All About HR

#2.23 - Total Wellbeing & Rewards: How Microsoft Does It

December 01, 2022 AIHR | Academy to Innovate HR Season 2 Episode 23
All About HR
#2.23 - Total Wellbeing & Rewards: How Microsoft Does It
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

What is total well-being and how can HR implement it?🔋

In this episode of All About HR season 2, we sit down with Kristen Roby Dimlow — Corporate VP of Total Rewards and Performance at Microsoft — to discuss how to build a holistic and inclusive benefits plan to reward and support your employees 🌱

Kristen is an experienced Human Resources Executive who started in Finance. She has strong experience with HR, Organizational Effectiveness, and Comp & Ben (including Executive Comp).

In this video, we’ll discuss: 

👉 The Human Energy Crisis

👉 Total well-being and holistic benefits

👉 6 skills for rewards professionals of the future

Watch the full episode to learn how a holistic approach to rewards and benefits can help your organization weather a crisis. ☔

Ready for the full experience? Watch the episode in video format. 

Useful resources: 

Rate, review & follow on your favorite podcast platform

If you've enjoyed this episode, please consider rating and reviewing our show. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the episode and any topics you'd like us to cover next.

If you haven't done so yet, subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode!

Kristen Robi Dimlow: As HR professionals, we're really trying to think about the people of an organization and how we optimize that employee experience through the lifecycle. And rewards is such a powerful lever, it’s compensation, it’s benefits, and in my case performance. I think of it as an orchestra. And we try to get all the pieces of the orchestra singing in harmony together: rewards, benefits, performance, people analytics. It's all focused on trying to accelerate our culture and trying to be accretive to our culture.

Neelie Verlinden: Hi everyone, and welcome back for a new episode of All About HR. My name is Neelie, and for today's episode, I got to have a conversation with Kristen Robi Dimlow. Kristen is one of Microsoft's HR leaders and she's also the VP of Total Rewards and Performance. Kristen and I had a fascinating conversation about holistic well-being. And we also talked about the reward space and what is happening there. So, all the more reason to get started straight away. But not before I asked you to subscribe to our channel, hit that notification bell, and like this video. Now, let's get started.

Neelie Verlinden: Welcome to another episode of All About HR. Hi there, Kristen, and welcome to the podcast. How are you?

Kristen Robi Dimlow: I'm doing very well, Neelie, it's great to be here.

Neelie Verlinden: It is very great to have you, Kristen. And also, I was so pleased to hear, just before we started to record this episode, that you have actually lived in the Netherlands for a while.

Kristen Robi Dimlow: I did it, was a fantastic part of my career, earlier in my career. And I – for anyone who's listening, if you get an opportunity to live and work in another country, take it. It’s such a fantastic life and work experience.

Neelie Verlinden:  A bit of a promo talk for the Netherlands, it's always nice to hear, I think. So, Kristen, we have a very interesting topic for today's conversation. Or actually, we have two topics. Starting with well-being, or actually total well-being or holistic well-being – I believe you're calling in at Microsoft now. And this is even more exciting for us here at the Academy to Innovate HR, because we came out last month with our HR trends for 2023. And one of the important themes we identified for next year and beyond is all about total well-being. But this is even more interesting, I believe, because today we are at a bit of a tipping point in our working lives. We see a lot of burnout, depleted surge capacity, global mental health crisis, it has been talked about and other factors that are really draining energy and sapping ambition in the workforce. And at Microsoft, Kristen, I believe you call this the human energy crisis. Can you perhaps elaborate on this?

Kristen Robi Dimlow: Absolutely. And exactly what you've said, we've done a recent study where 53% of managers and 48% of employees say that they are burned out. And we do call it the human energy crisis. I think, over the last several years, we have gone from crisis to crisis. And employees and managers have fairly weathered – weathered it as well as they can. But understandably, they're feeling really burned out and feel continued anxiety. So we've been thinking about, well, what can we do? What can we do to support employees? What can we do to create holistic well-being in the workforce? And so we came up with six ideas. You know, I think these are, these are pretty big buckets. But I think as HR professionals, if you can think about how to help your company, deliver some of these, you can start to offset the energy drain from the human energy crisis. So first of all, you know, culture and purpose. At Microsoft, we have a mission of empowering every individual and every organization on the planet to achieve more. And we hear from our employees, and I can tell you myself that I feel this way, being able to align my personal purpose to that is really awesome. It makes me feel like the time I spend at work really does matter. The other thing is, you know, in my side of the house being the leader of Total Rewards, we think about providing holistic and inclusive benefits. So what can we do to support people's holistic well-being? And by holistic well-being, I mean, physical, financial, and mental well-being. We offer a variety of benefits. And as you all know, you know, we have at least five generations in the workforce, if not seven, and so meeting people where they are and providing benefits that can support them through life's anxiety and anxious moments, is important. During the pandemic, we did things like offering global pandemic leave to family caregivers, so that they could take time off if they needed to, to attend to small children. We've done a lot to increase our mental well-being resources as well. So that's the second piece. We also really need to focus on helping leaders and managers. So the statistic I said earlier, managers are feeling even more anxious than individual contributors. And that's because they're carrying the load of making hybrid and flexibility work and trying to help the employees weather, you know, crisis to crisis. And so helping leaders and managers think about what they can do, first of all, to put their own oxygen masks on, as we say, to attend to their own well-being, and then to support their organization. And, even to role model the importance of well-being and ensuring that they're sort of connecting with people and understanding what's on their minds and what they can do to help. Also building supportive teams. So when we started to shift to what we call hybrid, which is extreme flexibility, working from anywhere, we thought it was important to get teams together to norm on: what makes sense for you, what are some of the team agreements that we can have. The fourth one, we talked about is career planning. So again, this importance of, in times of difficulty, reminding people that we've been up and down before. And plan for the future, think about how you continue to build upon your own career dreams. That doesn't need to stop when you're in these moments. And I think it's particularly important for employees, in addition to purpose, to sort of have an end in mind, and to be able to give them ideas about what might be next. We all know, I think most companies feel this, certainly at Microsoft, we feel it. The number one reason why people stay or go is career. And so, if they feel that their career dreams can be met, then they're much more engaged and sort of able to deal with the daily setbacks. And then last but not least, giving flexibility. So, I was recently with a group of peers and we were talking about our companies’ approach to hybrid post-pandemic. And it was interesting to me that there are a number of companies that are really trying to go back to “normal” where they have people showing up and being in offices and their leadership feels strongly that that is a must-have. You know, I take it from a different standpoint. I think enabling flexibility allows us to have the best minds across the planet. You know, IQ knows no geo boundary. And so we're finding at Microsoft that if we can challenge our mindsets a bit and allow more flexible work arrangements, we hire and engage better talent. So those are kind of our six pillars on how we're addressing the human energy crisis.

Neelie Verlinden: Yeah, sounds to me, Kristen, like a pretty exhaustive overview of all the important pillars when it comes to an employee’s lifecycle.

Kristen Robi Dimlow: Very much so. And I also think that in those six pieces, no one group does everything. So it's not all on HR, we activate others to help us. So for example, for leaders and managers, we need to remind them: here are some of the tips that you can do, and here are some of the beliefs that we have. Here are some of the things to spot in your employees. But they're the ones who are really the heroes who sort of show up every day and make it work. It is a village, I know that list sounds exhaustive. And I've worked in smaller companies before, and I haven't had the benefit of the power of Microsoft HR. But that's where you get the village to work with you. You work across functions, you have people come together to try to work on this opportunity together.

Neelie Verlinden: Yeah, absolutely. And then there was – Kristen, I was listening to you talking and you were mentioning how there were maybe four or five, perhaps even seven different generations in the workplace at the moment. And I was wondering, how are you going about that at Microsoft? Can you share something about that? 

Kristen Robi Dimlow: Sure. So of course, early in a career, people who have just left university or left school, you know, they think very differently than I did when I was in their shoes. They're much more interested in things like sustainability and social causes than I was. I'm ashamed to say that back in my era, we were more focused on just sort of doing what the boss wanted, and getting ahead. So I'm grateful for the up-and-comers who are much more socially conscious than I was. So we try to think about those sorts of opportunities, people who are retiring, maybe women who are having families, any parent having families, one of the things we found is families are very different today. And so thinking very differently about parents and offering everything from adoption service to fertility service, to caregiver leave, to you know, everything. So, you know, those are just some examples of different things in different stages of life. But the interesting part, from a benefits perspective, is trying to serve up those benefits at the right time. One of the hardest things any HR person has to do is trying to express the totality of rewards and benefits that the employees have. And so, my husband had a health condition and I got a message from Microsoft benefits saying, “Hey, do you realize we have a second opinion service? You can use this.” So that is really, I think, the trick. And I think one of the neat things about technology is that it's getting easier for us to have some ideas about what might be interesting to people and when. And then, of course, there are all kinds of things we offer just to everybody all the time. And I feel like again, getting that front and center to people, reminding them of the totality of things that they have is one of the things that keeps me up at night. It's just, my goal is really to get people to use their benefits. And so I have to constantly remind them: hey, don't forget we have this.

Neelie Verlinden: Yeah, Kristen. So I also wanted to talk with you briefly about healthcare and, in particular, how can employers make healthcare accessible and acceptable in a system where, nowadays, even mental health professionals are feeling burned out?

Kristen Robi Dimlow: Well, I love that you use the broad term health care, and health care applies to both physical and mental health. And I think employers, more and more – I think traditionally, we didn't focus on mental health. We've all had our EAP. So Employee Assistance Programs were, sort of, some of the more basic stuff. But what we certainly learned from the pandemic and from the human energy crisis is that more is needed. During the pandemic, we found that we had a real issue with this supply of counseling. And we heard stories that the EAP wasn't able to get back to people. In talking with our EAP, they also said that their counselors were having challenges. So one of the things I think we all need to think of, as HR folks, is: how do we give care to the caregivers? Certainly, nurses, doctors, and all healthcare professionals have been greatly stretched because of the pandemic. And then following on with that, the great reshuffle, where many of them sort of hit, you know, maybe changed roles, or were given huge opportunities elsewhere. And so it's put a lot of strain on our healthcare systems. So one of the things we've done is look for ways to scale mental well-being. So we've learned a lot since that time, we've offered our employees things like Headspace. And we have a global platform called “Be Well”, where people can go in and find recordings of fitness classes, or mindfulness classes, or different kinds of, like I mentioned, women in menopause, that sort of opportunity to talk with professionals to learn more. Like, am I crazy? Is what I'm going through unusual?

Neelie Verlinden: Now, I believe that at Microsoft you are making a point out of making a distinction between well-being and mental health as two separate things. Can you perhaps tell us a bit more about that?

Kristen Robi Dimlow: Absolutely. And I do hear people use the word well-being for mental health. And to me, well-being is more holistic. It's this concept of holistic well-being. And we do think of it as financial, physical, and mental. So you know, financial, trying to teach people a little bit about investing, a little bit about planning for the future, so that they can make their money work for them. Also, on the physical side. Obviously, all the health care resources – we have the online exercise classes. And then the big one is mental well-being, sort of the newer one that I talked about that we've really been amplifying and augmenting. The reason I think it's important to have that differentiation is that well-being really is a holistic thing. If your finances are in trouble, chances are you're feeling maybe physical symptoms from that, and mental symptoms, such as anxiety. If you are having a physical condition, it may translate into mental health issues. And so we're really trying to think about encouraging employees to think about the whole package, trying to ensure that they're getting balanced in all three places. So that is why we think about it differently. And we do think when we consider the human energy crisis, it's not just mental, it's really thinking about that holistic package to help people be better. One thing we talk about at Microsoft is that we want employees in teams to thrive. That's sort of our new tagline: thrive. And so in order to thrive, it's not just about making work good or it's not just about thinking about your mental health. It's really thinking about all those pieces. And when it's working, you get sort of that reinforcing success loop across all three. So that's why we think about them differently. Also, I would say personally, one of the reasons why I think it's important to continue to talk about mental health and mental well-being is again to destigmatize and make it okay.

Neelie Verlinden: I think this is so important, Kristen, because I do believe that there's still a lot of destigmatizing to be done when it comes to mental health in the workplace. Now, Kristen, as I mentioned in the intro, we were also going to talk about the rewards space and your role as the VP of Total Rewards and Performance at Microsoft. And perhaps we can kick off where you take us with you into a day in your life.

Kristen Robi Dimlow: That is a really fun question and I'll just start by saying no two days are the same, which is true for any HR professional. I think that's one of the most fun parts of our job. It’s that you never know what's going to happen. You may have a to-do list. And we all know, a lot of times it doesn't happen. So this morning, I got up, and my first meeting was with our compensation committee. So one of the things that's really fun that I get to do is to work with the compensation committee on Microsoft's board of directors on executive pay matters. And so I love that. So I support the board. They are responsible for governance because we're a publicly traded company. And so I work with them. Then I got to come to this, which I'm very excited about. I always love to get to talk HR with like-minded folks. And then I have some one-on-ones. We're also working with our global diversity and inclusion team on our D&I disclosure, which goes out next week. So I'm working on that later today. I frequently will have a team meeting or two, where we think about ways to improve compensation. We have the war for talent, even though things have calmed down from last year with the great reshuffle. We're always thinking about what's next, where do we need to go? How are we doing against the market? Usually, there's a business leader who has an idea. So we'll go think about that. In the performance space, we're always trying to think about how we improve performance and development in Microsoft, which includes things like recognition. We just launched a new – we call them Connect Forms. But it's basically many performance reviews that happen throughout the year. And our goal on all things performance is really to help managers and employees get really, really clear on what success looks like and what the priorities are. So those are the kinds of things I do. I'm part of the HR leadership team here. So we think a lot about what is the future, we try to strategize together about what are our people's priorities for Microsoft. And then also another really fun part of my job is getting to do a little bit of external work. So I'll talk to other HR leaders about how we use programs and tools at Microsoft, I'll also work with our product teams. So we have a product called Microsoft Viva. And it's really targeted toward the employee experience. And so they're spending a fair bit of time with HR leaders. So I'll spend time also with our Power BI team or our Vivaa product leaders to think about product direction. And there are also people on my team. So I have experts in the people analytics space that spend a lot of time with our product groups, thinking about how to use the tools better. So I love my job. I think I've been in HR for some time. But rewards for me. I started my career in corporate finance. And then I moved into HR about 20 years ago, I've been around a while. And to me, the total rewards job with performance and people analytics is the perfect blend of sort of HR, finance, and business. So it's been you know, no two days are the same.

Neelie Verlinden: Yeah, I think that was actually the best first thing that you could say in response to that question, Kristen. Saying that no two days are the same. Because I believe that that is probably what makes your role so exciting. So thank you very much for taking us with you on a day in your life. Linked to what you were just saying, Kristen, how no two days are the same for you in your role, and at the same time, the changes that are happening in the reward space as a whole as well. What kind of advice would you give to people who are wanting to start out in that world of rewards?

Kristen Robi Dimlow: Absolutely. So I love rewards. If you think about HR systemically, we have end-to-end talent management. As HR professionals, we're really trying to think about the people of an organization and how we optimize that employee experience through the lifecycle. And rewards is such a powerful lever, you know, it’s compensation, it’s benefits, and in my case performance. And so I think of it as an orchestra, and we try to get all the pieces of the orchestra singing in harmony together or playing in harmony. I'm mixing my metaphors. So one of the neat things that we've, you know, been trying to do, we've been on a journey ever since Satya Nadella became our CEO. We've been working very, very hard on culture at Microsoft. And so my piece of the world, rewards, benefits, performance, people analytics, it's all focused on trying to accelerate our culture and trying to be accretive to our culture. So one of our culture tenets is growth mindset. So this idea of making the company learn it all, instead of know it all, and being willing to take a little more risk and asking a lot of questions, being willing to take feedback from others. And so I try to infuse that in everything I do. And so, I would say to people who are considering careers in rewards, you can have a lifetime career in that space because you can move across rewards, benefits, you can play in the performance space. If you have an interest in potentially becoming a CHRO at some point, it's really great to have that foundational understanding of rewards. It's also, I mean, if sometimes people have anxiety over math, and we do have a lot of math people, and I would say, it's good to like numbers if you're coming to either compensation or benefits, because we do use a lot of numbers. But I'll tell you, if you're a little nervous about math, it's not hard math. Maybe our actuaries, and some of our data scientists are good at hard math, but you don't have to be a nuclear physicist to do well in rewards. We also get a lot of exposure. So I have people fairly early on in their career in rewards who are meeting with pretty senior leaders to help them with their comp issues. And then the other thing, I love economics and business, and this is the ultimate place where you get to practice that every day. We think a lot about supply and demand. We think a lot about, you know, the budget opportunity, optimising budget. I don't know any company that has unlimited money. So there's always a little bit of, hey, how do I make the comp investment go further? So it's sort of like a little bit of a puzzle. And then if you're into things like diversity and inclusion, and you're into sustainability, rewards is a big lever that's helping to push those things. So another cultural pillar for us is diversity and inclusion. We've thought through everything. We think about inclusive compensation and benefits. And so we're trying to think about how do we use those levers to incent the behavior that we want. And we really believe that D&I has a real impact on the bottom line, we know it, we've seen it, we've got examples in Microsoft. And so we want to keep using our rewards and benefits to make that happen. And then on the sustainability front, we're also trying to help our sustainability team who's got some very, very ambitious goals around carbon reduction. We're gonna pay back all the carbon we've ever done by 2050, which is pretty cool. And we're thinking about how we use rewards and incentives to do that. So I love my job. Like I said, no two days are the same. And with rewards, it's always a new year, it's always a new day, things are always changing. And it's super, super fun. And even if you're not going to be a long-term rewards professional, it's great grounding for any kind of HR role. Even if you go and become an HR business partner, chances are your leader is going to ask you about compensation. So or even benefits, just understanding how benefits work.

Neelie Verlinden: I really enjoy listening to you, Kristen, because I can actually feel that you really have a passion for what you're doing. And I think this is always the nicest people to listen to, in an interview or in a podcast or what have you. So yeah, that's really nice. So you mentioned topics like sustainability, D&I. And then if we link the sort of future of work with rewards, how do you see the value of rewards in this future of work?

Kristen Robi Dimlow: I think that the rewards are so important for that. And rewards can also do a lot of damage if you don't have them aligned with the right things, or even performance. And let me just give a quick example, At Microsoft, we used to have a very individual-centric performance and reward system. And so it was really, we considered, a meritocracy. And, you know, we really wanted the best individual, you know, the hero of the group to get really, really well compensated. And we still believe in pay for performance, for sure. But we define performance differently. It's not just what you do as an individual, but it's what you're doing for others, how are you leveraging others and so there's more of a team focus. And one of the reasons we got there is this example where we used to have developers who were sort of incentivized based on the amount and quality of code that they wrote. And then we had testers who are incentivized based on the number of bugs that they found. And I had a tester come to me and say, Kristen, this is so crazy, because I could walk across the hall to my developer partner, and tell them how to fix their code. Instead, I have to go log the bug in a system. So I get credit. And ironically, I am incentivized by hoping that person writes buggy code, and I was like, oh, gosh, this is bad. And so anyway, I just want to share that it is so important, as we think about the future of rewards, to think about what in your reward systems might be doing things of harm. So I do think reward to the future. You really need to have alignment to culture and purpose in the company. If you're trying to drive things like D&I and sustainability, you want to make sure that it's aligned to that and that you don't have any unintended consequences. We've also seen, in rewards, some companies really stumble when their incentives were not aligned to customer outcomes. You know, there's a certain bank in the United States that got into a lot of trouble for jamming credit cards on customers because their incentives for their salesforce were so hardcore on signing up new people, that bad things were happening. So we think a lot about the governance around our incentives to make sure that there aren't any unintended consequences. And so that is very important in the future rewards. One of the most exciting things that we're all talking about, I'm sure you've heard this, and we've probably talked about it on your podcast, is skilling, this idea of skilling the workforce. And, you know, the world is changing so fast that what we really need to ensure, as HR professionals – and the learning people out there think a lot about this – is how do we quickly help people build skills that they're going to need into the future? And from a pay perspective? How do we align incentives up to encourage people to keep growing and to be willing to build those new skill sets? And then also, from a supply and demand standpoint, some of those skills are really, really hot in the market. So how do we ensure that we're thinking about skills-based pay? So for example, you know, if you are really an AI professional, that's something that's pretty hot right now, security is really, really hot. My team and I need to think about how do we incentivize people who have gone to the trouble of learning those very difficult skills, and to ensure that we're rewarding them and encouraging them to stay at Microsoft. So I think, you know, those are a couple of examples. I think, we're thinking a lot about incentivizing people not just on what they do, but how they do it. So are their actions congruent with our pillars around diversity and inclusion, our values of respect, integrity, and accountability? Are they taking their responsibilities with respect to manage our excellence, we call it model coaching care. So you know, that is what the future of rewards is, it’s thinking about all that. Also, sorry, one more on the flexibility of work. So more and more, we're probably going to see different kinds of working agreements. We have a lot of full-time employees who sort of work, I'll call it, 40-hour work weeks, maybe 35 in France. But I think more and more, and especially as we have talent shortages, and as we do have this huge population of baby boomers who are retiring, we may think about more part-time work. Certainly gig economy. We have to think about that. So this whole world of hybrid and flexibility, it's going to keep us challenged and intellectually curious for quite some time.

Neelie Verlinden: Oh, absolutely, Kristen. And I think personally, I think that that is also what makes this so so interesting at the moment. Now regarding the skilling that you were just talking about, are there any skills in particular that you feel are relevant for people in the reward space? Maybe you can name one or two?

Kristen Robi Dimlow: Absolutely. So I do think that math, you know, understanding algebra-level math. As well as we have rules where if you're really into math, like actuarial or data science, so we have big, big-level math as well. But one of the most important things, which has always been an important skill, and will continue to be an important skill is consulting. So this idea of meeting business clients, hearing their issues. Any good HR professional is very good at diagnosing root causes, and not necessarily reacting to the symptom and helping your leaders understand, you know, what sorts of things would help you get to the root cause. Also, we really believe in data-driven decision-making. So competency and fluency with data. And I'll also say storytelling. So I think that the ability to boil up complex concepts into very simple ideas, and being able to get to the heart of an issue. So all of those things are very important. I think, you know, diversity and inclusion as well, you know. All of us, really, have such an opportunity within diversity and inclusion to get clear on our own unconscious biases. And then also to consider where might there be biases in the system because in rewards and performance definitely, if you're not careful, you could have issues and so you have to be able to understand those. So those are some of the ideas. I think the hottest one is data-driven decision-making. But consulting, being strong on diversity, inclusion, all of those things are incredibly important for a rewards professional of the future. I'm going to add one more: business acumen. Rewards really does touch a lot of pieces of business. You have to understand what your business strategies are, you have to understand where the hot talent pools are. So, you know, this is a great place if you have an interest in business economics, but the big one, I'd say is data-driven.

Neelie Verlinden: Thank you. Thank you for that. And it totally makes sense to me as well. And in fact, here at the Academy to Innovate HR we are, of course, all about upskilling HR professionals and getting them ready for the future of work. And we have a framework, it's a T-shaped framework. And one of the things that we believe is an integral part of that is actually being data-driven, being data savvy, and not just for people in the reward space. But for every HR professional out there. So it's very nice to hear actually, from somebody who is working in the field and the reward space in particular, that this is something that is so relevant on a day-to-day basis in your job. So thank you for that, Kristen. Now onto one of my favorite parts of the podcast, actually. So every episode, I get to ask my guests if they want to share what they believe is the biggest cliche about HR that's out there. So, Kristen, I'm all ears.

Kristen Robi Dimlow: Oh, my gosh, we could spend hours on this. But I think there are a lot of people –- the cliche is HR people like people. And yes, we like people but we're more than that. I think I talked to a lot of people. Because I started my career in finance, and moved to HR, I have a lot of people who want to do career chats about moving to HR, and they usually start the conversation with “I really like people”. And I'm like, well, that's great that you really like people but we are a little bit more than just liking people. You know, we are HR professionals, and we are very good at what we do. We have a passion for business, we have some pretty deep skills that help us help you make the organization sing. And so I think that the misnomer that the only thing you need to come to HR and be successful is the ability to like people, that's a big cliche for me. It kind of bugs me, it kind of makes me smile. And I do like people but there are times in HR when you will hate people. And that's, I guess, that's a terrible thing to say. But you know, it's challenging. When we're dealing with humans, sometimes we have to have a lot of patience. And certainly have a lot of patience, sometimes, when people don't understand the professionalism of the function. I think we're getting a lot more credit these days. One of the silver linings, I guess, of the global pandemic, and of all of the stress that organizations have gone through lately, the war for talent, addressing racial injustice, you know, is that it's put HR at the center. If you think about what boards are talking about: it’s HR. Compensation committees have changed their name from compensation committee to human capital management, people are getting that HR is a first-class function. And it's not just about liking people, it's a little bit more than that. It's about loving business, and trying to help make the organization and the people in that business as effective and performant as possible to achieve the company's mission. That's our job. 

Neelie Verlinden: Yeah, that is a really beautiful answer. Kristen, thank you very much. And also, thank you so much for having this conversation with me.

Kristen Robi Dimlow: It was such a pleasure, Neelie, and thank you for having me today.

Neelie Verlinden: And thank you very much, everybody, for tuning in to today's episode. If you enjoyed this episode, and I really hope you did, don't forget to subscribe to our channel. If you haven't done so yet, click that notification bell and share this episode with a friend, a colleague, or a family member. Thank you very much and see you soon for a new episode of All About HR. Bye!

Rewards is like an orchestra
Introduction
The Human Energy Crisis
Microsoft’s 6 pillars to address this crisis
Holistic & inclusive benefits
Helping leaders & managers
Building supportive teams
Career planning
Giving flexibility
Making this a success takes a village (and not just HR)
The multi-generational workforce: serving up benefits at the right time
Making healthcare acceptable & accessible
Why Microsoft distinguishes between wellbeing and mental health
A day in the life of a VP Total Rewards & Performance
Kristen’s advice to people starting out in the Rewards space
Rewards as a lever to push D&I and sustainability
The value of Rewards in the future of work
How Microsoft defines performance
Skilling people for the future & skills-based pay
6 Relevant skills for the Rewards professionals of the future
The biggest cliché about HR is that they like people
HR has been put at the center