There Are Many Reasons to Be Grateful This Holiday Season

Last year, I wrote a blog on why I was grateful to be at SHL during the holiday season, and I felt that this year warranted these thoughts even more. We are quickly approaching Thanksgiving – a U.S. holiday where we gather together, share a meal with Turkey at the center, and recount our gratitude for the lives we have “together.”

”Together” will mean something different this year, as many of us are not able to celebrate with our loved ones to protect each other from COVID. There is still much to be thankful for, especially when I think of the Black Lives Matter movement, our customers, the innovative solutions of 2020, and the SHL team.

This year has challenged us in a way none of us has seen before – and the things we learned can change the future for the positive. This year has been a reflection on the brilliant innovation that can occur when teams are forced to work together to survive in spite of the continuous loss.

Black Lives Matter Movement

Systemic racism has been around us for generations, and BIPOC communities have fought for equity for centuries. I am not sure why the murder of George Floyd woke up the world this last summer, but finally, the global community is taking the Black Lives Matter movement seriously. In honor of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the countless others whose lives have been destroyed by our unchecked systems of oppression – we (SHL and the greater global community) have committed to take a stand by making some real and lasting changes so that more lives are not lost and true equity can exist. Read more about our commitments here.

To Our Customers

I am in awe of the resilience you have shown through this testing time, and even more grateful that you trusted me and the SHL team to partner with you throughout the year. We spent time listening to each other and growing through some of the most difficult business decisions we have had to make in our careers. And at the center of these decisions was a commitment to our people, and the talents and abilities we knew they possessed. Revealing the possibilities of what your company could achieve if you truly harnessed the potential of your people has been an incredible journey that will inform our work together for years to come.

Revealing the possibilities of what your company could achieve if you truly harnessed the potential of your people has been an incredible journey that will inform our work together for years to come.

Finding a Solution

One of the best parts of 2020 was delivering products like the RemoteWorkQ and the Virtual Solutions Suite. It felt incredible to offer these solutions to our customers at no cost earlier this year when the world turned upside down. We knew that we had to do our part to help organizations rapidly transition into a remote working and virtual environment.

Together, with our customers and the SHL team, we created solutions to the most pressing problems of our day, and then brought them to scale globally. As we were forced into a new virtual reality, we met every challenge with solutions that increased productivity and delivered what your business needed in real-time:

• Every solution at SHL is underpinned with the world’s most advanced psychometric science designed to provide a truly objective and bias-reduced approach to hiring and developing your people – our commitment is to integrate inclusion and diversity into your talent strategy;
• Mobilize was designed to uncover the hidden gems of our people’s talent – knowing that many talent decisions have been made, we delivered a solution to help you address your business needs by harnessing the potential of your existing team members;
• Smart Interview, now integrated with Zoom and Microsoft Teams, allowed you to efficiently find and wow the best candidates on the market without having to learn new technology;
• Tech Hiring gave you the option to increase your highly qualified tech talent candidate pool by 60% — this is critical in an ever-increasingly virtual world – programmers are essential to making our businesses succeed.
  
  

To My SHL Team

I am truly thankful to the whole SHL family, for the way we came together and served with passion and discipline to get us where we are now. I know that it was not an easy year, but we have had some remarkable performances throughout the globe that we can be grateful for, the sacrifices we had made and endured were not in vain because amidst the dire environment, we are still here delivering value to our customers.

• In the early days of COVID, when the world was lost and the outlook of the world seemed grim, the SHL team rallied around our customers and each other with passion, skill, and dedication – I was so proud and filled with hope in the face of a desperate time.Then, in June, when communities around the world responded to the murder of George Floyd – you all rallied in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. We joined together as a family to commit to changing the world by acknowledging privilege where it exists, and by committing to actions that will dismantle the systemic oppression of the BIPOC community.
• After this year and going into next – you have shown me that there is NOTHING we cannot do! I could not be more proud of this strong, brave, resilient, and intelligent team.

Our commitment to helping our customers create a strong, agile, and diverse workforce is not over. As we dream of the possibilities and newfound hope of 2021, I think fondly of how 2020 forced us to think more creatively, stretched us to work more closely (even though we were physically miles apart), and drove us towards even stronger relationships with you – our customer.

There is so much promise and hope going into the new year – the promise of a vaccine, and the promise of our continued journey to create a more equitable world – these would not have been possible without the commitment you all have shown during these extremely trying days.

At the end of this experience, I am overwhelmed and inspired by the experience of working with you – our customers and my team. I will think of you warmly and fondly this holiday season. Here’s to a brighter future where we can once again hug those we love tightly!