Episode 244: Mental Health, Belonging and the Role of AI: Carmen Barboza, CHRO at Crowell & Moring

Um, well, I'm gonna dive into our first question.

Our regular listeners-

Please do

... yeah, they know it very well, we think of you as an HR leader whose influence is driving social change, and we would like to ask, what do you feel has been your biggest impact to date?

Yeah.

I, I started the conversation by talking about this multifaceted person that I am, because that's truly how I think about myself and how I think about the world.

And as I reflect on the impact that I've had, um, I can't help but think about the pandemic, and the pandemic really changed how the world thought of HR professionals.

Um, some organizations used to think HR was so back of the house, and this was a real moment for us to step up, and an opportunity for us, one, to help people think about how to work differently, so it was that transition from home, from work to home.

But I think it was also creating space for people to feel safe at a time that was really scary.

And in the legal profession, so specifically here where I think I had the most impact was, we've always known that mental health, um, is important, but there is a big stigma still in the legal profession around having conversations about mental health and burnout and, heaven forbid, someone talked about needing a therapist.

And what the pandemic did was highlight how much of a mental health crisis was going on in the world.

And so I'm really proud of the programs that we were able to roll out at that point, and many firms and many organizations rolled out those programs.

We were able to keep them post pandemic.

So one of them specifically, we gave hours, billable hours to our timekeepers to take time off to unplug, so we call it unplug time.

We gave them 40 hours.

That's really costly to the firm.

Those are hours where they're not producing.

But we're putting our money where our mouth is, and so we said we truly believe that a well-rounded professional is someone who has time to reset.

Um, and so that's a specific thing that we did, but beyond that, there had to be this level of psychological safety for us to then introduce a program like that.

Because, as you know, many organizations have all these benefits, but if you ask how many of them are actually being used, what's the utilization, you'll find that some of them are not really utilized because people are afraid to take time off.

That's right.

People are afraid to say, "I need to unplug." And so there's the, the policy change, but there's also the cultural change, where we made it okay for people to say, "I need help," where we made it okay to have words like resilience and burnout in our vocabulary.

Yeah.

It's, you know, I feel I must note that not only is it wonderful to hear about that work and the culture change you created, but, you know, you're speaking to us from an American law firm as well, and we all know the pressures, uh, that exist in that sector and the kind of hours that, you know, are well known that people work, and the time sheet element as well, the billing-

Yeah

Um, well, I'm gonna dive into our first question.

Our regular listeners-

Please do

... yeah, they know it very well, we think of you as an HR leader whose influence is driving social change, and we would like to ask, what do you feel has been your biggest impact to date?

Yeah.

I, I started the conversation by talking about this multifaceted person that I am, because that's truly how I think about myself and how I think about the world.

And as I reflect on the impact that I've had, um, I can't help but think about the pandemic, and the pandemic really changed how the world thought of HR professionals.

Um, some organizations used to think HR was so back of the house, and this was a real moment for us to step up, and an opportunity for us, one, to help people think about how to work differently, so it was that transition from home, from work to home.

But I think it was also creating space for people to feel safe at a time that was really scary.

And in the legal profession, so specifically here where I think I had the most impact was, we've always known that mental health, um, is important, but there is a big stigma still in the legal profession around having conversations about mental health and burnout and, heaven forbid, someone talked about needing a therapist.

And what the pandemic did was highlight how much of a mental health crisis was going on in the world.

And so I'm really proud of the programs that we were able to roll out at that point, and many firms and many organizations rolled out those programs.

We were able to keep them post pandemic.

So one of them specifically, we gave hours, billable hours to our timekeepers to take time off to unplug, so we call it unplug time.

We gave them 40 hours.

That's really costly to the firm.

Those are hours where they're not producing.

But we're putting our money where our mouth is, and so we said we truly believe that a well-rounded professional is someone who has time to reset.

Um, and so that's a specific thing that we did, but beyond that, there had to be this level of psychological safety for us to then introduce a program like that.

Because, as you know, many organizations have all these benefits, but if you ask how many of them are actually being used, what's the utilization, you'll find that some of them are not really utilized because people are afraid to take time off.

That's right.

People are afraid to say, "I need to unplug." And so there's the, the policy change, but there's also the cultural change, where we made it okay for people to say, "I need help," where we made it okay to have words like resilience and burnout in our vocabulary.

Yeah.

It's, you know, I feel I must note that not only is it wonderful to hear about that work and the culture change you created, but, you know, you're speaking to us from an American law firm as well, and we all know the pressures, uh, that exist in that sector and the kind of hours that, you know, are well known that people work, and the time sheet element as well, the billing-

Yeah