Thanks To COVID, Your Culture May Need An Overhaul

By Dan Schell, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader

The pandemic spurred companies in all industries to reevaluate their cultures, accommodating a workforce that began to expect more from employers than simply a steady salary and a traditional benefits package. In tandem, that workforce became scarcer, with early retirements and an abundance of job hopping. All of this has caused HR professionals to get even more creative at attracting and retaining staff.

At Zymeworks, a clinical-stage biotech with offices in Seattle and Vancouver, Chief People Officer Kathy O’Driscoll has been hyperfocused during the past year and a half on creating company initiatives that bolstered the company’s culture and met the changing well-being needs of employees. “We have leveraged research from i4cp [the Institute for Corporate Productivity] that correlates holistic well-being with high-performance organizations,” she says. “We are also avid consumers of insight from the NeuroLeadership Institute (NLI), which emphasizes the importance of connection.”