Writing for The Center for Effective Philanthropy, Leading Edge Chief Research & Innovation Officer Amy Born examines the new work-life paradox, and explores tradeoffs between remote, in-person, and hybrid work options. 

There is a persistent itch in the working world right now, a growing sense of deep and widely shared dissatisfaction.

Here’s the challenge: Many people want work to be both a bigger and smaller part of their lives, at the same time — and no one knows what to do about it.

Each of these desires — to grow the role of work within our lives, and to shrink it — is a beautiful vision. But they are inescapably contradictory. We cannot achieve them both at the same time. A job that is deeply meaningful will not stay neatly contained during business hours. Developing close, meaningful connections and friendships is difficult without challenging, deep work, physical proximity, tight deadlines, and occasional long hours that teams so often bond over.

This contradiction plays out in many ways, including the types of jobs people choose to pursue and their tenure with their organization, but perhaps one of the most tangible is the question of where the work gets done: Should an organization work all in-person, all remotely, or some of both (i.e., hybrid)?  This is one of the most common questions I hear, and my answer is almost always a dissatisfying “It depends.”

There is a persistent itch in the working world right now, a growing sense of deep and widely shared dissatisfaction. Here’s the challenge: Many people want work to be both a bigger and smaller part of their lives, at the same time — and no one knows what to do about it.

The (Impossible) Work Dream

Since the pandemic, the Jewish nonprofit sector has faced the same changes and challenges as the rest of the working world: the Great Resignation, shifted expectations of work, and Gen Z entering the workforce, to name a few. Joining this week’s episode of Adapting is Amy Born, Chief Strategy & Impact Officer from Leading Edge, an organization that supports Jewish nonprofits on their quests to become even better places to work. Together, David Bryfman and Amy Born explore the themes that, as Jewish nonprofit leaders—from CEO’s to directors and beyond—are on our minds: work-life balance and setting boundaries, recruitment and retention of Jewish educators, and the role lay leaders play in ensuring the Jewish workforce is as strong as it can be. Lastly, Amy shares advice for Jewish leaders based on her expertise and Leading Edge data to ensure they are doing all they can to run a healthy and successful work environment today and for the future.

Amy was a guest on “Adapting: The Future of Jewish Education,” a podcast hosted by David Bryfman, CEO of The Jewish Education Project.

Making the Jewish Workforce as Strong as It Can Be: Amy Born on the “Adapting” Podcast

Writing in Stanford Social Innovation Review, Leading Edge President & CEO Gali Cooks and Chief Strategy Officer Amy Born explain how biting weasels explain the relationship between salaries and employee engagement. Here is an excerpt:

Every year, when Leading Edge releases our annual Employee Experience Survey, we tend to emphasize findings from the survey that most strongly contribute to employee engagement. “Employee engagement” is about feeling proud of the organization, feeling motivated to do great work, wanting to stay with the organization, and being likely to recommend the organization to others…

We can’t count how often people have asked us this question. Don’t people care about salaries? They ask because the nonprofit sector has an unfortunate—and unfortunately accurate—reputation for offering lower salaries than other fields. And salary is intuitively and materially important to people. It affects where we can live, what we can own, how we can educate our children, what we can consume, how much we can give and share with others, and much more. For those in the nonprofit sector, it is also often the clearest way we can understand and measure our value to the organization. Our own survey data shows that salary is, in fact, correlated with employee engagement. So people ask us why we don’t emphasize it more prominently. Don’t salaries matter?

Our answer is: Yes! They are not an “engagement driver,” per se, because other organizational factors do a lot more than salary does to drive employee engagement. Salaries matter, but they are not the most important thing that does.

To understand why, let’s talk about weasels.

Imagine a workplace where everyone comes into the office. (This story is set in 2019.) It's a totally normal office, except that for some mysterious reason, the company has always kept a group of weasels as office pets. The weasels have a special area in the back with their food and nesting materials and they are also free to wander about the office.

It isn't cute. The weasels bite. Unprovoked. Every day! They approach silently and employees have no warning. You're at your desk, lost in your inbox, when suddenly there's a piercing pain in your ankle and one of the weasels is running away before you knew it was there.

Everyone complains about the weasels. Even the senior team acknowledges that ideally the weasels wouldn't be there. But they've always been there, and no one has time to think of a good plan to get rid of them. Some employees can't take it, and they leave. Turnover is high.

One day, at long last, the senior team locates a shelter for weasels and moves them all out. For the first time, the office is weasel-free. The senior team expects big engagement dividends from this. They have been hearing employees ask to ditch the weasels for years. And on the first day Post-Weasel, the staff is ecstatic. “This is so nice!” everyone says to each other. “Best. Day. Ever.” someone posts (in GIF form) on the company Slack. They celebrate by throwing stuffed weasels at each other and laughing with relief. On Day 2, the atmosphere is still festive. The next week is calmer, but people still seem to have an extra spring in their step and an extra heart emoji in their DMs.

By the third week, however, the euphoria is gone. People's moods have sunk back down toward the old status quo. True, there are no more shrieks of “Youch!” every hour or so. People aren’t so resentful or nervous anymore. But they don’t seem more motivated about their work, either. The senior team is perplexed. What went wrong?

A better question than “What went wrong” is: “What didn’t go right?”

The reason that removing the weasels from our fictional office didn’t send engagement through the roof—and why higher salaries and better salary transparency won’t, either—can be explained by psychologist Frederick Herzberg’s “motivation-hygiene theory.” Herzberg divided workplace experiences into two groups:

“Hygiene factors” can’t make you happy, but they can make you miserable. Think of your knees. When your knees are in good health, you don’t walk around thinking, “Wow, my knees are feeling phenomenal today! That makes me so happy!” In fact, when your knees have no problems, you don’t even notice them. But go sprain your knee, and, well … in the worst way, you notice! (As we write this, one of us is on crutches from a minor knee injury, so trust us on this.)

The other group is “motivational factors.” These won’t, in their absence, make you miserable, although the lack of them might leave you feeling sort of blah. But when they’re there, they can light you up, in the best way. When these factors are in place in your job, you become highly engaged: you go above and beyond to do your best work and are eager to recommend your organization to others as a great place to work. The bottom line isn’t just that you do your job, it’s that you do your job well, add value to the organization, and find meaning and fulfillment in your everyday working life.

Salaries—along with healthy knees and a lack of biting weasels—are hygiene factors…

Writing in Stanford Social Innovation Review, Leading Edge President & CEO Gali Cooks and Chief Strategy Officer Amy Born explain how biting weasels explain the relationship between salaries and employee engagement.

In Stanford Social Innovation Review, Leading Edge President & CEO Gali Cooks and Chief Strategy Officer Amy Born explain how biting weasels explain the relationship between salaries and employee engagement.

Don’t Salaries Matter? Of work, weasels, and employee engagement in the nonprofit sector

Don’t Salaries Matter? Of Work, Weasels, and Employee Engagement in the Nonprofit Sector

Writing for the Career Insights Column of Candid's Philanthropy News Digest, Leading Edge Chief Strategy Officer Amy Born suggests we focus on improving the jobs. 

“It’s easy to assume that a job is static. You need a director of development. You need a volunteer coordinator. You need a finance associate. Those are the functions needed to get the work done. What can we change about that?

“A lot, actually. Think about the job as an experience. People work for pay and benefits, but they also want to feel personal satisfaction while doing good work. How will the employee spend their time? Are the expectations exciting and achievable? Who will they work with? How will the job interface with the rest of their life?”

In this “buyer’s market” for jobs, if we think about the job as a product, many of us focus on our sales pitch.  It’s important to get our pitch right. But what if the problem is less with the pitch than the product? What would happen if we worried less about the job postings and more about changing the jobs?

Don't Change the Job Description; Change the Job

Published in eJewish Philanthropy on February 17, 2021.

Asking questions is part of being Jewish—which is great for me, because I’ve always asked a lot of questions. When I was growing up, my parents patiently responded—often with more questions, which was sometimes annoying but probably also helpful. 

At Leading Edge, we love questions, too. We design surveys full of questions, like our annual Employee Experience Survey and ongoing Pulse Surveys, to support organizations in becoming even better places to work. 

But lately I’ve also been reflecting on the dark side of questions. The wrong question at the wrong time can be damaging. Questions are powerful, and with power comes responsibility. 

We might think, what could be more open and less absolute than a question? A question isn’t an argument or pronouncement from on high—no harm in asking, right? But questions are much less innocent than they seem. 

Here are three hidden powers of asking questions. These powers show us what can go wrong if we misuse questions—and what can go right when we remember that every question carries with it more than just the literal meanings of its words.

Questions tell as much as they ask. The questions we ask can reveal our attitudes; our assumptions; our priorities; our focus; how much we know; what we may not know; how much we care; and more.

When we design the Leading Edge Employee Experience Survey, we do our best to balance the experience of the people responding to the survey, the leaders’ ability to understand and act on the data to make the organization an even better place to work, and our understanding of broader trends and needs in the field. Each question reveals a bit about our beliefs and priorities, but the story a question tells may not be what we intended. Here’s an example: when the Leading Edge team creates demographic questions on a survey, we format the answers as multiple-choice options. In the past, after the specific options was an “Other” option for typed responses. The multiple-choice format makes results much easier to sort and quantify. But that format also means we’re displaying an official list of demographic categories, a canonized set of “normal” or “expected” demographic options. We strive to make these options broad enough to allow everyone taking the survey to find themselves in the answer choices, but in the rare cases in which people didn’t see themselves in the response options, the “Other” label could be taken as implying that they are “other,” outsiders, people who don’t belong, afterthoughts, or exceptions. That we didn’t intend this message or consciously think it to be true doesn’t solve the problem. We shaped the question, and the question had a story to tell. This is why we have moved from “Other” to “Prefer to self-describe” for all such situations.

Questions can shape experiences. Psychology and sociology both have a rich literature on “framing”—essentially, how different external signals, cues, prejudices, narratives, and superficial differences can radically alter how we might experience the same object or event. Framing effects can include anything from how the first number spoken in a negotiation conversation shapes what offer someone is later willing to accept to how we consider information differently when it’s told to us by someone wearing a white coat. Just as a literal frame isn’t a painting, but rather tells us what part of our visual field is a painting, a cognitive frame is something that tells us what to notice.

Asking questions can have unintentional framing effects. Let’s say an employer asks her team members a set of 50 questions that are all exclusively about productivity. That survey not only tells the story that productivity is all the employer cares about (power #1) but will likely also affect the attention, behavior, and experience of team members in the weeks and months that follow. Maybe they’ll produce more. Maybe they’ll resent it and produce less. Maybe they’ll have a host of different feelings and reactions, but the point is that the organization has now influenced the employees’ stories in the direction of being more centrally about productivity, whether or not that was their intention. 

On the positive side, we can use framing effects on purpose. Recently, a funder asked me how they can encourage organizations to prioritize employee wellness without being prescriptive or (at this moment) giving extra dollars. I responded that just asking grantees about wellness will encourage organizations to prioritize it and think about it differently.

Questions can set expectations. Whether we’re talking about the workplace or a personal relationship, the fact of asking always implies something about the relationship between the asker and the askee. Sometimes it means we really care, really want to get involved, or at least want to be there as a supportive listener. Sometimes it means we’re just making small talk and we have no intention of building a real connection. In both cases, and whether it’s two people talking or an organization surveying, the most awkward moments often come when someone asks an insincere question. 

Often, leaders ask us if we think participating in the survey makes sense for them in a given year. We typically respond by asking if they intend to take action on what they learn. If you know that you’re unable or unwilling to do anything about the answers to a survey, then asking will only be making an implicit promise you don’t intend to keep, and this may not be the best time for a survey at all. 

For organizations that do take the Employee Experience Survey, we recommend leaning into the implication that asking means caring, since implying that intention can help even before the results are fully collected. That’s one reason that we include a question in the survey that asks whether employees agree with the statement, "I expect something will be done as a result of this survey."

So those are three powers of asking questions: giving information, shaping experience, and setting expectations. As you can see, these powers can be used for unintentional evil or for good. 

Let’s be careful what we ask. Let’s treat questions with the serious consideration, and even caution, that they deserve. But then let’s embrace them as not only a Jewish cultural heirloom, but as a versatile, complex, and useful tool of the communal trade.

There’s still time (until February 24) to register for Leading Edge’s Employee Experience Survey 2021.

Careful What You Ask: The Three Hidden Powers of a Question

Originally published at eJewish Philanthropy.

One February, Sam and Jamie both began jobs at the same Jewish organization. Sam had one summer of relevant work experience while Jamie had three years of relevant experience. They both started with annual salaries of $56,000. Sam’s manager explained that she would receive only a small raise at the end of the first year, but if she continued to improve she would be rewarded more significantly after another year or two. Jamie’s manager didn’t tell Jamie anything about a future career trajectory.

The two met at orientation and sat near each other at the office, and they quickly became friends. One evening they went to dinner after work and ended up talking about their paychecks. Jamie was shocked to learn that they were both paid the same amount. She had assumed that she made more than Sam because of her experience and the fact that her role required more advanced skills; Jamie’s job description included rigorous data analysis, while Sam’s involved administrative support and responding to emails. 

When Jamie learned that she was paid no more than Sam, her motivation went out the window. It seemed clear that her supervisors didn’t really value her skills, her effort, or the value she was providing. And even though she knew it wasn’t Sam’s fault, Jamie also couldn’t seem to stop herself from feeling a little resentful of Sam. Their new friendship began to cool.

What Jamie didn’t know was that her manager had been planning to give her a significant raise at the end of her first year. But since the manager had never communicated this to her, Jamie assumed that she and Sam were on the same pay trajectory, despite Jamie’s more extensive experience and the fact that her role required a more advanced skill set. As Jamie grew more frustrated with the situation, she began job hunting, and left for a new opportunity before the end of her first year. 

Jamie had a bad experience and the organization needlessly lost a talented and dedicated employee, both because the organization didn’t have a structured compensation strategy and because managers weren’t consistently communicating the right information.

Okay, truth time: Sam and Jamie don’t exist. But their problem of an organization’s compensation seeming unfair and unintelligible to employees sure does. It’s all too common in many sectors, and unfortunately Jewish nonprofits are no exception. The 2019 Leading Edge Employee Experience Survey found that about one out of three respondents feel they are unfairly compensated compared to others in similar roles, and only 38% of respondents said they understand how pay decisions are made at their organization. 

Don’t undervalue the point about understanding the decisions. A 2017 PayScale survey of over 500,000 employees found that “employee satisfaction is driven mostly by feeling that pay is fair, not by how much someone is actually paid.” A 2015 study even found that most employees were satisfied with a lower-than-average salary as long as they understood the rationale behind the decision. 

That’s not a reason to be stingy; organizations are wise to pay people well when they can, both because they’ll reap value for that investment and because they’ll strengthen the community around them. But whether or not an organization can afford to meet or beat the average going rate for talent, clarity about the process of making pay decisions is always extremely valuable and virtually cost free.

One of the best tools for achieving this kind of clarity is by implementing salary bands.

Salary bands are ranges of pay that provide structure to salary decisions. Each role in an organization is assigned to a band based on the amount of responsibility required of the position, years of experience, and/or the job level.

Salary bands are important for four main reasons:

First, they encourage consistency, ensuring that employees with similar skill levels and years of experience are paid within the same range. 

Second, they promote equity and fairness, forcing managers and Human Resources professionals to stay within a designated range when determining salaries. This will help to reduce all kinds of biases, including those that contribute to racial and gender pay gaps that still unacceptably persist. Salary bands will also help to minimize other universal human biases like status quo bias, the halo effect, and more.

Third, salary bands provide an opportunity to create or revise an organization’s compensation philosophy—a written statement of the values, principles, and goals that shape how employees are compensated, answering questions like “Will we lead, lag, or match market rates”, “How will we respond when people negotiate salaries”, and more. Having a formal compensation philosophy can help managers making pay decisions stay consistent with the principles and practices specified, and with one another, over time.

Finally, salary bands can be a starting point for a more general move toward increased salary transparency, as many organizations choose to share some or all of their salary bands with employees. 

Salary transparency is a big topic, and it’s not just one model — it’s a whole range of choices and practices. At the most radical end of the salary transparency spectrum is the social media company Buffer’s choice to post all its employees’ salaries online publicly. A small number of other organizations share all salaries internally with employees; others might let employees know which roles are in which salary band (whether in their own department or organization-wide) without knowing any individual numbers. 

There’s no one right answer for every organization, but the broader point is that moving toward salary transparency is generally good, and more organizations should consider it. Moving in the direction of more transparency will help employees feel valued, fairly treated, and engaged; make salary negotiations an easier and smoother experience for both sides; and help minimize turnover and inequity, both in the organization and in our whole sector.

There’s a lot more to be said about salary bands. How should we set them? How do we benchmark the numbers? Should the bands overlap? Which job goes in which band? How should job titles relate to salary bands? How do we transition from an ad hoc status quo to a new, structured system?

We at Leading Edge have just completed a new guide exploring these questions and more. Our newly-released guide is Salary Bands: Valuing Talent with Intention and Transparency. 

Download it at leadingedge.org/salary-bands. Share it with your colleagues, your CEO, or your HR professionals. Talk about it with your manager or at a staff meeting. The more we can break through the idea that talking about salaries is taboo, the more quickly we can achieve a Jewish nonprofit field in which our people are paid fairly, know it, and know why.

Most employees don't know how salary decisions are made at their organizations. Here's why that's a problem.

Beyond the Money: Being Clear About How Pay Works

Presenting to Jewish Funders Network, they discussed how COVID-19 has affected leaders and professionals in our community and what it means for the future of the Jewish nonprofit sector. See Amy's slides here.

A discussion featuring Amy Born (Chief Strategy Officer, Leading Edge), Randall Kaplan (Leading Edge board member) and Corinne Irwin (Director of HR, American Jewish World Service).

Video—State of Play: Professional Talent in the Jewish Nonprofit Sector

Flexible Hours. To support employees who are unable to work normal hours, consider allowing them to adjust their schedule to accommodate personal or family needs. If employees are able to work more productively late at night or on the weekend when they can focus, this should be an option. While many organizations are already doing this informally, it’s helpful to be as explicit as possible so that employees don’t feel pressure to check and respond to email at all times. Leaders and managers can also suggest that employees list work hours in their email signature, block off working and non-working on their calendars for coworkers to see, or put up an out-of-office message if they are not working during the typical work day.


Reward Hard Work. It’s important to also recognize and reward employees who may be taking on a larger-than-usual share of the workload. There are a variety of ways to do this. Send a card to say you’re grateful and appreciate their efforts. If folks are working remotely, consider sending a small gift to employees’ homes to show the organization’s gratitude. Just expressing to employees that their hard work is acknowledged and noticed can go a long way towards improving morale for those who are going above and beyond. 


Prioritize. With many staff working remotely, communication can be difficult. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and lose track of what’s most important. Weekly check-ins or team meetings can help staff determine which tasks and projects are most important for the week. This way, even if staff are working flexible hours they know what is expected of them and can work to achieve short-term goals. Managers can also create a template to mark the status of each task or project with a green light, yellow light, or red light, assigning a color to help an employee visualize what is on track, paused, or removed.


Safe Spaces. While 2020 has proven to be eye-opening for many around issues of racial justice, discrimination in the workplace has long been known to communities of color. Research has shown a trend with mental health concerns resulting from workplace discrimination. Managers should consider appropriate ways to address equity within their organization and provide a space for people to talk about it. A human resources or talent professional can reach out to employees offering the opportunity for discussions about issues relating to racial justice. Some staff may want to meet privately while others might prefer sharing their thoughts among a group of individuals facing similar challenges, where they can speak openly and offer support. The manager organizing the discussion should be mindful to listen and let participants do the majority of the talking. Another option is to form a book club focused on DEIJ-related books as a way to spark discussions about racial justice in the workplace. 


Time off. Employees may be less willing to speak up if they need to take time off to deal with mental health. But organizations should consider that those struggling with mental health issues often need rest, away from the computer, the same way that those dealing with physical ailments do. Think about offering mental health or wellness days, in addition to PTO days for employees to utilize if needed. These could take the form of organization-wide “Rest and Recharge Days” where the entire organization shuts down for a few days, or “Summer Fridays” where the whole organization is off on Friday afternoons. No matter what policy you implement, ensure that senior leaders set the example to help normalize the practice. Otherwise, employees may not feel comfortable taking advantage of the new policy. 


Re-think Meetings. The way that meetings are structured and scheduled can have an impact on how employees feel throughout the day. One suggestion is to end all internal meetings at 50 minutes past the hour to allow for at least a 10 minute break between calls/Zoom meetings. This may help to avoid dreaded Zoom fatigue. Another option is opening internal meetings with a scale of one to ten in response to “How are you feeling at this moment?” so that employees have the opportunity to speak up if they are not feeling well and others can offer support. 


Coverage Uncovered. Make sure your employees know exactly what kind of mental health services are covered under your policies. Sometimes navigating coverage questions can be a barrier to taking advantage of the available options. Make it easy for employees to access insurer-provided therapy and support. Consider a lunch and learn, HR office hours, or even a thorough memo to help explain what is available, how to find providers, and how folks can access everything. Include time for questions and answers so that employees can have all of their concerns addressed. 


“Walk-in-my-shoes.” Sometimes we don’t know the full story of what a team member is working on or going through. Make space for folks to share what’s hard for them during their work days along with any visible or invisible challenges. This could be done during a sharing circle at a team lunch, on a Slack channel where team members share what they are struggling with in real time, or any other forum that works for your team. To make sure that folks feel safe and comfortable to share, have the leadership share first to establish a safe and brave space. 


Accountabili-Buddies. An “accountabili-buddy” is an accountability partner who you speak with daily or weekly, where you support each other and hold each other accountable. It could include anything from fitness check-ins, making sure they are taking mental health days, keeping up with work goals, or sticking to a professional development plan. An “accountabili-buddy” is a great way to make sure your employees have someone to lean on during stressful moments and to have at least one person to check in with to make sure they are doing OK. Set up “accountabili-buddy” pairs for a specific period of time (1-3 months, 6 months, etc.) and make sure that the two individuals are not in a supervisor-supervisee relationship. 

Other Resources. Management can explore local resources to find a counselor that teaches coping skills or wellness strategies. Leaders can also consider scheduling a singular training or a series of training sessions to help improve staff morale, self-care, or well-being. A counselor may be available for one-on-one sessions, if the organization wants to offer this resource. Even sharing a list of online resources, recommended mental health professionals, or free online courses could be helpful. Think about bringing in experts to run workshops or guest speakers on various mental health topics. Consider paying for a meditation or exercise app to share with staff that would help them manage their mental health.


Manager Discussions. Leadership can offer managers-only meetings for senior leaders or middle management focusing on the challenges of managing teams during this time. These groups can be helpful and supportive environments. Meetings can also provide an opportunity for learning mindfulness and stress management techniques tailored for managers, which could reduce stress, increase focus, and set positive examples for their teams.


Listen to Staff. Provide a list of resources for any issues that haven’t been explicitly addressed already. For example, a list of hotlines for mental health or domestic violence could be helpful to staff who may not feel comfortable sharing these personal aspects of their lives in the workplace. Additionally, there may be a spoken need among several staff for more support around a particular issue, like homeschooling their children. Be open to what staff say their needs are, and think about how to address needs that may be unspoken.


Here are some additional tips to support mental health and encourage well-being at your organization:

Have a “rest hour” everyday in the afternoon when meetings cannot be scheduled

Have walking meetings instead of Zoom calls to encourage fresh air and movement

Play a quick game at the start of your next meeting to bond as a team and to have some fun

Have a quick coffee date or lunch break with a coworker just to chat (not about work)

Buy a small plant to put on your desk at home or in the office

Take a few hours (or a day) off from social media

Have your team take a personality test; understanding that everyone has different strengths can help your team work well together

Ask everyone on your team to share their stress styles in order to gain a better understanding of how each person responds to stress; this makes it easier for coworkers to support each other

Encourage staff not to read their emails during a 2-hour block each day, or to set specific times for checking email during the day 

Set up calendar invites for a stretch break every few hours - employees stretch on their own but the invite serves as a reminder to get up and move

The current work environment presents many challenges that may be impacting health and well-being. Employees are juggling childcare needs with job responsibilities, caring for sick friends or relatives, struggling with isolation, and more. This list provides some ideas and suggestions to support your people and their mental health.

Supporting Employee Mental Health

At Leading Edge we believe that people are the most valuable asset of our sector. But what does it mean to truly invest in our people? And what does it mean to put the employee experience at the center of how we think about our work?

In 2016, Leading Edge piloted the first employee experience survey for the Jewish nonprofit sector. This tool, which gathers feedback from employees about their experiences at work, has now been taken by over 250 organizations in our sector over the past four years. These organizations are using the feedback they garner from the survey to help manifest core Jewish values in their institutions. They recognize that in addition to keeping all of their critical programs and fundraising needs on track, they must also prioritize their employees as key stakeholders in their work. When we piloted the survey, we engaged a coalition of 55 organizations willing to learn more about their employees’ experiences. Since that first year, we have found organizations are placing increasing value on workplace culture and leadership development, which are becoming priorities for Jewish nonprofits.

This year alone, Leading Edge surveyed over 11,000 employees at 182 organizations. In participating in the survey, leaders become vulnerable, solicit honest and confidential input, and explore what they learn from their employees with curiosity and intention to create even better places to work. In short, they are valuing and empowering people and building towards the future.

In encouraging organizations to take a deep look at their cultures, our role at Leading Edge is to provide guidance and support as organizations hold up a mirror and learn about what is working and what requires more focus and attention. We do not provide the answers about what will work at a specific organization. We believe organizations themselves hold the keys to success – we simply provide the tools and partnership on the journey as they explore areas for potential growth. Taking the survey is just the first step in what we hope will be an ongoing process of exploration and improvement.

Our team is learning about many ways organizations are using data from the survey to identify areas for improvement. Here is some of what we have heard so far:

Developing staff-driven initiatives to improve culture. Culture is not a leadership issue or an HR initiative. It is an everyone issue. Everyone contributes to what it feels like at work. Many organizations unpacked the data with their entire staff, making the data their own with visuals, stories, analyses, and reports that can be shared with stakeholders. Other organizations incorporate the results into leadership team retreats, developing an action plan and urging managers to think about how they will close some of the gaps presented.

Empowering staff to own the work. We know from the survey data that many people at Jewish nonprofit organizations feel stretched thin. There is a lot of work to do and not always enough people or hours in the day to get it all done. That said, as organizations are prioritizing workplace culture, many have decided to shift priorities so someone can focus all or part of their time on opportunities identified in the survey. Some organizations have hired a person to focus specifically on an outcome from the survey, while others have incorporated this responsibility into an existing job. Two organizations recognized the need to fill gaps in human resources expertise, so they partnered with each other to hire a shared HR Manager.

Holding senior leaders accountable. Senior leaders hold the keys to making change. Workplace culture must be prioritized and modeled from the CEO down. Though having staff own the work is important, this work cannot be relegated to an HR department or one person assigned to workplace culture. It needs to be integrated into the entire organization, starting at the top. We’ve found that the best results unfold when senior leaders buy in to the process and when managers themselves understand the importance of nurturing their own staff.

Small changes can make a big difference. One organization finalized a new Onboarding Handbook, another created a more equitable cell phone policy, and another used their survey data to get board member buy-in to improve their health insurance. Several groups instituted new, transparent compensation philosophies. Organizations have revitalized cross-organizational collaboration. We’ve seen institutions change team meeting structures, enforce performance evaluations, bolster employee appreciation efforts, and hire an HR attorney to lead harassment prevention training. In all cases, organizations are using the data to inform their workplace culture priorities and show employees that they take workplace culture seriously.

Changing mindset. One organizational leader shared that participating in the survey has helped ensure that she always keeps workplace culture and leadership development front of mind when making decisions. Not surprisingly, her organization’s scores have gone up each year.

Experts know there is no magic wand that can shift the employee experience overnight. Culture change takes time. Overall, the organizations that are involved in the Leading Edge employee experience survey are integrating the survey findings into their day-to-day operations. They are making progress slowly and steadily. Similar to getting into shape, lasting success is best achieved by making incremental changes, practicing consistent new behaviors, and building new muscles along the way.

Mazel tov to the 182 organizations that are placing culture and talent at the forefront of their agendas! Leading Edge is excited to continue working with you on this journey.

This article originally appeared in eJewish Philanthropy on July 17, 2019.

The Chief Strategy Officer of Leading Edge explains what it means to put the employee experience at the center of how we think about our work.

Placing Organizational Culture at the Center

Read original article on Culture Amp's website

Amy Born dreams of a world where people experience work in a different way. Instead of feeling stressed, overwhelmed and unhappy with their jobs, she knows it’s possible for employees to feel fulfilled, nourished, and inspired at work.

As the Chief Strategy Officer at Leading Edge, a nonprofit focused on attracting, developing, and retaining top talent for Jewish organizations, she is working on making these dreams a reality for many people.

“Too many people aren’t thriving in their jobs, and that’s not helpful for their state of mind, the success of their organization, or the communities the organization serves. One of the reasons why I’m in this field of work is because I truly believe that – regardless of the type of job one has – we all need to raise the bar of what it feels like to be at work. We spend so much time working. It has to be better.”

Amy has always been fascinated by people. She studied anthropology and theater in college which allowed her to study people and cultures at a high level and also up close. After graduating, she participated in a fellowship at a nonprofit, which is where she made her first foray into HR.

Amy then joined Hay Group (now Korn Ferry Hay Group) and advanced as a consultant within their Leadership and Talent practice. After a few years, she found herself drawn back into the nonprofit world and worked in the education space at City Year headquarters and also with public school districts for several years before pursuing a master’s degree in organizational psychology at Columbia University.

“I was trained and educated at the consulting firm, where I learned so much from my incredible colleagues and clients. However, I realized there were many models beyond what I was practicing and wanted to learn more. That’s why I went to graduate school – I loved learning the theories behind what I had been practicing and new ways to do the work,” says Amy.

After completing her graduate program, Amy continued to work in both the for profit and nonprofit sectors and made her way to Leading Edge. Amy serves as the organization’s Chief Strategy Officer and heads up the Leading Places to Work Initiative. She  partners with nonprofits to provide insights and tools that enable them to create and maintain great workplace cultures that attract and retain top talent.

“‘I’m deeply interested in understanding what drives people,” says Amy. “I especially love working with nonprofit organizations because the sector tends to attract passionate individuals who are driven by mission but many end up sacrificing a lot of themselves in service to their work. I don’t believe that paradigm serves anyone well. When people feel nourished and uplifted by their jobs, they win, their coworkers and managers win, the organization itself wins, and the people around them win.”

When asked how she views her role when partnering with nonprofits through Leading Edge, Amy describes it as akin to holding up a mirror.

“I get to offer a unique perspective because I’m outside the organization. I try to think about how I can reflect back what I’m seeing so leaders can see things that might be blind spots to them. I share what I see as strengths and gaps, and work with leaders to see if there are changes they believe will positively impact their employees and their organization. Building on the positive is important.”

Amy emphasizes that her approach with every organization is different depending on where they are. Some are ready to dig into the work and be pushed outside of their comfort zones. Others need more guidance and validation about which direction to move in. This makes it tricky to define success, but Amy explains that it all comes down to making sure each organization feels heard and moves from where they are to a better place.

“When I’m working with an organization,” says Amy, “my definition of success is that people feel understood and respected; that there is free-flowing, transparent two-way communication; and that leaders have the tools they need and a clear sense of what they’re going to do moving forward.”

She also shares advice for the leaders of these organizations as they invest in building better workplace cultures:

“Confident vulnerability is an important trait for leaders. I have a lot of respect for leaders who make themselves vulnerable because I know how hard it is to say something isn’t working well. When leaders are dedicated to making positive changes in the world, it can be hard to slow down, listen to, and focus on the people who are doing the work.”

As someone who advocates for healthier and happier workplace cultures, Amy puts a lot of effort into practicing what she preaches.

“I have an outstanding team of colleagues within my organization and in the field. I get so much energy from partnering with so many talented professionals,” says Amy. “We keep ourselves and each other on track with practices that are generous, team-oriented, and whole-person focused. Like any busy professional, I experience challenges with work-life balance, but I recognize it’s an ongoing process and I’m proud of the progress I’ve made in prioritization and balance.”

Leading Edge has partnered with Culture Amp for the past three years by offering a free, annual employee survey to Jewish nonprofits. This year, 182 organizations participated in the Leading Edge Employee Experience Survey – representing a variety of organizations within the sector from social justice institutions to religious organizations to community centers.

“The language all these organizations use is different, so finessing the survey questions is challenging. We use Culture Amp’s database of questions and work closely with the People Science team to come up with a number of our own questions as well. For example, this year we found Culture Amp’s wellbeing questions especially compelling, so we included some wellbeing questions in our survey for the first time.”

After each organization receives their survey results, Amy and a team of management consultants offer each organization a one-on-one consultation to process their data.

“We help leaders identify the themes and stories around their data, provide guidance on how to communicate this data to their employees, and help them take action on the one or two items that will be most impactful for their workplace culture,” says Amy. “We then connect organizations with other resources we think will be helpful to them. In addition, we publish a detailed report for the field about the sector’s results, along with tips on common themes that come up in the survey, like communicating a compensation philosophy, promoting cross-team collaboration, and instituting effective feedback loops.”

Leading Edge continues to figure out ways to support the sector. They publish case studies and resource guides, work with boards, and have supported several cohorts of new organizational leaders through their CEO Onboarding Program.

Amy looks forward to refining the survey process so that she can continue to learn from organizations and how they’re using the survey data over time to initiate culture shifts at their institutions.

“The world is a tough place, and everyone is dealing with things everyday that are hard. Work can either deplete your energy or fill you with energy. We’re committed to work feeling energizing. We know that how people spend their time is how they spend their lives.”

Each month, Culture Amp, a company focused on people and culture in the workplace and our partner in our annual Employee Experience Survey, profiles one talent expert who is doing cutting edge work in these areas. Our very own Amy Born, Leading Edge's Chief Strategy Officer, was profiled in June.

Amy Born: A Culture Amp “People Geek of the Month”

For the first few weeks at his new job at a Jewish nonprofit, Aaron had to ring a doorbell to get into the building. No one told him there was an access code for employees.When Lauren started her new job at a different Jewish nonprofit, she met with the CEO to discuss the organization’s mission and how her job contributed to it. She was assigned a mentor to help onboard her and meetings with key stakeholders were scheduled in her calendar.

Who do you think felt more inspired and empowered to do their best work?

People are the most important assets of organizations, yet many (not all, to be sure, but many) of our Jewish workplace cultures do not reflect this important truth.

An executive director can have a brilliant vision, but it will not see the light of day if her employees are unclear about their roles, frustrated by operational friction and feel clueless about the ways their jobs connect to the greater vision and mission of the organization. As management guru Peter Drucker put it, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

That is why Leading Edge is launching its “Leading Places to Work” initiative – to shine a light on the importance of workplace cultures, including prioritizing supporting employees to genuinely feel empowered to do their best and most creative work, as well as recruiting and retaining the best possible talent for open positions.

If successful, this project will help the heart of our community – the nonprofits that provide education, social justice, environmental, and safety net services to our beloved Jewish community – to make an even more meaningful and lasting difference. This is no small task.

As a first step on this journey, this month Leading Edge launched a pilot employee engagement survey with 55 organizations and nearly 5,000 employees across the United States.

The purpose of the survey is to get a baseline level of employee satisfaction and engagement in the Jewish nonprofit sector. We want to understand what’s working and what needs work in our organizations so we can enrich our field. The interest and participation in this pilot is indicative of a sector open to understanding the needs of an evolving workforce

Our partner in this initiative is Hay Group, a global leader in employee research whose clients include Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations. This is the first time a capacity building pilot of this scale and with this methodological approach has been launched in the Jewish nonprofit sector.

Organizations participating in the pilot will get aggregated results (survey participants are anonymous) for their own organizations and will see how they compare with other organizations in the pilot group. They will gain access to action-planning tools to help them cultivate their “growing edges.”

And this is only the beginning. Leading Edge is committed to supporting organizations on the journey to becoming leading places to work. We look forward to using the pilot data to determine next steps, which may include expanding the survey sector-wide, developing other tools and piloting additional interventions.

If we want our organizations to have the deepest impact, we need to create environments – grounded in trust, nurtured by respect – where individuals can maximize their potential. It is not just management gurus that espouse this cultural focus. Our own tradition highlights this priority.

Spertus CEO Hal Lewis speaking at a recent Spertus event entitled, How Great Leaders Create Great Places to Work shared a Talmudic teaching from the great sage Raba: When individuals die and stand at the gates of heaven, they are asked a series of questions to determine how they lived their lives. The number one question an individual is asked is, “Were you honest in your business dealings?” It’s not, how religiously observant were you, or even how charitable. The text suggests the measure of our lives depends significantly on the quality of our conduct in the workplace.

Organizations are the sum of their people, and like people, they must reflect in order to grow and become their best selves. We believe organizational growth is a practice, not a destination. It is time to put this practice front and center in our community.

Results from our pilot will be released and on our web site this fall. Stay tuned.

This article originally appeared on EJewishPhilanthrophy.com on February 17, 2016.

People First: Why We’re Focusing on Workplace Culture in Jewish Organizations

Amy leads research and innovation efforts at Leading Edge. She and her team collect and analyze information to inform, evaluate, and improve Leading Edge's work, and share information with the Jewish nonprofit sector to empower positive change for the field's talent, culture, and leadership. 

Amy has spent most of her career in the field of organizational psychology both as a consultant and in roles internal to organizations including working at Korn Ferry Hay Group, City Year Headquarters, and Hillel International. Some of her consulting work has focused on leadership in public education and ongoing consulting to public and corporate clients. She has served as a board member of Hillel International, Joshua Venture Group, and currently serves on the boards of directors of Keshet and the Jewish Studio Project. 

Former Chief Research & Innovation Officer

Amy Born

Amy Born is a former Chief Research & Innovation Officer at Leading Edge.