In HRchat episode 692, we welcome Laura Probert, Chief People Officer at Egress to share tips to help companies combat cyber attacks.
Laura is responsible for the company’s global people strategy. Her focus is on attracting, retaining, and developing world-class talent, including creating a high-performing culture that rewards and recognizes its people, provides flexibility, training and career development, and supports mental and physical wellbeing.
With over 25 years of experience, Laura is passionate about creating successful people development strategies and building agile, high-performing, diverse teams with high levels of engagement.
Questions for Laura include:
- Before joining Egress, you held senior HR positions in technology, advertising, retail, and entertainment, working with some of the world’s leading brands including Adobe and Bwin Sports. How have recent trends like the rise of AI, remote working, and more gig workers changed how HR leaders do their jobs?
- Egress helps companies combat various cyber attacks. Why does that matter and how severe is the threat?
- I can see you have a passion for creating a great culture. In your experience, what are some of the key elements that make a great culture?
- After launching a 4-day week initiative and noticing patchy delivery and customer support, you conducted a post-mortem and found that the inflexibility of the program was negatively impacting particular days of the week so you introduced a new concept to Egress employees known as eFlex. Tell us more
- The tech industry has been facing a skills shortage for some time, what advice or insights can you offer to attract and retain top talent?
- What does the Great Places to Work ranking from 88th to 50th mean to you and Egress? What does it say about the company?
More About Laura
Before joining Egress, Laura held senior HR positions in technology, advertising, retail, and entertainment, working with some of the world’s leading brands, including Adobe, bwin Sports and Xaxis, a global agency within GroupM and WPP.
As a leading email security platform, Egress understands the value of an engaged workforce in driving superior quality service delivery to its customers. As such Laura Probert, Chief People Officer at Egress, has been instrumental in working with staff to help improve mental health and wellbeing, and moving Egress from 88th to 50th on the list of Great Companies to Work.
Since joining the company in January 2022, Laura has transformed the Egress company culture by listening to employee feedback and implementing radical changes across the organization. One such initiative is the company’s eFlex offering.
When Laura eagerly introduced the 4-day workweek initiative, which had taken the world by storm, she never imagined that it would result in Egress implementing an even better solution that would increase employee satisfaction and improve employee retention. After the 4-day week initiative created patchy delivery and customer support, Laura conducted a post-mortem and found that the inflexibility of the program was negatively impacting particular days of the week so, Laura introduced a new concept to Egress employees known as eFlex.
The eFlex initiative recognizes that employees want to have the flexibility to meet their personal needs but also want to achieve their career goals and aspirations. By giving employees the flexibility to choose when they want to take time off to recharge and focus on their mental wellbeing, eFlex provides employees with an additional 15 days of leave to use as they like, either by taking extended lunch breaks or booking extra half days off throughout the year in addition to annual leave. Managers have also found that eFlex spreads time out so thinly it’s barely noticeable.
A year and a half later, eFlex has proven to be a huge success and is a massive drawcard for attracting, recruiting and retaining a happy, productive workforce. However, Laura knows that it takes more than additional leave days to keep employees happy and motivated. To achieve this, she also introduced a Career Framework that unpacks each employee’s career path when joining the company and provides ‘in the moment’ feedback on their progress to achieving their career goals.
Through these and other initiatives, the company culture has evolved into a place where employees feel valued. This is demonstrated by the decrease in employee attrition of 8% over the past 18 months, retaining approximately 45 employees over the same period. At the same time, more than 15% of employee referrals come from within the organization and through the Career Framework program, the rate of promotion has increased to over 40% across the company.
Laura has big ambitions and goals for 2024; with the Great Places to Work rankings being published in March, Egress expects to continue to climb the leaderboard. If you would like to speak to her and find out more about how she is transforming Egress into a Great Place to Work and the various innovations that she has spearheaded, please let me know and I will be happy to arrange an interview.