 I don't know if everything's going well so far. Hold on. OK, great. One in. Join us. This is for you to keep us low-keyed. Very casual. Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you all for being here. We're very honored that you came to join us for this conversation. We are going to spend a little bit of time, I know it was written up, right? But thinking about how you actually grow, retain your employees, we know that there's a moron talent, especially in the cyber space right now, right? Everybody's trying to get everybody in the door. Pipelines are a little bit dry, a little bit hard to find. It's a tricky scenario. What we want to do, if you allow us for this session, is to almost park that call to the site. We're just going to suspend this belief we have for a moment. We're just going to put that aside. And instead what we're going to focus on are the employees that you actually have on board. All right. We know that the hiring piece is complex, it requires dollars, an HR and a whole bunch of stuff. That's that. We're going to focus on the rest, which is your workforce today, how do you grow them, how do you retain them? And in doing so, you actually find that they'll become more effective and efficient and committed to your organization, so that then they'll go ahead and become random ambassadors for you, which helps that talent recruit group pipeline in the end anyway. Okay. Great. You're going to jump in with a couple of introductions and then look what we're going to be. So my name is Susie Candace. I am a senior manager in the Lloyds Cuban Cabo practice. I focus on organizational transformation. What does that mean? That's where we put all of our organizational design work, so how offices are aligned up the org chart, and how the information and decisions flow. In addition, it's where we hold our culture and our communications work. I've spent my career at Deloitte and Beyond, previously, focused on culture and communications and employee and workforce programs and how you encourage that engagement and your job experience is the best taking day. I've done that in a couple of client spaces, including the federal state, state, state, local, and space, including with some cyber agencies as well. But that'll be excellent. Okay. Thanks, Susie. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Mara Patashnik. I'm also a senior manager at Deloitte, and I lead workforce experience for the government and public services practice at our firm. I, along the forefront, have worked for our success experience issues for commercial cities, state and federal clients, focusing on training, attracting talent, recruiting, retention, and really today, what we want to do is share some best practices, tools, what we've seen from other clients, and help you give you some ideas about how to become an employer and choice, and how to retain and attract high-performing cyber talent. So we'll dive right in. Before we do, I just want to give one copy out of you. Because it's day two of the conference, now I've been thinking outside for a while. I would say Mara and I both want to copy up the neither of us are going to be cyber experts, especially in the room of this caliber. We do this with cyber clients, but we also do this with other clients. Our invitation to you is to take what we're going to share here and think about how that applies to your day-to-day in your organization. So we kind of did this a little bit to stretch that thinking outside of just this formal cyber realm, and bring you some ideas of what we're seeing from outside. That works. Great. So, absolutely, we define workforce experience holistically as the sum of the workers lived experience at work and how they feel about their organization. And so, really, this is shaped by eight key dimensions that impact worker experience overall. So we'll start by walking through each of these. So really, this framework is backed by research, as well as testing solutions with both our commercial, as well as our government clients, and we start with the people I work with. And this is really support and recognition from managers and who interact with day-to-day. That's commonly cited as one of the top five factors for talent retention, for the technology that I use. So that's very much about frustration-free technology. So are you having to do work-or-arms? Are you having to call IT or spend a lot of your day trying to figure out how to actually use the technology to do your job? And are there ways to use technology to improve collaboration, coordination, and communication in a way that you're able to do your work more efficiently? The maximum focus on a places I do work, which is really focusing on the flexibility of the physical workspace and how that improves employee productivity, increases jobs as faction, and lowers overall workplace stress. Another one that we focus on is a sense of belonging and worthiness that an organization creates. So that's very much about increasing your job performance. I think we've cited that it can lead to a 56% increase in job performance and a 50% reduction in turnover risk. And the work I do, I think this is particularly important to cyber employees where a lot of government employees are driven by the mission of the work that they're doing. And so connecting the work to meaningful experiences and re-enerating that fulfilling and contributes to something bigger themselves is a great way to motivate and keep employees. And that's something that I think government organizations have an advantage over commercial organizations. Another one is well-being. So this is really focusing on personal life. So, organizations can create greater flexibility to attend to well-being means. That increases worker satisfaction. And then another one is really focusing on the mission. So, identifying an organization's purpose and connecting it to their own personal values as well as the mission of the work organization. And finally, education. So this is really about high performing organizations and the fact that 30 times more likely workers are going to be able to achieve their long-term goals and stay within organization if they have the proper training and support and experiences to help them get there. So really when thinking about workforce experience, organizations know often are sure where to start or what elements impact their employees. So this framework is really what we use as a starting point to help orient our clients and to also help them prioritize certain employee activities and relationships. So these are the key contributors that we've seen in our experience to employees really engage and motivated, which has directly contributed to retaining and attracting talent. So with that, we are going to move on to the next slide. So just start off cybersecurity employees we know are experiencing disruption unlike ever before. And so just to a frame today's discussion, we first want to start by walking through how one agency has approached the issue and use workforce experience to address it. So a large federal agency of the Angus Cybersecurity Priorities had long-suing workforce issues. You know, lots of attrition, tough time attracting the right talent for the roles that they needed. And so they really double down and focusing on career growth and development, culture, recognition, morale, and investing in trust in leadership. So as a result of reimagining the workforce experience, they were able to retain critical employees or a major transition. And a few things with these thoughts were as a result of investment in workforce experience programs include the increase in frequency of career-focused conversations, increase in informal recognition across the entire organization, and employees really felt that they had the tools to help the quantum to do their job center and also to prevent burnout amongst their teens, which was an issue that this organization was facing. So next, I'll pass it over to Susie and to speak about the cyber workforce today, probably a little bit about what you all are seeing. Thanks, Mara. So there are a couple of stats up on this slide. I don't think they're going to surprise anybody, but I just want to call them out, because I think they're an important framing for what we are seeing in this hybrid industry. This is one of the first groups you are all experts in. So in 2020, you last hear Des Moines and the National Association of State CIOs did a cybersecurity study. Is anyone familiar with the study? No, no. No, I think that. Okay, a little later. Afternoon reading board. Yeah. And so, it was a survey of all 50 state CSOs and three territories, CSOs, so very comprehensive across the United States. And they were asking questions about the general cybersecurity environment, and the conditions, and things came out around the workforce. So when those CSOs were asked about how they can support emerging threats, and what their biggest challenge is, number one, they said legacy infrastructure and solutions. Number two, they said workforce. The number two thing holding these state CSOs back from responding to the threats that are coming is the workforce. That's a pretty big issue. In addition, 62% out two-thirds reported that their staff have a gap in competencies. Don't have the skills to do the job. Another pretty big issue. You can step back and look at it. When we talk about the belonging piece that Mara just talked about and shared, 23% with the respondents didn't know if their organization has established DEI leadership positions. So is there someone in the organization really focused on that inclusion piece and bringing all of your workforce along? And only 25% reported offering remote work options, which I know is tricky in the cyberspace. When you think about the SOC and everything else, but there are ways to do it with at least parts of the workforce. And we know that that's super important to the millennials and slunder representing groups. Remote work has certainly been a topic since the pandemic, right? I see people nodding. It's just on everybody's tongue. It's front of mind. So how do you make that work? In addition to all of this, I think what's really important to note, right, is that cyber threats have not reduced in any way. So there's one stat that says that as a result of COVID-19, it's been linked to a 238% increase in cybercrack. So the numbers are going up. The need continues and the resourcing of the workforce maybe is a little bit lagging behind. In addition to this in the cyberspace, we're also seeing some pretty big macro trends in workforce space in general that are contributing to some of the challenges going on today. And these also probably won't surprise you. Number one, exhaustion. So this is where that burnout topic that someone you people are talking about is showing up. And in cyber agencies, we have frontline workers, right? There's a 24 set of an operation. And so you're going to have this burnout challenge, unfortunately. This is also contributed by working from home in some ways and that blurring of that work life, home life, when the end of the day happens, if it happens, and who stays on their laptop all night working. In addition, between 2021 and 2022, the number of meetings we all experience increased 288%. So you're getting your Zoom fatigue, your Teams fatigue, right? Does that meeting fatigue along the way? Resignation. Who's heard of the great resignation coming out of the pandemic area? Yeah. So that's where the stomach fits in. We know that a lot of people left the workforce voluntarily and in fact in 2021, more people than ever before left the workforce according to the Bureau of Labor statistics. Some people have come back and some people haven't. So now are options for who's out there working and interested in being in the workforce. And the talent and diversity that they bring to your organizations could be a little more limited. And then reshuffling. 34% of US workers shifted their cities since the start of COVID. 34, a third of US workers have moved cities. And so this is where that remote work conversation becomes so important about can you get the right people? And so people again that you have on board, how are you engaging them, keeping them, you know, working at their most effective to support themselves in your organization? Why does all this matter? Because we know that losing employees is costly. Giving them a positive workforce experience means that they stay with your organization. They are committed. They are loyal. And they continue to grow and build within your organization. One study shows that losing an employee and having to recruit a new one costs three to four times their salary. The opportunity costs, the knowledge drain, the process of just onboarding, putting the job up on the boards, bringing them on three to four times their salary. So if you can get it right on the front end and really have that workforce experience be positive and keep your people, it's going to pay off dividends in the end. I'm going to pass it back tomorrow. Who's going to tie this back to that model for us? Great. Building on what Susie said, workforce experience has never been more important given this crisis and the urgency around keeping talent and finding the right talent. Since the workforce is an organization's most valuable asset, investing in workforce experience activities we've found has lead to more productive work, more efficient work, more innovative approaches to the work, and more engaged teams which ultimately results in better mission outcomes for your organization. And we found a direct correlation with the ability to retain employees, improve efficiency overall in your organization, and manage organizational changes and transitions more effectively. From our work with other agencies as well as commercial organizations, we found that investing in workforce experience is the most sustainable way to create a competitive advantage that improves building business and talent outcomes. And so, if investing in workforce experience is a single best way that organizations can minimize workforce disruption in the short term and get ahead of future work, how do we do that? And so, in this next section, we're going to focus on how cyber employers can win at workforce experience. So, based on a 2022 state CIO, NACIO study that included 51 participants, it was identified that the following areas were some of the top priorities around how to improve workforce experience. We found that 18% of respondents decided increasing remote work options as particularly important. 8% focused on flexible work schedules and how work affects their life. 35% focused on how I grow as a human, so focusing on sweet-skilling opportunities for rotation programs and the right training to make sure that the workforce is able to meet the needs of the modern IT demands. And so, with this, Susie is going to walk us through a deeper dive of the different options on how to address these results and what this actually might look like in practice. Great. Thank you, Mara. So, again, just to take it from the top, right? We know that the talent pipeline is tough. We know that the recruiting process is challenging. Diving a little deeper into some of these things, we're going to walk through a couple of activities, programs, initiatives, ideas, just to hopefully give you something to walk away with today that you can take back to your organization and implement. And the idea behind these is you can implement them tomorrow. You don't need to get into an IT backlog of some system bill. You don't need to go to HR and say I need millions of dollars to hire people and fill the gaps. These are things that you can do with your current workforce in place today to improve that workforce experience. So, starting with how I grow with a human, and again, 35% of the CIO said that this was one of the most important things. A couple of ideas here for things that can be done and things that we've seen be successful elsewhere. Number one, integrating training into the day to day. This is not about sending an employee off to go take a training, get a certification, step out of the workplace and come back. We know that most adult learners prefer experiential learning. And so the way to do that is apprenticeship, mentorship, shadowing, rotational programs, lunch and learns, informal training opportunities, action, after action reports where you can also around and talk about what did we do well, what didn't we do, what are we going to do differently. And some of this also is just documenting what it is you do, so setting up some of those SOPs so that you can pass those over to somebody and say, well this is the best way to do it. Identifying opportunities for employees to use their strengths daily. When we talk about strengths, we don't just mean one of my good at it. What we mean by strengths is what gives me individually energy, what energizes me, what excites me. And so I may be very good at data analytics, but that doesn't mean that that's my passion. I may actually prefer competing teams or communications or something like that. And so checking in with your teams about what is it that each person enjoys most? And trying to align them to that work, studies have shown that if you align people to their strengths, again the things that energize them, they will actually outperform and do way better than if you give them a challenge task or activity that then they have to sort of overcome and be able to accomplish. We are good when we're playing to our strengths. So it doesn't mean that an employee can only do their strength all day and be happy, but trying to find ways for them to incorporate their strengths into the day and day as much as possible. And then another thing that tends to be useful is stepping back and looking at career pathways. So how are you going to grow people from level to level, from ability to ability? Is anybody here familiar with the nice framework? Come here, Nick. Yeah, couple of hands. So this is a great resource if you haven't seen and I highly recommend going onto the website. They have work titles, they have job descriptions, they have competencies, they have skills, knowledge, experiences, and you can stack roles so you can say, okay, if I'm an IT leadership management position today and I want to become a data analyst and they will help you kind of they map that path a little bit for you with the overlap between those two roles, for example, and then some of the knowledge skills and abilities to go get for one to the other. So a very, very useful tool used by a lot of cyber agencies and organizations highly, highly, highly recommend using it or at least checking it out and see if there's anything useful for you there. But really looking at where are my people going and how do I grow them? Because we know also that one of the most important things for employees is them feeling like they have a growth path within an organization that somebody is invested in their development. When we move on to places I do work, I know this becomes a sticky conversation in a cyber environment. I know the sock, you know, is what it is, we know that piece. But there are conversations still to be having around work location. What we have found is most successful is when organizations really focus in on work location, in alignment to your desires, your goals, your strategy. There are some things that working remote are great for. Heads down time, idea generation, focus, and productivity. There are some things that working in person are great for. Teamwork, apprenticeship, and some of those sort of incidental connection points, right? Running into somebody, you know, by the water cooler and finding out that we're doing similar things and we can trade notes. Actually, Mara and I just did that and I said, oh, send me that if you could because I want to see that. So designing intentionally for what work can be done in person, what work can be done remotely, maybe it's part and part. Maybe there's a single initiative or project where you can send people to go home and work remotely and then come back. And they're still feeling like they're getting a taste of that opportunity if they're normally needing to be on site. So really being smart and intentional and purposeful about how you design that. Looking at the digital communications and information sharing, so a lot of us have moved on to teens and Slack and Zoom and these digital tools. Are you really using them for their maximum capability to support your organization? Is there somebody in your organization who really is tasked with understanding all of the features that you have licensed to and bringing that goodness to your organization to help your people work even better? And then the third one there is forcing connectivity and networking, especially in a high rate or remote environment. We know that happiness at work and elsewhere is tied to social connection. So how are you forcing some of that social connection? Maybe it is in those brown bag trainings or after action reports. Maybe it is taking a moment before diving into a meeting and saying, hey, how is everybody's weekend or what are you doing this weekend or tell me something funny or if you were going to be an office supply, what would you be, whatever it may be, right? But finding a way to sort of force a little door opening and having people build that connection. And then the well-being piece. And so I shared with you about the exhaustion and the burnout rates and all that earlier. A lot of organizations, especially since during instance the pandemic, have stood up well-being activities. They're not necessarily aligned to a strategy. What is your mission with those well-being activities? How does that align to your broader organizational strategy? What are you trying to achieve? Then what are the initiatives that you lay in with that? So it's not just sort of a scatter plot of activities, but they're sort of intentional and organized, aligning back to those goals that you have. And then matter of the impact of that and adjust as needed. And if you're engaging your workforce correctly, then you will have lots of data points about what's working and what's not in order to make those adjustments. Start your wellness a little bit, but again, thinking creatively, not just about remote work, but how shift work is scheduled. So a lot of the conversation around workforce and economic development is around people who may be to meet their child care duties at home while still trying to get into the workforce. Or they're taking classes at night while trying to get into the workforce. What is it that you can do to maybe look at four hour shifts or six hour shifts different than your typical shakes to bring in more people and diversity. And also alleviate some of the burnout and pressure that's happening for the workforce in place today. There are a bunch of apps that focus on this. A lot of them are focusing in the healthcare space of the transportation frontline worker space, but they could easily be leveraged over into the cyber space as well. And then the third one here conducting a culture assessment. A lot of organizations assume a culture sort of just happens and it doesn't. It's important to be intentional about culture. And what do we mean when we talk about culture, right? Because we all sort of live in it all the time. But what is that? When we talk about culture, what we talk about are the intangibles, your beliefs and your values as an organization. Are we more individually individualistic, the focused or are we more collaborative? Are we more risk averse or are we more innovative and risk takers? Are we more internally focused or do we have external customers that we've really organized around? And so when you do a cultural assessment, you look at where you are today versus where you want your organization to be and what are the steps to get from A to Z. And how do you do that in a way that then filters and flows through your entire organization so that by the time you get to performance reviews or your next strategic planning cycle or standing up on a new program or redesigning your organization, there isn't friction with what it is you really good. And what it is you really want from your employees and what you're trying to achieve as an organization and how you're getting there. So cultural assessment, well, it seems like a sort of unnecessary. It's actually very effective and super supportive of your broader goals. Okay, I've talked a lot. Lots of ideas. Hopefully a good menu for you to pick at least something from it if it's useful. I'm going to pass it back tomorrow to kind of bring it all together for us. Thank you, Cici. So how can employers win at work for our experience? So practically speaking, the key to implementing a successful workforce experience really starts with understanding what your workforce wants. That can be through a survey or focus groups doing user research, but really putting their voice at the center of these initiatives. And then working to prioritize which ones within your organization can help you achieve your overall business objectives. So we're going to walk through our perspective on what it means to really bring workforce experience to an organization. So starting with employers need to think about beyond employee engagement. And so what we mean by this is it's not just one data point. Are my employees engaged? How have I retained my staff? Or did I recruit an attractor? You know this number of individuals? It's beyond that an accommodation of those eight characteristics that really helps to retain employees and attract the right talent and enhance the overall workforce experience. So an example of that is looking at physical workspace. So do they are they able to do their work remotely? In some cases, as Susie mentioned, do they have everything they need in the office in order to be productive, to get things done in terms of head-down work versus team collaboration? Culture, do they, you know, are they recognized for their work? It's great as a hundred dollar gift card is for a great job and something. In a lot of cases what we found is it's equally just as advantageous to have a manager reach out and say, thank you so much. You did a great job and acknowledged that. And that's often what can motivate and keep employees engaged. And another area is technology. I think we mentioned, you know, it's a great way to help collaborate, work remotely, but it can also be an impediment to when technology isn't easily accessible within an organization. There are challenges, IT is available to help with certain things and can often be like a source of frustration for employees. And so really the way we look at it is not just one area at an employee engagement, but how do you approach across those eight dimensions, multiple areas of prioritizing different initiatives? The second one that we really focus on and this goes back to what Susie said about the assessment and also what I mentioned around the voice of the workforce. And so incorporating that throughout the design is incredibly important. One of the first things that we often do is a poll survey of a particular group to understand what they really hear about. What are their preferences? If they had, it's not just, I want more money, but rather if you had a choice between a little bit more flexibility in your work schedule versus, you know, increased recognition, where do they really stand in terms of what should actually get prioritized? And when you drill down into the heart of it, often is it what you think? Is it the obvious answers around like, I want flexibility? It's like, but what does that really need and how can that work for your organization in a way that maybe hybrid works for some workforces, but not necessarily for a cyber workforce? It's really, you know, is there a way that they can get different experiences for rotation program? As Susie mentioned. And so worker input, I would say, is the number one thing to invest in and even, you know, communicating that you're doing this and engaging the workforce early on and incorporating them into this because this is important to the organization and to you as leaders is an important way, I think also to retain talent. The third one is a continuous listening approach. And this one really focuses on not just pulsing a workforce once a year through an annual HR survey of, how do you really feel like, you know, what leadership considerations should we implement or, you know, how can we enhance the performance management process? It's really on an ongoing basis and even in an informal way, you as leaders and managers of teams asking your teams, you know, what they care about, what they're frustrated about, what their preferences are, and taking small steps where you can to try to incorporate that into how they work. And, you know, sometimes it's challenging to do organization-wide changes that take a lot of funding, investment, and capabilities. So oftentimes a way to do that is through, you know, more informal touch points on individual teams that you're leading. We found that that's a cost-effective, quick way to be able to get a lot of employee engagement and retain and keep your talent happy. The final one is workplace technology, and I know we've talked about this a little bit. And I think really with this, it's, how do you boost productivity? Workers want to do a great job. They're, they're the performed well. They, you know, are often very mission driven. They want to grow their careers and they, you know, want to try to be as efficient effective as they can in their job. But oftentimes, you know, what the organization decides in terms of technology versus like what the worker actually needs. There's a bit of a disconnect. And so really looking at, you know, how this can be a major accelerator based on how you work. Do you want an ants collaboration? Do you want to try to create more opportunities for high-grader of work? And, you know, through technology, that can really enhance and accelerate a lot of those activities. And so with all of these four areas combined, you know, this is what we've seen across, you know, Fortune 500 companies, federal agencies, the city, state agencies as well as kind of the key characteristics and commonalities amongst the most effective employee engagement and workforce experience programs. And just kind of round things out with this quote is, you know, if workforce experience I recognize, you know, can seem kind of fluffy and like, oh, that's a nice to have. But our premise is that your workforce is the most important asset in your organization. And if they are the most important asset, you really want to invest in them to, you know, day to day be the driver of change in, you know, be the builder productivity. We've just found that, you know, by investing in this and putting the workforce as, you know, the center part of what you invest in as an organization and leaders, it's not only about retention, talent, you know, the cyber workforce crisis, but people want to do work well and they're able to get more done and achieve more without you, you know, directly supervising and micromanaging or looking at everything because, you know, you know, you know, you're not going to be able to do anything. And you know, you know, you're not going to be able to do anything because you're not going to be able to do anything because you're not going to do anything because you're not going to do anything. So with that, that is our presentation for today. I hope there was a little bit of, you know, the landscape of the cyber workforce with some practical tips that you can take away for how to just think about, you know, improving the overall workforce experience and investing in your employees. So with this, you know, we know that all of you are in the trenches every day, you're facing this, you're living this, and we are just interested to hear from all of you, you know, just to start, like, what's one thing that has worked well in your organization in terms of enhancing or investing in the workforce experience? I'd love to get someone to start. Don't be shy. Yeah, sometimes it's important to have something or what hasn't worked well, you know, that's something that's easier to start with, you know. But we'd love to just hear from all of you, because I think, you know, how we've aggregated a lot of these best practices and what we've come with is by, you know, hearing other experiences from other organizations. And so one of the best and most effective things that I feel like I take away from conferences often is hearing from my peers and what they're facing and, you know, let it, you know, similarly I could bring back to what I'm leading. What about you? Oh, I see a hand back there.