Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I’m your host, Bill Kerr. My guest today is Sarah Chavarria, President of Delta Dental of California, which despite the name operates in more than a dozen states. Sarah made the move to the corner office after heading up HR. As a leader, she has prioritized communication over top-down management. In practice, this has meant town hall meetings, webinars, listening tours, and during the pandemic, providing crucial information on vaccines. We’ll talk about Delta Dental’s ongoing digital transformation, managing a majority-female workforce, access and equity in the delivery of care, and helping practitioners weather the pandemic. We’ll also look at the company’s remote and hybrid work strategy and its commitment to diversity. Welcome to the podcast, Sarah.

Sarah Chavarria: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Kerr: Sarah, let’s begin with a little bit of your background and the roles that you’re playing at Delta Dental of California.

Chavarria: Sure. As you said, I’m President of Delta Dental, and we’re an enterprise that encompasses 15 states and the District of Columbia. We have nearly 5,000 employees, and we provide quality oral health benefits to more than 44 million Americans. We are a 68-year-old organization. I started my journey with Delta Dental in 2017, where I joined as the Chief People Officer, and in March of ’22, I became the Chief Operations Officer, and in August, then, the President, where I oversee operations, technology, relationship and business development—which is our growth function—marketing, communications, and people. I’ve been at it for over 30 years as an HR professional, focused on both start-up companies and transformation companies.

Kerr: Sarah, that path from being the Chief People Officer or sometimes the Chief Human Resources Officer to becoming the President or the CEO is becoming quite frequent in business these days. I’d love your reflections as to why you think that is, and also what has been the benefit for you in the president’s role from having that background?

Chavarria: I think nothing could be more exciting to me than to have watched this role evolve. When I joined 30 years ago into the workforce, I was really focused on leadership development, organizational effectiveness. And I happened to report to HR. And I think, over the decades, that evolution of the human resources function has just been in tandem with my career. I think that a lot of times you hear HR really identified as the eyes and ears of the organization, and I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong. But I do think there’s so much more to it than that. When I think about the most talented HR people that I’ve had the pleasure of working with, I think of someone who brings an incredible business savvy, like a real understanding of how does the business fit into its marketplace. Where is it trying to go? Is it a start-up? Is it a transformation? And then, on the other side, they have this incredible talent for engagement and empathy, if you will, and so [they] really can then connect that to the impact it’s going to have on the employees, the impact it’s going to even have on the market, if you make some of these big changes. So I think that what I’ve really loved seeing is, that softer side has become more valuable in leaders. I think that’s that magic sauce that the HR professionals bring to the table, which makes it sound really normal and right to say and suggest that an HR person can, should, really take a leadership role in driving business change or leading operations or any other aspect of the business.

Kerr: And your business has undergone a rather significant transformation in recent years. So maybe tell us a little about the origins of that transformation. And then, how did it impact the skills and workforce dimension?

Chavarria: Yeah, sure. So when I joined in 2017, I was very specifically invited to come to the organization—remember, it’s 68 years old and a really well-known brand doing well—but they really wanted to embark on a transformation to think about, where does this business need to be in five and 10 years from an innovative perspective. And so when I joined, they invited me to lead the culture transformation. So I came into the organization, we didn’t have [defined] organizational values. We really didn’t have competencies, which define how people do their work and what the behaviors are that you’re expecting. And we had a really loose mission or vision for the organization. So my opportunity really started by connecting with employees across the organization and shaping those things. When I started, communications was one of the biggest challenges. We did not have people in the organization who were really focused on this. So I’m really proud of the progress we’ve made in just a few short years. We’ve grown our team, but more importantly, we’ve added communication channels. We did not do virtual town halls before. We didn’t do listening sessions before. We do “All Hands,” where senior leaders meet with their function’s employees. And we’ve really built this incredible way to cascade information that we have. We host “People Leader” webinars about once a month, where we bring every people leader up to date on what they need to know, how we’re thinking about things, and what’s coming down the pike so that they can communicate that to employees. And I think that what used to be a major pain point for us has now become a really top-performing area for us, and our communications teams are really engaged in most of the work that we are doing and how we translate the vision, the goals, and our strategy to every single employee across the organization. And so that culture transformation really started to develop into a business transformation, moving the organization from a command-and-control culture, which can be a very fear-based culture, where people are showing up, and they’re complying with what they’re directed to do. And if, in your business, you’re trying to become more innovative, you certainly want to then have a population that isn’t really focused and driven by fear, but they’re encouraged and engaged to take a risk, make a suggestion, have an idea, maybe do something outside of the lines a little bit, which I think was a big, big step for us. So really landing those values and then defining those competencies for folks and for their leaders really started that journey for us of inviting the employees to engage in a very different way than they had engaged before, where we then started focusing on things like belonging and inclusion—inviting those voices to the table to help us think about, gosh, if this is what we want to do, how long do we think it’s going to take us to do that? Or what should we consider? I think we’re not unique. The front line to our business is through our employees. Most of our employees are the ones engaging directly with our customers, engaging directly with our dentists, with whom we partner to deliver that experience. And so their voices and their opportunity to share their perspectives and insights becomes really, really critical to us. So that, again, that culture transformation really starts to meet that business transformation, where those engaged employees are now enthusiastic about their work. They feel a sense of belonging, which means that they want to help us deliver on that vision. We’re listening, we’re building in those feedback loops to make sure that we’re hearing where are they at?—what do they need from us?—so that as leaders, we’re helping to deliver on some of those things. And I touched on it really briefly, but that then leads to our DIB [diversity, inclusion, belonging] strategy, which I have a very strong bias that it’s not a program; it is a part of how we do business, making sure that we are diverse in how we include many different perspectives from many different experiences to share their voice, help us think about things. Being intentional about diversity, inclusion, belonging, it’s really a business strategy for our innovation, our productivity, and our success. They can’t thrive, our employees, if we’re not diverse in our thinking and our approaches. And so inviting them to help bring that to the table through listening tours, engaging with them as leaders, and developing our leaders to cascade what it is we’re trying to accomplish becomes really important.

Kerr: I know you’re focused a lot on coaching and “I only bring questions” and so forth. So Sarah, tell me as a leader, beyond listening, what is your leadership approach? What’s your style?

Chavarria: I love that question, because I think this gets, again, to the evolution of an HR leader being a really great business leader. I tell my teams all the time, “I don’t bring answers, I only bring questions.” And what I mean by that is, I really see my role as facilitating the right conversations around the table to get to the right outcomes. And this organization, when I joined a little over five years ago, was really more of a command-and-control organization. So the one leader sitting at the head of the table really dictated what the to-dos were and what the goals were. So the ability to facilitate conversation and ask why and ask questions that really prompt people to think differently is a very powerful way to get to the right outcomes on the business front.

Kerr: Sarah, another big thing has been going on as the transformation has happened is, of course, the pandemic. And I’d love for you to help us appreciate where you were, both in terms of centrally at headquarters and then also out in the dental practices, through the pandemic.

Chavarria: What became really, really fast was that our employees immediately were moved to the place of wanting to feel safe and secure. And so we very quickly rallied around that understanding and put emergency time off in place before that was even a thing, so people felt secure that they could take time off if they were unwell or others were unwell. We worked to build the remote capabilities. Now we were taking people from the office who had no laptops, who had no tools at home, and asking them to go work from home tomorrow. So we had a stipend for them that they could spend and use on making themselves set up at home and getting the tools that they need. We launched very rapid communications. We made a commitment early on—one of our values is trust—that we would communicate what we know, when we know it, and how we think about it. And so we had frequent town halls just sharing with employees, “Here’s what we’ve learned, here’s how we’re thinking about it, and here’s how this is going to impact you.” And those feedback loops I talked about earlier were wide open, so that we could really engage with them. Then we, to your question, realized that dentists were impacted, and so our patients, our members, were impacted too, because going to the dentist was changing, and the dentist offices couldn’t see as many patients when they were reopening and doing things like that. And so we launched a comprehensive loan program that offered up to a total of $700 million in interest-free loans for our dentists that they could take advantage of so that they could take care of their patients. We also created a new charge code so providers could expense that personal protective equipment—that we know as PPE—so that patients could feel safer in the dentist’s office and dentists could as well. And then through our foundation, we granted more than $11 million to organizations impacted by Covid-19.

Kerr: That’s an impressive set of actions during that difficult time period. As you come to today, and this is something I think many would’ve picked up from your style, you’re a leader that likes to be out speaking and talking to people. I’d love for you to reflect upon the listening tours that you’re going on. And what are the themes that you’re frequently hearing about? And where does employee engagement effort stand?

Chavarria: Sure. So the listening tours, my first three weeks in 2017, were going out and meeting with employees and just hosting roundtables, breakfasts, and lunches and connecting with as many employees as possible. And that gave birth to our values. And so one of the first things that I realized in engaging with our employees was that people want to come together for purposeful events. So my scheduling these—and we called them “Weeks In the Life,” where I went to each of the offices, we took over our portal and spotlighted where I was eating my lunch and who I was hanging out with—we had about 580 employees come to just one of our offices for this event. Then while I was there, I learned that employees were really settled in how they were balancing their work and their life by working from home or in this hybrid fashion—because we have employees who work in the office as well. And so we really changed our philosophy around how we thought about bringing people back. And so that was a key takeaway from these listening sessions, was really moving away from the idea that we would come back a certain number of days a week or we would come back with a prescription of some kind and really just work with leaders to continue to build and deliver on this hybrid model, which our employees had really come to appreciate. And we saw a direct link between those listening tours and those decisions and our engagement surveys and in the themes of input, feedback, and questions we get on all of our town halls. So there’s a direct correlation with that.

Kerr: So, Sarah, given that it’s so topical for everybody in early 2023, as we record this, tell us a bit more about what is the remote and hybrid policy that you have developed, and also, if there are variations across functions or roles or geographies, we’d love to hear how you’re approaching it.

Chavarria: Sure. So we will always have employees whose job it is to be in the office. We will have some employees who can work remote. And then we’re going to have this bulk of employees who can do their work either at home or in the office. And so we really started working with leaders to start to identify and shape what are purposeful events. You don’t want people coming into the office sitting in their cube with their headset on and never talking to anybody. So new-hire onboarding, connections, meetings, things like that become those purposeful events. And, really, one of the opportunities we had was to center some of those around customer focus. I think I mentioned a little bit earlier, we’ve really focused as our purpose, on partnering with our providers, our dentists, to deliver a patient experience. And therein lies a lot of that innovation opportunity and a lot of that, how can we take some of our data insights and really drive some change. And so using that as a topic to bring people together, I think, is really, really important and has really served as a critical topic for those purposeful events. I also think that really figuring out how to continue to support employees who are working from home—be it through a stipend, be it through, we built a technology-in-a-box kind of learning, that not every job needs a laptop, but they do need some way to connect back to the office. And how do we do that? So being really thoughtful and the listening to our employees and then pushing out the solutions that most directly link to what it is we’re learning from them in terms of their needs and how to keep them productive and engaged throughout. So I think that has been one of the biggest ways, both from a technology perspective and from a leadership perspective, that we’ve supported that hybrid work.

Kerr: Can I continue on the labor force theme? We’re in a period of time where there’s a lot of talent scarcity, a lot of people are looking for work. And as you think about your talent pipeline, what are some of the key functions that you’re zeroed in on? And do you have a change in the recruitment strategy in our new sort of hybrid world?

Chavarria: Absolutely. And this is a great example for people sitting in the HR function really partnered with operations. So in 2021, our attrition in operations was 66 percent. Can you imagine? And of that, 42 percent were quick quits. Now, that’s an HR statistic, but when you translate that to operations, what that means for us in our contact center is that we are losing people faster than we can train them and get them on the phone to answer customer calls. That’s that business translation. And so I took operations in the spring of ’22 to sort of a more direct role now. And so my ability to influence change with that statistic was pretty incredible, because I started walking around those purposeful events with our employees and sharing that we are losing these folks before they’re even hitting the floor. And, of course, our employees know that, because they’re the ones feeling the pressure of having to handle those calls and answer those calls and hoping that we will onboard more folks. So we very quickly changed the tactic around securing talent to fill those roles. One, we recognized that we were competing for talent with people who could take jobs in retail or at a warehouse or somewhere else. And we have a complex business. The amount of systems that someone has to navigate while being on the phone engaged with a caller, that’s a pretty unique skill set. So one of the strategies was, let’s hire people who understand and know what it’s like to work in a contact center. So let’s kind of raise that bar, if you will, and pursue people who know what that’s like. Two, let’s get that technology in a box that I talked about earlier. Everyone should be equipped day one to have the tools necessary to perform their job from home. So that was really critical. Hiring higher. So not only looking for people with that experience of what it’s like to work in a contact center, but hiring people at higher levels within that became really important, too. So how do we find leaders, supervisors, five-year tenured professionals in that space so that we could hire them into our organization at a level two or something like that, I think became really important. And then the final thing that we did, because remember, we’re working in a hybrid fashion with individuals who had worked from home, was we launched and are finishing a pilot in a fully remote contact center team—so hire them remotely, manage them remotely, equip them remotely—so that we can take those learnings and then apply them to the broader workforce.

Kerr: You’ve mentioned this at several points, but I’d like to now circle back to it. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is important for many organizations, all organizations, right now. What has that really meant in practice for you and Delta Dental of California?

Chavarria: Yeah, I think the thing that inspires me the most around this topic is when we create the space for people to share their stories. As an HR person for over 30 years, I’ll share that it’s a topic that many leaders are probably still uncomfortable talking about. And I think that, in some ways, letting the organization’s employees guide what this looks like for the organization is really the key. It’s that engagement. It’s making sure that they feel like they’re united with us in thinking about delivering on this vision. So since 2021, we’ve created six inclusion communities. These were all created by employees, where the only ask was, find a leader who can be your sponsor, your link to the broader organization, so that we can create the space for you to hold the meetings, invite the people, give you some communication support, and all of those things. But we have six different inclusion communities. We had our first Women’s Leadership Summit this past summer, and that was really exciting, because as our first inclusion community, they really had advanced to the point where now they were hosting a week-long summit, where they invited me with my CFO partner to kick it off, they brought in content, they talked about ally-ship, I mean, just all of this wonderful content with all of our employees invited to participate, either live or through recordings. One of the things that I’ll mention, also—because I think it gets to just our organization and how we’re made up—is (and this is not unusual to healthcare, but healthcare and Delta Dental in particular) we’re about 70 percent women. So the fact that our women inclusion community was the first inclusion community to take shape, and the fact that we delivered our first Women’s Leadership Summit last summer, where that inclusion community hosted a week-long series of events and invited men and women to join to participate in lots of different content, is pretty incredible. And I’ll just add that, as President of the organization, I think it means a lot to our organization to see a woman move from that Chief People Officer role into the president role of our organization. And then, the thing I’m most proud about is, again, born from employees and really connecting with them through those many, many town halls that we did, one of those town halls, we just asked the question, “What could we do?” And the employee said, “We would just like to listen to people share their stories.” So we run a “Seen and Heard” series, now led by those inclusion communities, where three or four either employees or outside speakers really just talk about their experience. And that just opens up just an incredible dialogue that the organization can have about those experiences, what this individual has learned from those experiences.

Kerr: There’s a second side to equity in your context. You have as your purpose improving health by providing access to quality care. And so equity issues, in terms of access to quality care, is part of the mandate and purpose you put in front of the company. Tell us a little bit about the journey there.

Chavarria: Sure. I think the purpose behind us thinking about it with the word “equitable” or “equity” is a real appreciation and some real conversations for us around the leadership table that it isn’t about the sameness of what one is offering, but it’s about the absolute understanding that different individuals or different communities will have different needs. And how do we really think about that uniqueness of the need and then offer the variety, for lack of a better word, but the variety and the offerings so that depending on what that need is and how it’s defined, that access to healthcare can meet that need. And so, on the HR front, one of the great examples of a way you can do that internally is, rather than offering a gym reimbursement to all of your employees, and then they sign up for a gym, and you reimburse them a certain amount, you broaden the incentive to a whole host of wellness things that they could participate in, that they can define, because maybe not everybody wants to go to a gym, but they can participate in the broader context, which is wellness. And the gym is just one way to get there. So kind of applying that for us more broadly is understanding that, within communities, we have very different relationships between our patients and their dentists. Some communities where they can’t go, don’t go, don’t know where to go, and we’re on a real mission to close that gap and make sure that through our foundation and through our business, we are really providing that access to quality care for all.

Kerr: Talk to us about that second mandate and your efforts to improve the access.

Chavarria: Absolutely. Well, there are unfortunately many underserved populations in America when it comes to oral healthcare. One, in particular, has been cited as the most in need, and that is senior adults. A recent report by the National Institutes of Health cited that adults 65 and older is the most critically underserved and vulnerable population for oral health in America. Through our Delta Dental Community Care Foundation, we launched our senior oral health signature program. It was a really big move within our foundation—to go from supporting community care places with grants and really taking a proactive approach to partnering with community partners and forming a coalition focused on our seniors. And so that was a big move for us to find our first two partners, and those are Howard University College of Dentistry and Mary’s Center out of Washington, D.C. We’ve begun to really shape what that coalition could look like and focus on things like quality outcomes, improved access, and greater equity in the care and treatment of older adults.

Kerr: Sarah, in the introduction, you noted that Delta Dental of California, in fact, spans 15 states along with the District of Columbia, which means you’re going to encounter and encompass lots of different approaches to the vaccine and to mandates related to that. How did you navigate that as a company?

Chavarria: I talked a lot about when Covid started, and we shared this with a lot of other organizations, our employees really feeling that sense of wanting to be safe and secure. And through our efforts to engage with employees and share with them kind of what we knew and how we were thinking about it, it became pretty clear that to continue to care for our employees meant that we would be an employer who would require the vaccine. And we did so. But how we really delivered on that, I think, is where the importance of the story lies. And that is, we really needed to appreciate that the individuals who weren’t yet vaccinated were coming at that fear or that understanding from very, very different places. And so we, through our efforts with our people team and our communications team, really embarked on a pretty comprehensive campaign to do things like bring experts to talk about what the vaccine meant to them, how they think about it, and why they’re getting it. It meant really understanding that we had communities of employees where that fear of getting the vaccine in some ways was rooted within the community, itself. So how could we get people from the community, employees from within the organization, to talk about their experience getting the vaccine and why they thought it was important? And we really leaned on employees to continue to understand through surveys and through engaging with them what it was that we could continue to bring to help them appreciate what information there was. And I’ll close with the most important outcome, which was we, as the employer, became the trusted source of information about the vaccine, which in some ways is unbelievable, because there are so many places people could seek their information. But because we did such a thorough job communicating, sharing, bringing in experts, and really discerning, if you will, before releasing that information, employees were looking to us more than anyone else, and we had 98 percent compliance with being vaccinated, which is also unheard of.

Kerr: Sarah, you earlier mentioned your role included operations, people, growth, and technology. It’s a lot under that umbrella. So what are the trends that you’re tracking right now? What are you keying in on for what could lie a year ahead, three years ahead?

Chavarria: Sure. So maybe I’ll share two things. One, on the business front, we are really monitoring how do people—generations, maybe—how do they want to consume information related to their health. And so I think about that. My dad, who, boomer, retired military, his relationship with healthcare is very different than my children. I have a millennial and a Gen Z. And what is it that they need in the spirit of digital tools, mobile tools, immediacy, appointments? How does that look different for them? So we’re absolutely monitoring those trends and thinking about, if philosophically we believe the patient is the owner of their health information, how do we as a payer really participate in that and bring that about, given the varied needs that we have? And then I think on the other side, on the talent side, we’re continuing to think about how is the talent landscape changing? And what are the skills and competencies that we are going to need five years from now, 10 years from now? And how do we get in the forefront of that and remain an organization that can attract that kind of talent? How do we develop the people we have to really be innovative, take on some of those new competencies and skills? But those are probably the two big things that I’m very personally engaged in making sure we’re tracking and trending and learning from so that we can continue to deliver what we deliver.

Kerr: Sarah Chavarria is President of Delta Dental of California. Sarah, thanks so much for joining us today.

Chavarria: Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.

Kerr: We hope you enjoy the Managing the Future of Work podcast. If you haven’t already, please subscribe and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts. You can find out more about the Managing the Future of Work Project at our website hbs.edu/managingthefutureofwork. While you’re there, sign up for our newsletter.