JESS VON BANK’s Post

If you follow me, you know I raise three warrior daughters of my own, work at Mercer, and lead Diverse Daisies, a nonprofit to give every girl a place to belong, a place to grow.   Last month, a new girl joined our monthly Diverse Daisies activity, a half-day horse camp where girls learned to tack, saddle, feed, and ride horses. She didn't say a single word. Barely looked up. No eye contact. But she did everything everyone else did, sort of melting into the background and following the leader. Seemed happy to be there but it was hard to know, let alone get to know her. Yesterday, I brought Diverse Daisies sailing in a community partnership with the Minneapolis Sailing Center. She came back. Silent again, downcast eyes. Sort of slid into her life vest, slid onto a keel boat, and slid back up the dock while the rest of the girls gushed about their wild adventure on the high seas of Lake Bde Maka Ska. 😉 ⛵ I looked back through my pictures and zoomed in on her: there it is. A soft smile. Always shrinking behind someone, still voiceless, but eyes cast straight ahead. Looking at the camera this time. Smiling. Her guardian approached me on the dock: "I took her into foster care two months ago; I've been bringing her with my daughters. I am so grateful for Diverse Daisies. She's never done anything even close to the things you do with these girls. She can't even fathom it. She's been through …a lot. What you let these girls do is beyond anything she can even imagine. I'm so happy you exist."   This girl alone is worth every minute I have spent leading Diverse Daisies for the last 4 1/2 years. It could all be for her, but there are even more. I honestly have these moments all the time, my heart can barely handle them all. 💛 🌼   You have nothing else to do but live and breathe your purpose. You don't need proof every day, you just need to believe it matters. Because they just need one person to believe they matter. Massive thanks to our cheerleaders, sponsors, donors, board members. Some of you are reading this.😍

🏙 SINGAPORE, HERE WE COME 🏙 👀 Session Sneak Peek 👀 If your #HRTechnology isn't having the desired impact, it may be because your strategy is hinged on a bunch of false assumptions. Market research tends to focus on how decision makers evaluate, select, use, measure and replace solutions for their complex HR tech stacks. Most reports don’t focus on the perceived and real value of these solutions to the people they’re ultimately designed for: WORKERS THEMSELVES. That's why Mercer undertook its first ever study designed to understand how #technology decisions affect real-life workers. We started in the U.S. Did you know... 🤔 #HR has the MOST INFLUENCE when it comes to #AI adoption at #work; they're using it more, too. Yep, more than #IT and #technology leaders. 👨💻 Digital natives are NO FASTER to adopt new tech then digital immigrants. Take that, kids. But why? 💲 People say they ❤️ #performance reviews when they directly impact #pay 🤑 & #promotion, but even when it does or especially if it does not, they STRESS EVERYONE THE HELL OUT. Big opportunity to tune our approach here. 💼 Guess who benefits the most from #learning, #careerdevelopment, and #skills strategies? E-XE-CU-TIVES. Doh. Not what we wanted. How do we get good intentions to trickle down the org chart? ⌛ As workers age, they spend less time developing skills. Tenure also erodes sentiment. Not good with more #workers staying in the #workforce longer. So what's the remedy? I'm giving #Singapore & #APAC a sneak peek of this report before it's even released. With so many #HRTech vendors looking to crack open the North American market, I see a lot of BLUE OCEAN for fresh thinking and disruptive solutions. Cannot wait to share these insights with People Matters' #TechHRSG #conference. See you next week! ***Pssst: What do Jason Averbook & I need to see & do while in beautiful Singapore?*** People Matters Global #TechHRIN #MercerSG #APAC #CHRO #digitalHR

The largest association of #HR professionals drops #equity from its strategic priorities. 🤦♀️ And the post was made on Black Women's Equal Pay Day, no less. One of those yearly observances that's less holiday and more of a reminder, marker, warning. ‼️🚨⚖️ Rather than blame #DEI for coming under fire and buckling under political bullshit, SHRM could have planted a firm flag and reminded us all that absolutely nothing matters -- not your #employeeexperience or your #culture initiatives or your #engagement and #productivity expectations -- if you don't get #equity right. But they didn't. This is not just a huge miss, this is massively irresponsible. HR, think for yourself on this one. You know how to do better than this. Do it. #equalpay #payequity #genderequality #paygap #diversity #workforceexperience #parity #DEIB

Literally why I love Sara Martin. 🔥

Scaffolding is a temporary support structure to provide safety -- both a literal and psychological concept. I first heard the term when I listened to Adam Grant tell the story of Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, first black grandmaster in chess who coached an underdog middle school chess team from Harlem to smashing success. Before Maurice could teach them to win at chess, he had to get them to PLAY chess, to even CONSIDER such an idea for themselves. Scaffolding. I think about that a lot as a woman in #tech, as a #mom to 3 daughters, and as the President of Diverse Daisies, a #nonprofit designed to give girls a safe space to develop confidence and skills. I think about it every time you all ask me about women and #impostersyndrome. Maybe we don't have imposter syndrome at all; maybe we're just navigating a world not designed for us. Actually discriminating and unwelcoming to us. It's one thing to invite us in, it's another to feel safe and welcomed. Commanding a room vs. demanding a room. Challenge: Ask me about scaffolding rather than imposter syndrome. Like Tegan Trovato did, CEO + Founder of Bright Arrow Coaching & Leadership Development and host of the Life + Leadership podcast. There are a few things I melt for. Raising girls and #momlife, elevating women, collecting race medals, paddle boarding, connecting your daily #work to your #passion, and the concept of scaffolding. Listen: https://lnkd.in/giawDkn4 Thanks for having me, Tegan!

In Mercer’s Global Talent Trends report, 42% of #HR practitioners say implementing or upgrading new HR #technologies is the biggest challenge to their operating model. Even more, 2 out of 3 employees say their organization isn’t good at communicating how recent #technology, #AI or #automation will improve the way we #work. When we’re counting on a silver bullet to make things better and it FAILS or FALLS SHORT, people suffer. We lose out on the value we hoped for, and we degrade trust and morale to boot. I explained the High Stakes of #HRTechnology in my latest piece for Human Resource Executive. Read for 6 ways to get your next investment right. ✅ #humanresources #hrtech #worktech #digitaltransformation #HRtransformation #digitalHR #TATech #skillstech #employeeexperience

Imagine if everything was centered around women. And men were the supporting actors. There would be tech, and men in tech. Founders, and male founders. CEOs. And (a handful of) male CEOs. We'd celebrate the shit out of them, too, those rare gems. People who work, and look at those working dads! Ah, good on them. There would be employee resource groups and Men in Leadership programs and special task forces to achieve pay and promotion equity for men and other disadvantaged groups. We would ask men what accommodation they require in order to be able to contribute valuable work... ...and then pay them a little short when they do. Oops. 🤭 Imagine if your gender was your disadvantage. Imagine becoming a vocal and visible advocate for succeeding in spite of it. In fact, I keynote about being a woman in technology almost as much as I keynote about tech itself just to make sure our collective voices are heard. So keep asking me. I'll keep talking about #diversity, #inclusion, #womenintech, #womeninleadership, #humanresources, #payequity and #closingthegap in #technology, #AI, and #innovation until we no longer need the qualifier, how's that? 😉 #womensupportingwomen shoutouts!: 🗣 Teri A. Zipper for hosting me on Sapient Insights Group podcast about this very topic. Episode here: https://lnkd.in/ektXY3RW 🗣 Janice D'Aloia for asking me to support Oracle HCM Users Group (OHUG) & Oracle Applications & Technology Users Group (OATUG)'s Ascend conference last week, including your incredible Women in Tech community 🗣 Alexandria Smith, Gina Armada, Jacklyn Karell, Lauren Kopec, and Angie Chatham for sharing brilliant Lessons in Leadership on stage in Las Vegas last week...I learned from each one of you 🗣 My dad for proving feminists aren't just women

⚡ SPECIAL EPISODE ⚡ Could AI be like the Olympics? 🌐 Lots of disciplines, lots of winners, even more losers, international cooperation and strict governance, no single finish line or single metric of success. Or is it a zero sum game? You either win or lose, game over. Still to be seen in some regards, but we're already seeing clear winners in the still-early land grab. Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, medalists to be sure. What happens when Apple doesn’t need their OpenAI band-aid, er, partnership, any more? Where does Alphabet Inc. net out in all this? What happens to #applications, #platforms, point solutions, and #marketplaces? What does all of this have to do with #HRTechnology and your #experience architecture? #HR, the latest #AI developments have EVERYTHING to do with your experience architecture. When Sam Altman called this a "printing press moment" before Congress last year, he meant the opportunity of #technology to become a significant change agent in tipping the trajectory of things. We're already seeing proof in the world of #work. Tomorrow's Digital Meetup is a SPECIAL EPISODE discussing all the latest AI developments, sharing high-value use cases for #HumanResources and the #workforce beyond the obvious (I'm not generating a job description for you, so don't ask me to), and live demoing some of the best innovation we've seen. Our only guest is artificial. Join us! FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 10AM PT / 1PM ET: https://lnkd.in/g_Ae5pMT Mercer Jason Averbook #NowofWork #GenAI #artificialintelligence #worktech

Still fangirling. Not sure I can say enough about Shannon Boxx, who spent an incredible afternoon with our Women@Mercer #ERG on Friday. ⚽ If you follow soccer you surely know this GOAT. Shannon is a 3X #Olympic gold medalist, FIFA Women's World Cup Champion, and fierce advocate for #diversity & #inclusion, #womensempowerment, #leadership on and off the field, The Lupus Foundation, and #moms. She's one of the mostly highly decorated athletes in her sport, and she describes PRESSURE as a PRIVILEGE. When you feel pressure, it's because it matters. And you can train for pressure. "We trained being down a goal OVER & OVER & OVER AGAIN. We were trained to be down so we knew how to win when everything was on the line." Ooohhh...any entrepreneurs, executives, business leaders, startups, trailblazers, and innovators relate?   Shannon described the pressure of not only being a world-class athlete but also advocating for a PLATFORM for women to EXIST as world-class athletes. People told her to stay in her lane as an athlete, but she chose to use her voice and lead the way for everyone coming behind her. ***Doing the thing is hard enough; advocating for doing the thing is a heavier mantle.*** She was commenting on Caitlin Clark, #equalpay, and #women paving the way WHEN HER KIDS POPPED ON TO SAY HI. 😍 Could I swoon any more?...like I said, still fangirling, so I'll pause mid-swoon to let you follow Shannon yourself. Women who turn around and pull others up behind them are the Single Most Significant Change Agent the world can ask for. Shannon is one. Thanks for being a real one, Shannon. Massive props to Mercer's Women@Mercer for bringing her to us. #MotivationMonday #advocacy #DEI #workingmoms #womeninleadership #womenwholead #technology #innovation Special thanks: our own Trudi Sharpsteen, former pro herself 😍⚽️

Employers & leaders really need to perk up here. It has and will always be true that people expect to be grown and developed. ***Your best talent should be restless.*** If you don't have strong career development, learning programs, and leadership strategies designed to grow people, you're disrespecting their reason for joining you.