Xan Daniels has loved a 20-year profession at Alight Options (previously a part of Aon Hewitt), a cloud-based human capital know-how and companies supplier. She’s the driving drive behind this international group’s variety, fairness and inclusion technique, and her experience has powered this dynamic firm to draw, advance and retain various expertise worldwide.
Earlier than her present position, Daniels, considered one of this 12 months’s HR’s Rising Stars, led Alight’s take a look at administration follow. She jokes that she believed she would retire because the “queen of testing,” however in 2020, her colleagues known as on her to fill a job that illuminated a few of her different skilled abilities. Daniels accepted the award final week at Human Useful resource Govt‘s Elevate Folks, Ignite Change (EPIC) convention in Las Vegas.
A brand new management calling
Previous to taking over her present position, Daniels co-led the org’s international inclusion council, which advises and recommends inclusion and variety priorities to the corporate’s government management staff. Primarily based on this position and different related expertise, within the fall of 2020, she was requested to tackle the full-time place as Alight’s international inclusion and variety chief to play a pivotal position in creating associated insurance policies.
With a inhabitants of over 18,000 workers in additional than 20 nations, Daniels says that inclusion work is “pressing and related and necessary” to a worldwide workforce that’s vastly distributed. She says that workers and candidates wish to know that the group’s function aligns with their values and the way they view themselves.
As a member of the HR management staff, Daniels collaborates with colleagues in different areas, corresponding to expertise acquisition, complete rewards and communications, to make sure that inclusion and variety should not afterthoughts however are solidly built-in into departmental processes. She is charged with delivering on Alight’s promise of “bringing motion to phrases,” serving to Alight and its prospects have fun variations in an atmosphere the place everybody feels valued, revered and supported.
Rising various impression
Daniels says that within the space of inclusion and variety, many HR efforts presently concentrate on two key features: creating an atmosphere the place one could be one’s genuine self and fostering a way of belonging. Each of those proceed to be prime priorities for Alight; nevertheless, the staff additionally locations a robust emphasis on measuring and growing impression.
Daniels factors out that it’s typically recurring for enterprise leaders to “test the packing containers” on variety and inclusion with out contemplating whether or not they had been vital or if they might have been performed extra purposefully. “So, we’re beginning to be actually centered on impression and making certain that we’re not simply going by way of the motions, however on the finish of the day, persons are higher for it,” says Daniels.
Inclusive communication
Daniels is devoted to making sure Alight’s hiring course of and different worker communications use inclusive and clear language. “Generally, the phrases that we use make complete sense for these of us for whom English is our native language, however they’ll imply one thing completely totally different when translated,” she says.
“We now have to watch out that we’re not utilizing phrases that would imply so many alternative issues when they’re translated both on paper or digitally or in somebody’s head,” says Daniels. As an alternative of HR jargon, she advises using “pure language” that’s extra in tune with the best way that folks speak to at least one one other, a means of speaking that’s much less more likely to be mysterious or mistranslated by workers.
Daniels says this philosophy additionally applies to the expertise acquisition course of. She and her staff create job commercials with excessive readability whereas avoiding gendered language or an awesome checklist of necessities. Daniels finds that candidates typically exclude themselves from making use of based mostly on the tone of the job itemizing, even when they could possibly be a fantastic match for the position.
The Rising Star says this mindfulness extends past crafting the job commercials to driving “actual dialogue with hiring managers” about what traits and abilities are essential to efficiently fill every place.
Advantages 101
Daniels emphasizes supporting her staff members as they develop their careers and “be nice at who they’re” and what they do for Alight. “I take it personally that we’ve to set individuals up for achievement,” she says.
In 2023, Daniels performed a key position in coordinating a “Advantages 101” session for college kids on the Nationwide Black MBA Annual Convention. This program, led by 4 prime leaders from Alight, educated college students about essential features of monetary and medical advantages. She says that the classes empower college students to make assured enrollment-related selections and encourage them to consider advantages within the context of complete compensation.
Motivated by this success, Daniels plans comparable classes at Georgia State College and 4 different establishments: the College of Central Florida, Morehouse School, Johnson C. Smith College and Chicago State College.
Extra on HR’s Rising Stars 2024:
Private passions
Alight is a stigma-free firm on the subject of psychological sickness, says Daniels, and as a board member for the Illinois chapter of the Nationwide Alliance on Psychological Sickness (NAMI), she finds a connection between her contributions at work and her means to help this nonprofit group.
“One of many issues I’m very captivated with when working with NAMI is to deliver conversations round psychological well being and psychological sickness to the office as a result of they’re not the identical,” Daniels provides. She believes one of many causes persons are so hesitant to speak about psychological sickness is as a result of they conflate psychological well being with psychological sickness.
When requested a couple of key piece of recommendation she retains in her again pocket, Daniels tells HRE that she remembers occasions when she tried to emulate different individuals or use their phrases or presentation type: “And, you realize, I wasn’t excellent at being them, however I’m nice at being me.”
She says that if she may flip again time 20 years to the day she began at Alight, this Oscar Wilde nugget could be the recommendation she would give herself: “Be your self as a result of everyone seems to be taken.”
