This episode features an interview with Pratiksha Patel, Chief People Officer at Branch. Pratiksha has more than two decades of experience driving employee engagement in hybrid, office-based, and remote cultures. Prior to Branch, she served as the Senior Vice President of People at CB Insights and as a Talent Expert at McKinsey & Company. In this episode, Amanda and Pratiksha discuss meeting workers’ expectations, inclusivity, and upskilling employees.
This episode features an interview with Pratiksha Patel, Chief People Officer at Branch. Pratiksha has more than two decades of experience driving employee engagement in hybrid, office-based, and remote cultures. Prior to Branch, she served as the Senior Vice President of People at CB Insights and as a Talent Expert at McKinsey & Company.
In this episode, Amanda and Pratiksha discuss meeting workers’ expectations, inclusivity, and upskilling employees.
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“To create conditions where a highly diverse company and team works well together, can bring all of their ideas, bring the varied perspective that we so desperately want everyone to bring, takes a special environment. Takes an intentionality around saying, ‘We want to create an environment where you bring your perspectives and you bring your differences in, you don't just suppress them and leave them at home.’ Some of the ways we do that is we provide a guide and a micro training on the notion of day-to-day conversations and how to enable Branchers and help them know that we want them to have inclusive conversations with their colleagues about differences. As well as giving them tools on how to share stories on more sensitive topics like social or political challenges in our environment that are around us.” – Pratiksha Patel
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Episode Timestamps:
*(01:53): Pratiksha’s background
*(03:44): Segment: Story Time
*(06:20): How Branch is intentional about employee experience
*(09:24): Segment: Getting Tactical
*(18:04): How inclusivity helps with career development
*(21:41): How Branch ensures employees have a good work-life blend
*(26:00): Segment: Asking For a Friend
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Links:
Connect with Pratiksha on LinkedIn
Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn
Amanda Berry: Pratiksha, how are you?
Pratiksha Patel: I'm doing well. Thank you. Nice to see you, Amanda.
Amanda Berry: Yeah, nice to see you too. Thanks so much for joining me today. I wanna start off and just learn a little bit more about you. Would you mind talking about your career journey and how you got to where you are
Pratiksha Patel: today? Sure I started my career in the late nineties, sort of fell into the people function with little background of what to expect.
Pratiksha Patel: I was in intern at the time and after a few months of getting exposed to all the areas of the people function, thanks to a generous mentor, I was hooked. And I quickly went to study organizational psychology while starting my full-time job and have been off to the races ever since. And when I take a beat now and look back at the journey, since then, I've been in this amalgam of companies, very different industries stages, growth sizes, but there's been a common through line, which is always about achieving greater business results through how we unlock people
Pratiksha Patel: and talent.
Amanda Berry: When you started as an intern, what was your kind of focus then?
Pratiksha Patel: It wasn't well defined as, as is the case sometimes with intern roles, but it was labeled an HR intern. What I found was I, there was an opportunity to organize the rest of the interns, so kinda create an experience for the interns that had all come in, myself included, for what their summer would like from a development perspective, from an exposure perspective, and.
Pratiksha Patel: Understand if we want them to join again after they graduate. So that was one of the key things I worked on, including organizing, bowling, and then of elements around professional development, performance competencies, career, just a little bit here and there.
Amanda Berry: Right. Sounds like you were like doing HR for the intern program before you got
Amanda Berry: into hr.
Pratiksha Patel: For sure. Employee experience. Before it was employee experience. Right?
Amanda Berry: Absolutely. We're gonna move into our first segment story time. Welcome to
Amanda Berry: you are Branch's, first ever Chief People Officer. Can you talk a little bit about what you do as a Chief People Officer Branch?
Pratiksha Patel: Amanda, gosh, when you put it like that,
Pratiksha Patel: it's
Pratiksha Patel: pretty cool. It's cool. It's cool, you know, it means a lot. It really does. And I think when I, after I take a deep breath about the enormity of that and how it feels, I, I think about first learning.
Pratiksha Patel: And while I know I bring lots of ideas and experiences to Branch, I also am very aware that I'm a steward of something particularly special and kinda precious. So our culture is strong and yet kind of inherently fragile based on our size and our age. I'm the first, but I certainly won't be the last, so I.
Pratiksha Patel: See my role as helping our culture and our employee experience become more self-reinforcing as we scale.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. So what drew you to
Pratiksha Patel: Branch? Oh gosh. Well, it started with the people, maybe ironically, or maybe obviously, but I was connected through folks in my network to the folks at Branch who were talking to candidates in two directions, actually.
Pratiksha Patel: One was the initial and then the other was more of an advocate of me once they knew I was. And the conversations were effortless from right off the bat of having kinda big dreams on and nerding out on what a, an amazing customer experience and what an amazing employee experience could look like as we build a great insurance company and a great employer.
Pratiksha Patel: So started with the people, then the mission. I mean, I'm one of the fewers who come without industry experience, insurance industry experience, and so I. The industry, the opportunity and getting really enamored by ultimately a mission that you can't help but fall in love with, which is to lower the cost of insurance so more people could be covered.
Pratiksha Patel: And I would say last is the build opportunity, because to be able to take a strong culture and take a shot at making it big and lasting, I mean, What CPO doesn't want that.
Amanda Berry: So something that's very clear when you, when you go out and search about Branch right, is that it's about the founders and they say they've intentionally built a company that they've always wanted to work for.
Amanda Berry: You mentioned employee experience a number of times and it's such a hot topic, building a better employee experience. So could you talk about how Branch you, the founders, how are they intentional about
Pratiksha Patel: that? Yeah, so I, I love this question because I'm studying it and I'm taking it forward, right? So I came in to study like, how did we intentionally create this?
Pratiksha Patel: And it's, it's pretty exciting. So at a top line, like my own study has brought me to this phrasing of, I say this is a real true inside out brand. The way I think about how we are being intentional is we're thinking about our brand or in our experience overall with our members and our employees. And so when I dug in further, I, I got to see the early intense and, and the intentionality of a few things.
Pratiksha Patel: One was that having a clear mission and that, as we say, aligns with that direction. And what that means is like you don't have to say much once you say what the mission is for anyone to understand it and to understand it's worthwhile. So we really take pride in. And I'm really impressed by how we build a clear mission that aligns with that direction.
Pratiksha Patel: The next step was to develop this brand narrative for our members of those who we wanted to create a better insurance experience for. Take that brand narrative and be really clear about what it is we wanted to provide for them that was new, better indifferent. And the other piece early on was being intentional about translating that kind of brand narrative to the member.
Pratiksha Patel: What does that mean for what kind of culture and experience has to be delivered for the Brancher to be able to yield that experience for their member? So there is this kind of two sides of the coin of the experience to our members is definitely a relationship with the experience to our Branchers and how do we live that every day.
Pratiksha Patel: And now coming in, I see that that definition of the culture manifesting in a. Articulation and education on the kind of mindset we expect everyone to come in with and to lean in towards, I should say, more than come in with, to lean towards every day in their work. And then the kinds of behaviors which we call our roots that are prevalent in how we work together every day.
Pratiksha Patel: And you can't actually have any meeting or conversation without hearing at least multiple. Of our roots mentioned because they're part of our vernacular. And then the intentionality around revisiting and integrating the kind of mindset we expect to take as we turn our mindset and care to our colleagues, to our members.
Pratiksha Patel: And then the kinds of behaviors that we think should govern the way we interact with one another and incorporate that into our people programs, right? Like our recognition, our performance reviews, our promotion reviews, and more. Yeah,
Amanda Berry: I have a lot of questions cause this is such a hot topic, so I I, I've been just over here thinking about a lot of questions, so I'm gonna move us into our next segment.
Amanda Berry: Getting tactical.
Producer 3: I'm trying to figure out tactics and to be perfectly honest, and I didn't have to worry about tactics too much, here I am in charge and trying to say, why did you sleep through tactics, tactics.
Amanda Berry: Looking at Branch, you're recognized in 2023 as one of the the best places to work from Glassdoor. Employees say things like, Branch truly cares about its employees. I feel more connected to employees than I ever have in an office setting. But I wanna dig into how you're all doing that, because it sounds like you've got it down to a science in looking at where we're at now, right?
Amanda Berry: We've got multi-generations in a, in an office setting, you've got people working from home. There's just so many variables, right? So employee expectations about. What a good employee experience means is evolving, right? For some people that means being in the office. For some people that means being at home.
Amanda Berry: It means so many different things. So can you first talk about how you all at Branch are keeping up with understanding these expectations?
Pratiksha Patel: So, and this may be a little provocative, but I think part of the reason that employee expectations are always evolving is because, Companies don't always give them something to rely on or share what they should expect.
Pratiksha Patel: And so, you know, the way we keep up is certainly through listening through a variety of structured and organic methods so we can be responsive to patterns. Trends, of course, kind of goes back to that intentionality of what we're building for. We're also reflecting, researching, and building ahead so we can be proactive.
Pratiksha Patel: And so what happens when you build ahead and say, Here's how we're shaping things next for you, and here's what you can expect from it. It's sometimes ahead of the expectation arising for the employee, and that's artful, right? So we wanna be responsive and we also wanna be proactive, and we have our listening mechanisms to be responsive, and we have the talent and the support, frankly, and the expectation of ourselves as leaders and as a people team to go out there and be proactive and not just reactive.
Amanda Berry: So what are some of the recent themes you've been hearing related to employee experience as you're, you're using these methods and, and, and learning about what the employees are expecting and as you're building expectations.
Pratiksha Patel: Yeah, I love this. We, we actually just completed our second employee engagement survey, and so while it's not just about the survey, I would say our listening mechanisms include that plus our exit conversations, onboarding conversations, day-to-day conversations and other channels just of like in the flow of work, of hearing what people are struggling with and what they asking about, even if not struggling with or what they're imagining, even they're struggling.
Pratiksha Patel: Is really great and a great learning for us is that we had an insight last summer-ish that our, our employees were craving more structure around career development. And actually in my assessment, uh, an expectation of structure that's earlier and earlier, the more I visit different companies or spent time in companies given,
Pratiksha Patel: responded really well and. The right foundational structure of ladders and levels in place and communicated it to all the stakeholders, made it transparent. Published, I've communicated again, and then using in our processes. At times with career development and kind of reifying them, they're available.
Pratiksha Patel: And so what we learned in this point in Times survey is that, hey, that was really good and it was also not sufficient. And so I, I like to use this phrase, yes, that was necessary but not sufficient or not. All the things that we need to do. And so what we're hearing is Branchers still really believe that this is a great place to build a career and they really want still Cause we moved the needle a little bit, but not as much as we wanted to and feel like we should and can next they still crave.
Pratiksha Patel: Okay, but. What does that mean for my career? So the next build is like, how do we now take all this foundation we've put in place and make it possible collectively with like the right leaders and managers and and individual Branches, of course, in their own reflection on their career journey? Make it clearer on how they can contextualize all this great structure into their own lived experience and journey at Branch.
Amanda Berry: So what are you doing at Branch to help prepare people for their career and move them forward? Because this comes up a lot. I mean, a lot of people just really want help moving their career along and, and a lot of people, you know, from folks that I know and folks that I talk to, wanna stay at places, but there's no way to really move up in their career.
Amanda Berry: So what are you doing at Branch to help employees with that issue?
Pratiksha Patel: The unique thing we're doing is, and I was really attracted to Branch on this point, is we have a developer bootcamp where we have a fully paid 12 week program to take folks who wanna access a software development career and have some desire slash aptitude that makes them a good candidate to pursue that.
Pratiksha Patel: And we give them access to all the learning through this. Intensive bootcamp. It's almost like an undergraduate program and effectively creates access to a type of job at a software development level of responsibility of pay. And in particular, all of our candidates to date have been in all of our boot campers, as I like to call them, have been from an underrepresented category.
Pratiksha Patel: So we're really delighted to see this continue and this notion of, you know, workforce development, how do we think about the needs that Branch has, the untapped talent that haven't had access to the training and the learning opportunities and the initial employment opportunities too. And where our boot campers turn into interns, turn into developers at Branch.
Pratiksha Patel: How can we emulate that in more places and widening the overall labor market in. The bootcamp comes from a core principle that many of us share, including our founders, that it's really great to build talent. And so similarly, even if you're in a career and you have that skillset, how are we helping you keep learning?
Pratiksha Patel: And we've made some significant investments starting last year, and that's accelerating in lots of parts of our organization on. All the ways to create learning and enablement opportunities, either specific to your job function and doing it really well, and also learning opportunities that help you grow more skill and skills that help you with other opportunities in the company.
Amanda Berry: Yeah, I love that. I feel like I know a lot of the companies I've worked for and they focus mostly on upskilling for those more soft skills, like how to be a good manager or how to represent our company values, how to live our company values. You know, you just don't hear very often about companies who are saying like, Hey, we have these specific.
Amanda Berry: Needs. We're gonna train employees, we're gonna bring in people, train them, and now we have this whole pool of people to choose from or to, you know, to come work for us who have the skills that we've been able to train. I, I think that's a really great program. I, I hope, hope our listeners like really hear that.
Amanda Berry: And to have an employer say 12 weeks, you're right, that is like an undergraduate course.
Pratiksha Patel: Yeah, Amanda, I, I'm gonna suggest it's a, this and actually, so those soft skills you're referring to are really hard skills and really important and in different way the value of both, right? How do we give you technical, functional skills to access?
Pratiksha Patel: Necessarily have access to. And then there's also how do you develop those tough skills of empathy and critical thinking and turning outwards and giving feedback and getting feedback, which are so hard. And so we really take a this and approach as we think about growing the full capacity of humans and of our people, Anders, on what they wanna be able to live into.
Pratiksha Patel: And the. I
Amanda Berry: wanna go back to something you said about the bootcamp, cause I think this is so important you, you talk about how this bootcamp focuses on underrepresented kind of junior employees and I'm wondering if you could talk about the importance of that being inclusive and diverse at Branch and sort of how that helps overall keep people employed at Branch and helps our career development.
Pratiksha Patel: Oh wow. That's a wonderful question. And inclusion has been, A part of our intentionality of we need to serve our members. And so our best chance of serving our members well is if we have the. Mix and that representation overall. And so that's kind of like a diversity imperative and a business diversity imperative.
Pratiksha Patel: What I love about what we've done at Branch and we'll keep doing is we, it's, it's necessary but not sufficient. And to create conditions where highly diverse company and team works well together can bring. All of their ideas bring the varied perspective that we so desperately want everyone to bring.
Pratiksha Patel: Takes a special environment, takes an intentionality around saying, we want to create an environment where you bring your perspectives and you bring your differences in. You don't just suppress them and leave them at home. And some of the ways we do that is we provide. A guide and a micro training on.
Pratiksha Patel: The notion of like day-to-day conversations and how to enable Branches and help them know that we want them to have inclusive conversations with their colleagues about differences as well as giving them tools on how to share stories on more sensitive topics like social or political challenges in our environment that are around us.
Pratiksha Patel: In addition, another way we bring the differences in so we can learn from them is our community programming. Is where we have structured events that are autonomy driven for those who wanna run them, and optional attendance for those who wanna join them around identity learning more about specific identities, learning ab more about specific religious holidays, learning more about specific heritages that are celebrated and we create the conditions for the folks who wanna share about.
Pratiksha Patel: There are differences and the folks who wanna learn about others differences and share their own, we create the good conditions for that to happen. We don't say that work is about keeping those at the door. And what we hear as recently as a few All Hands with our support or yesterday is one of the great things that About Branch that keeps it awesome, as they say, is, how is this place so awesome still is that I say, well, I turned the question back to them.
Pratiksha Patel: I said, well, How is it, why is it, what does that mean to you? And the comments that come up is, I get to be myself. I get to bring my ideas, I get to be heard, I get to be understood. And I think that's what's so special. I talked about it earlier, right? Like it's, it's precious and it's special, and we wanna preserve that.
Amanda Berry: So thinking about the employee experience, another topic that comes up a lot is, I've heard it called work-life balance. I've heard it heard what we called work-life blend. Some people call it a recipe for work and life. There's so many different metaphors for that. But you know, there seems to be this notion about, you know, working long hours, pay all of this stuff that makes up work-life blend balance recipe.
Amanda Berry: The notion is that employees want. Better work-life balance. So can you talk about how Branch is ensuring employees have a good work-life
Pratiksha Patel: blend? Yeah. Well, I'll add another metaphor to the mix rhythm. So work-life rhythm, and when we. Looked into kinda what was important and what we wanted to optimize for.
Pratiksha Patel: We understood that sustainability of a pace of building a company and putting in that amazing work every day can be a challenge. And so sustainability has helped us focus on our understanding of what we wanted accomplish. And what that means is enabling Branches to perform at their highest. Levels over time while also being able to be successful in other areas of life.
Pratiksha Patel: And we learned and, and understood that taking regular extended breaks and, you know, leave from work helps to facilitate this opportunity to recover and, and tend to the other things you wanna be successful at in life. So understanding this, we have a benefit called Branch Out. So, What I like to say is we put our money where our mouth is ands, actually get funds from the company to take at least five consecutive days off.
Pratiksha Patel: Unplug.
Amanda Berry: Is this more than just like PTO funds? Yeah,
Pratiksha Patel: no, it's real dollars. It's real dollars that can fund your trip or whatever you're doing to Branch out in addition to the time off days. Oh,
Amanda Berry: it could be money spend on airfare or hotel. Mm-hmm. And all that.
Pratiksha Patel: Oh, very, very cool. The funds are part of it, but I think the most powerful part of it is, is this shared expectation up and down and throughout Branch that when you're on Branch out, you are unplugged.
Pratiksha Patel: Totally unplugged.
Amanda Berry: And how do employees respond to that? Because I, I feel like that unplugging often comes from like leadership, right? People who aren't leaders tend to mimic some of that behavior. Like if, if you're responding to emails and text messages and your Branch out trip, and then I'll know that's expected of me.
Amanda Berry: So how do you ensure that people really Branch out? Yes. I love great metaphors related to companies like that, like roots and all that. So how do you ensure that employees are really disconnecting.
Pratiksha Patel: Yeah, I mean, what you said is exactly right. It's that simple. And, and of course, for whatever reason it's very hard and, and I understand why it's hard being one of those leaders myself who has to set a good example and just role model the thing.
Pratiksha Patel: It's that simple as we have to role model it and we do.
Amanda Berry: It sounds like you're doing a great job. Employees feel welcome and they're having a great employee experience. Can you talk about sort of some dos and don'ts to help people build a better employee experience?
Pratiksha Patel: So do be humble. I. Bring up beginner's mindset and you know, if I extrapolate on the, don't, if you will, don't rely solely on your playbook and you, they're certainly part of your toolbox and all of our toolbox.
Pratiksha Patel: But it's likely you'll need, I think it's likely you'll need to reimagine them to fit the culture and context of your, by definition, certainly the context of workforce expectations now and for future. So that would be one kind. Yin yang do index heavily. On bringing others along. So, another way I say this is don't assume people are picking up what you're putting down.
Pratiksha Patel: So if you're trying to, you know, build a wildly successful company that also has an amazing culture, guess what the likelihood of. Anyone actually having experienced that and been in that is kinda low. And even if they have, the goalposts have kinda changed. So it's, it's just unlikely that your peers or even you have fully experienced where you're trying to go and what you're imagining and dreaming of.
Pratiksha Patel: I mean, this is what gets me like super nerding out and that's okay, but that means you'll need to go like. Deeper and be more intentional about bringing them along with you. Yeah.
Amanda Berry: I always say like, do you wanna know how to do something better? You know, ask people. So I love that idea of bringing people along, whether it be employees or other stakeholders.
Amanda Berry: Or leaders. Mm-hmm. Let's move into our last segment, asking for a friend
Producer 3: who's Destin for a friend. Hey, asking for a friend.
Producer 3: The
Amanda Berry: whole first season of this show, we've spent a lot of time talking about just the changes that have happened since the Covid 19 pandemic, you know, work from home. All sorts of things have changed the way we've done things. We're learning how to do them differently now. So I'm wondering if you could give to your expertise, I'm, what are some people trends we can expect to see in the future?
Pratiksha Patel: Okay. Well speaking of bootcamp earlier, I think workforce development is going become increasingly not just for the academy companies. I've. Established companies that are known to be a great training ground who are maybe already doing this access to a career play. I think more and more companies are going to realize that that's a way to increase the talent pool for yourself while doing something good.
Pratiksha Patel: I think much like our kind of early conviction of building developer talent versus buying, I think others are gonna come along. And two other trends I'm thinking about are driven by remote work and I guess the pendulum that's keeps swinging, if you will, in some places. And so Ill reemphasize the focus employee wellbeing, if there's potentially a reckoning with carbon footprint.
Pratiksha Patel: If the inverse of remote work is more travel or just whether work, travel becomes something that we're, we're also reckoning with. It also ties back to wellbeing. That's the first
Amanda Berry: time in the season that that's even come up. This, this idea of carbon, carbon, footprinting, and remote work. I know personally I feel.
Amanda Berry: Even just the commute, I mean, beyond the stress and not dealing with all the cars and not having to spend an hour getting ready, like that's mentally helped me. Now I can imagine what all that driving to work every day is, is doing for the environment. I think I read somewhere that I think it was like la, the amount of air pollution in that first year had substantially dropped.
Amanda Berry: You know, the expectation that it would eventually go back up. So I, I'm surprised that doesn't come up more. Well, it's been a tough year. We always say the new normal, you know, we're gonna find the new normal. You know, that's a little played out. But looking ahead, you know, what's some advice you would give?
Amanda Berry: Let's start with employees who are just sort of worn down from the, the last few years we've had Covid, we've seen a lot of bad stuff happening with social and racial injustice. Just all sorts of stuff. So do you have any advice as the Chief People Officer, how to help people get through some
Pratiksha Patel: of this? I am also an employee.
Pratiksha Patel: Just be clear. And so I have all the hats on. I'm also a parent, I'm a colleague, I all the things as well as this job, and so I'm well, which is responsibility and finding ways to be more self aware about whether we can do more to change our own. Poor wellbeing habits. We all know we've gotten into some patterns that might not be so healthy, not going outside, not moderating our social media consumption, not getting enough movement.
Pratiksha Patel: So you know, there's an element of, take some initiative to look at yourself. Try to be self-aware. I can't tell you how many employees in my last role, especially during the thick of covid, but then when it was subsiding and when folks would come and get together in person. I would hear so often, like, I, I didn't realize how much I needed this, and I don't think any of us can really know what others need fully, and I'm just invite all of you and all of us to find ways to access and understand what we need or what you need and what you can do.
Pratiksha Patel: To make those small changes for your own wellbeing. I say because I care.
Amanda Berry: I know you nailed me right on the head with that one. Personally, I've gone into bad patterns like used to like going out, having dinner, and then when my husband and I go and have dinner, I'm like, ah, I miss this, you know? And then we don't do it again for a while because we're just not sort of used to doing it.
Amanda Berry: But every time we do, we go for a long walk or something, I'm like, oh, we should do this every day. I feel fantastic. I can relate to that. I think that probably a lot of us have fallen into that trap. Yes,
Pratiksha Patel: I'm big on agency and if I can help us all step into our agency, I'm pretty
Amanda Berry: happy. What about for leaders, managing people who have had a tough couple years, what are some things, some advice you can give them, keeping all of that in mind?
Pratiksha Patel: Yeah, so once again, I too am a leader and so I'm speaking as much to myself as all of our, our listeners. So I say we need to check our assumptions at the door. And what that means to me is taking accountability for getting feedback on how we're showing up, how we could show up better, how people are.
Pratiksha Patel: Doing no news is not good news. So let's, let's not keep saying that or assuming that. And as leaders, you know, we've gotta seek an accurate understanding of how our actions impact others. And that goes across, down and up. And you know, I think if we do this, we can unlock some real value in the relationships and I think it could be really beautiful.
Amanda Berry: So Pratiksha. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for coming on today. Before I let you go, will you let our listeners know where they can find
Pratiksha Patel: you? Sure. Probably the best place is LinkedIn. That's one of the only channels I'm in, so I would love to see you there.
Amanda Berry: Thank you so much. This
Amanda Berry: has
Amanda Berry: been great.
Pratiksha Patel: Thank you.