholesale change, this doesn’t take years of development and training. This really is just recognizing that, taking a pause.
Being willing to listen and not feeling like you have to always come up with the solutions is what it takes to be empathetic. And right now people wanna feel heard. People want. To feel valued. They wanna know that their opinion matters. That if they ask you for 30 minutes of your time, that you are going to give that 30 minutes that you are willing to schedule that time with them because you’re willing to give them that 30 minutes that they need or whatever the time is.
But I think what’s important is, that right now listening. Not feeling like you’ve gotta be always in solution mode is probably one of the best things that we could be doing, through uncertain times through this change with ai, no matter what it is. I think that’s probably the number one thing that I would recommend,for people to really invest in terms of building their skillset as leaders.
Nicole Alvino: Yeah. I love that. It’s so powerful to, to listen and stop and not always need to come up with the response or the solve that’s so, so important. and that kind of brings us to, one of the ways that I like to wind down the podcast when we think about cruising altitude. It’s for companies who are managing over 30,000 employees.
We cruise in airplanes at 30,000 feet, and for me, I get a sense of clarity and heightened perspective. I do a lot of travel. I’m sure you, you do as well. Well, and so what is your place where you get to this extreme clarity or heightened perspective?
Ginnie Carlier: Well, I’m fortunate that I live in a high altitude place. I am an outdoor junkie. I live in Colorado and I’m very fortunate to have, I. Trails and wilderness, just, you know, right out my back door. And so I spent a lot of time, hiking, a lot of time snowshoeing, a lot of time skiing by myself.
Just, you know, that is my reflection time. so it’s usually something active outdoors is when I’m able to really, you know, pause, have moments by myself, really get clarity on things.
Nicole Alvino: That’s great. And can you think of something that,this level of clarity and perspective helped you with a breakthrough or achieve something that you didn’t think possible before?
Ginnie Carlier: well, we talked about it one of them earlier, was the Vitality Index. I thought about the fact that we as organizations have been measuring engagement every which way from Sunday for the last decade and a half. Why can’t we figure out a way to measure wellbeing? If we could figure out a way to measure wellbeing,the impact that, that will have.
and so I, I, I think we cracked it, but yeah, the vitality index was a vision that happened on a, on a hike with my dog one day.
Nicole Alvino: I love that. I love that everyone get, get outside and, and go for some, go for some hikes. Okay. Well good. This has been so great. Can you share, I always like to end with, the ones, one thing that you never do. And one thing that you always do.
Ginnie Carlier: The never in the always, they come from actually the same person. so I had a mentor once who challenged me to always have a mindset that went beyond a growth mindset. And so I, one day told him that I was always gonna have it in vitreous mindset. So I never say no to an opportunity even when I don’t.
Truly understand what that opportunity is. I just, I never say no because an adventurous mindset will just take it on, and see what they get from it. what will I always do? And learned it from the same person, which was find something, the, something that you would have you see, that every day that would remind you to pause, and think of something good in that day.
’cause no matter. How bad the day might’ve felt, the stress of the day. There’s always something, one good thing. And he’s like, just always pause and when you see that, whatever that thing is. And so now I carry around ’cause I travel so much, I carry around a little trinket. it’s with me all the time, so at least I know I see it once a day and I think of something good.
Nicole Alvino: I love those. I love those adventurous mindset and the time to pause and reflect. Well, Ginnie, thank you so much. You’ve shared some amazing knowledge with. All of our listeners, I’m sure we could continue for hours and hours, um, but can you share with listeners how to find you if they want to continue the conversation?
Ginnie Carlier: Well, you can always find me on LinkedIn. yes, I’m very active on LinkedIn, I mean, if you go to the EY site, I’m certainly there and you can email me, but LinkedIn’s usually a pretty good way to, to track me down.
Nicole Alvino: Okay, super. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I really enjoyed the conversation.
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