This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. If you happen to work at the private equity from Carlisle Group, you are getting an extra week off next week. That's on top of a seven well being stipended. So for more on that and how the company is thinking about the wellness of its employees, let's find out from Bruce Lawson. He is chief human resources officer over at Carlisle Group.
He's on the phone with us on this Tuesday. Hey, Bruce, nice to have you here. How are you hi, Carol great, Thank you for having me. Well, it's great to have you here. First of all, I want to get into what you guys are doing your world. Tell us how things have progressed over the past year and a half as you've dealt with the pandemic, you know, getting through it, starting to reopening. Kind of where where are you right now in terms of your individual firm? So we're um,
we're doing a great job of managing through things. Our firm has been having record level performances. Are people are working incredibly hard and they're completely engaged. Um. But like everybody who's been going through this has been a journey. We've had UM challenges and things that have come up that we've tried to deal with, and some of those are around our new well being strategy that we have implemented a number of months ago. UM. But we're we're
hanging in there. We'll talk to us about this well being strategy because it's really been very interesting, at least for me as a journalist and for many others to see how companies have opened up in terms of thinking about their employees different like how how is that relationship
between Carlisle the employee or change with Carlyle and its employees. Sure, so, look, I think a lot of this started UM a little bit before the pandemic, where um, you know, with new leadership at Carlisle and our new CEO, Cuson Lee, trying to focus on how do we enhance UM an already very strong culture in the firm UM and really make our human capital strategies in line with all of our other strategies to deliver the right kind of commercial results.
And so we were beginning to talk about a number of things, and then, of course, in March of last year, the world began to change, and we all went out on on a lockdown for what everybody thought would be two weeks in life could get back to normal UM, but of course that didn't happen UM, and so we began navigating our way through that and one of the key pillars of our human capital strategy that we wanted
to put in place. But what this all happened was sort of a very clear and transparent communication from leadership about what was going on in the world, and the pandemic kind of gave us no choice but to really accelerate that, and so we spent a lot of time just very openly and candidly and honestly communicating with our people about what was going on, even at times when we didn't really know what was going on, so that the new management was watching things and being concerned about things.
And as the pandemic progressed, UM, well all individually got a sense for the increased stress levels that we're going on UM because of your inability to separate from work and just no stop button, and it felt like people were living at work more than they were working from home.
And so we started to focus on a bunch of things around UM focusing on the well being of our people, because we have a strong belief that if our people are feeling better about themselves both physically, mentally emotionally, they'll be able to perform better individuals and their teams will function better, and ultimately that will deliver better commercial results
for the firm. And so we started to put together kind of a brief well being approach, which has evolved into a much more formal strategy UM where we're trying to cover essentially the five pillars of well being as as we see them, which are physical, emotional, social, environmental, and financial. And our initial thrust has really been on
the physical and emotional well being of our people. And so we started kind of small by having um, you know, very early on in the pandemic zoom yoga classes and meditation classes and some some things to just give people a break, and started to do some other things, and then we thought, we've got to get more serious about this, because this is this is going to be part of our world going forward and it's just smart business on
our part. And so we established well Being Advisory Committee across the firm that consists of employees from all different levels across all of our businesses and all geographies to help advise us on the kinds of things that we think would be most impactful for our people, and one of those was, you know, this inability to separate and have any kind of disconnection from work. And so we started.
We started last year by giving people a day off before the fourth of July and before Labor Day, before other holidays, just to extend the break a little bit where everybody was off at the same time, because it seemed to us like that was the only time you could really as connected if everybody was was off, and we got such positive feedback from that that that evolved UM into us discussing as a leadership team earlier this year, you know, we should just close the place down for
a week globally and give everybody a week off where they can really disconnect. And we discussed amongst our leaders globally about the right time to do that and when made the most sense, and we ended up UM with next week in August being the right week to do that. I want to get back to Bruce Lawson, chief human resources officer over at Carlisle Group, still with us on the phone. Next week their workers are getting an extra
week off next week. They've also provided a seven well being stipend for UH Carlisle workers and Bruce, you know, one of the things I was thinking about is and I think I do wonder how much of this stays with us in terms of permanent, you know, planning for our workers at companies. UM, And I do wonder if there's a you know, commercial aspect to why you're doing it, that it that it works, that it makes workers feel better,
that it ultimately makes them feel more productive. What kind of researcher science did you guys maybe tap into before setting your sights on some of these programs. Sure, UM, Look, we've we've looked at a bunch of different studies that indicate that if people are physically and emotionally healthier, UM and well that are off, they are engaged more in their life generally, that's not not just in work, but
in their personal lives. And if your people are more energized and have the ability of focus, are feeling better about themselves, they're going to perform better. And when you've got a collection of better performing individuals, you're going to have better performing teams. UM. One of the measures that we look at to see how people are feeling about
some of our efforts. Is in our recent employee engagement survey that closed in March of this year, and our people said that they were proud to work at Carlisle and would recommend it to a friend, And that to me says a lot about how they feel about their job. And when they're feeling great about their job, you know,
this is a competitive, intense business. They're going to be moments where they've really got to push themselves and they're going to be more willing to do that if they're feeling good about how the company is thinking about them as a person, not just a cog in a will
that's that's trying to crank out commerce. But what's changed in terms of the conversations that you think are are are happening between senior management, because I think it's safe to say that they're probably been studies out there for years about people saying that if people have time off and breaks and really you know, get away from their work, that they ultimately come back and they are more productive. That it isn't just about more hours worked, right, it's
better hours work or smarter hours work. So what's happened in terms of the conversations that we're having among senior management that people are saying, we'll wait a minute, the pandemic really opened our eyes to something, and we gotta do we gotta do things differently. Well, look, I think historically human top departments and HR functions have been trying to have those conversations, but a lot of times people
didn't take it all that seriously. I think one of the things the pandemic has done is made senior leaders of organizations realize, because they're experiencing the same things in a very similar way that their employees are, that this is real, and this will make us better and our people were performed better, will have lower turnover, and people will be generally happier if we focus on these things.
And so part of it, I think has really just been how the pandemic as stone everybody into the same boat, and senior leaders, at least at Carlisle have chosen respond to that by engaging in the conversation. Very practically, a lot of these things we're doing aren't my ideas. Some of them have come from our CFO, some have come from the CEO. It's literally a contribution from a lot
of senior folks. Well, I love that you took me there because I was thinking and I've had a lot of discussions about like, after the financial crisis, the CFO was no longer just on the earnings call and you know, making sure all the statements went out. They became so crucial in helping companies get through that crisis. And I do feel like human resources officers, chief human resources officers like yourself now have a much more senior spot within
the c suite. Is that fair to say? Well, it's certainly fair to say at Carlisle, and I think it's true across industry generally. Um, you know, I'm part of a small group of people who I think are are in the executive suite advising on a whole host of issues. And our CEO and our CFO and our CEO, etcetera take people issues so seriously they want me at the table,
and I'm there for all the meaningful discussions. When we came up with the stipend, the seven fifty dollar stipend, it was our CFO who actually gave us some of the best input, which was, let's just make this simple. Let's not make people submit receipts and have something approved, let's just give it to them and let them decide the best way to spend that seven fifty dollars for their own personal well being. And that kind of input historically would have been you know, miles and miles of
conversations and meetings to get that kind of approval. Hey, just got about thirty seconds. What do you hope that employees do next? Tweak or spend their money on the stipend? What do you hope they do? And just quickly if you could. It's really just whatever's gonna make them feel better. It's been fund at Carlisle leading up to this. Literally at the end of every meeting, somebody says, hey, Carol,
what are you going to do next week? And you know, the conversations about what people are doing in the way they're spending are vast as people's individual well being is. And I just hope people get a get a good rest and a good break from it all. Well, great to check in with you and hear what you guys are doing. Uh. I find it that the human resource space has really evolved a lot across the world over
the last year and a half. Bruce Laarson, thank you, Thank you, Chief human resources officer at Carlisle Group joining us on the phone here