Holistic Friends & Family Update: May 2020

Given the times we’re living in, we thought it would make sense to share our latest Friends & Family newsletter from our CEO, Tom Alexander. Check it out below.

Hi all,

It’s been a pretty crazy couple months at Holistic, as it has been everywhere. It’s been hard -- on our families, on our clients, on our individual selves, everywhere. It can be gut-wrenching, it can be overwhelming, it can be terrifying. And yet, I’m heartened by the fashion in which our team has stepped up and humbled by their grit and determination. And I feel the same about my family. And I’m truly, truly grateful for all that I have, in work and in life, and hopeful, as always, to have the chance to share some opportunity with others.

This whole idea of stay-at-home is, at its core, a giant communal act of inclusion and vulnerability. And, as a company that is effectively based on those two concepts, I believe that on some level, this crisis has helped Holistic find our footing, our place, in a way we never had before. We’ve used the time to try and be there for our clients, first and foremost, as well as make some substantive improvements to the business (more on these later).

Our clients have been truly fantastic, for which we will be forever grateful. They have stuck with us and in many ways we’re finding creative and unique ways to work with them and support them as they help their own teams through this challenge. Our work from home survey tool and our subsequent office hours sessions have been really well received. Our clients are also adjusting and doing everything they can to be there for their own employees, with some great successes along the way (check out what United Way, Metropolitan Family Services, Sittercity, Yello, First Stop Health, YEA! or Shoprunner -- to name just a few -- are doing). We are very proud of all of them.

Business development has obviously been harder, but in that space we have had some initial success as well. Our approach at Holistic has been basically to be as gracious and generous as possible and do the right thing, always, engaging with anyone and everyone we can in hopes that we can provide some support, resources, comfort or guidance right now. Our objective is that and that as we return to “normal”ish, those relationships will persevere. (A list of the resources we’ve been offering is below, and here). We've launched a free Slack channel and have been working on exciting new partnerships with the Executives’ Club of Chicago to roll out pulse surveys and with Passageways to help their clients have access to some additional resources as well. (BTW, if you are in Chicago, you should be a member of the Executives’ Club of Chicago, and if you need an employee portal, check out Passageways).

Our partner company, Hirewell, has been fantastic during this time, led by their CEO, Matt Massucci, who is the co-founder of Holistic. Hirewell is working on some interesting tools to help job seekers find employment and in general they’ve approached #coronaquarantine with the same professionalism and verve that they approach everything, which has been great to watch and has helped us focus. They are the sort of company, and the sort of people, that you want to be around in times like this.

We are also really excited about our latest offerings, which aim to support companies during this time. This includes our bank of free pulse surveys, which companies can easily administer to their employee base to get a quick check on how they’re doing, including one on remote work during COVID. The survey is a great way to engage with your employees and get a feel for how we work - it takes no more than 5 minutes to fill out and we’ll provide a customized report for all participating companies. We are also making ourselves available for “office hours” to provide counsel to companies -- this a great opportunity to get third-party advice regarding anything that is on your mind as an executive. If you’re interested in either opportunity, respond directly to this email and we’ll get you set up or schedule some time.

In terms of Holistic ourselves, we’ve been about as productive these past weeks as we ever have (a lot of these tools are available for free, and we hope that you consider trying them out):

We’ve launched a comprehensive and free Pulse surveys project -- increasingly, companies are looking to pulse surveys to gauge the well-being of their employees
We’re offering executive office hours sessions for partners to help them manage through this wild time.
We’ve hosted three webinars so far, including last week hosting a really exciting session with the Chicago Foundation for Women and A Better Chicago. You can check out the replay of the livestream of that conversation on building stronger women and girls here on our Facebook page. As a follow-up from our webinar on Employee Engagement During Difficult Times and Inclusion, we wrote this blog. For a quick recap of 5 Things You Can Do to Foster Inclusion with Tamiya Aurel of United Way of Chicago, check out the attached slides. If you missed out, we are available to present our Employee Engagement webinar to your HR people or leadership team for free as a helpful service for organizations. If you have a question you’re struggling with or an idea for a webinar we should do, reach out to us. We have a feature called #DearHolistic aimed at addressing concerns from people leaders and often create content around real-world company issues.
We’ve made a lot of progress on our employee handbook product, which is run by Sheila from our team.
We’ve built out and launched our Natural Language Processing and machine learning capabilities
Exec club partnership -- we’ll be “starring” in a coffee and connect on May 7th, where we’ll present the results of our efforts.
A couple of really insightful blog posts
Our latest Passageways partnerships, as mentioned above.
Also, the Peoria Innovation Hub, a project on which I’ve been working, is having its big brand reveal next Wednesday -- check it out.
A Slack channel dedicated to HR leaders and those interested in sharing their perspectives on DEI and people matters.
Our partner, Hirewell, stepping in to assist candidates in their career search

And, I’ll end where I began, which is with our team. Our folks have demonstrated tremendous resolve, focus and spirit during this time. They are building relationships with clients existing and new, coming up with creative and impactful ideas for the company, and most importantly being there for one another. I’m always proud of our team, but never more than right now. I share the sentiment that a lot of CEOs and other leaders are expressing -- tremendous gratitude that we get to “go to work” every day in the orbit of such wonderful people.

We are -- collectively -- very far from the end of this story. That much is obvious. But I’m buoyed by the general thoughtfulness and heart shown by the business community during this time. And I’m optimistic for the future; for Holistic and for everyone else.

Governor Quinn, when I worked for him, would recall this old adage about the mouse that falls into the bowl of milk. Rather than drowning, the mouse just starts swimming -- hard -- and keeps on swimming until the milk is churned into butter, at which point she just walks out.

There is something really powerful about waking up every day and trying as hard as you possibly can.

Stay healthy, and wash your hands!