Faces of HR: Désirée Pascual on Curiosity, Collaboration and Courage

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Today’s Faces profile is presented as part of HR Daily Advisor‘s HR Corporate Culture Week. Désirée Pascual is Chief People Officer at Headspace Health – a comprehensive and accessible mental healthcare platform – and oversees HR for about 1,000 employees. In 2021, Headspace and Ginger joined forces to form Headspace Health. Today, Headspace Health touches nearly 100 million lives around the world through its brands Headspace, Ginger, and Headspace for Work. The vision? A world where everyone is kind to their mind.

Désirée Pascual

“My favorite part about working in this industry, at the risk of sounding like a cliche, is that I get to touch human lives every day,” Pascual shared with HR Daily Advisor. “And the magic in my role, is that the lives that I touch, in turn touch the lives of our members, so that we’re sending these ripples of care and love out into the world, in pursuit of the vision that we have, that is a world where everyone is kind to their mind.”

In our latest Faces of HR, meet Désirée Pascual.

How did you get your start in the field?

I came up through the ranks. I am a first-generation immigrant and I say that proudly because I know that there are many others like me. When you come to a new country where a different language is spoken, it’s a new culture, ways of interacting with one another, and rules of engagement. It’s something that feels brave at the time, when you do it, because you really step into the unknown. As a first immigration immigrant coming here by myself, I had no family here. I knew nobody. I landed a job as an executive assistant, so I came up through the ranks at a startup and the rest is history. I was fascinated by Silicon Valley, the culture, startup companies, and the level of innovation. I just tried to learn everything that I could. I literally soaked up information like a sponge, and then I sought to add value, regardless of my job description.

So, when there were projects in HR, I raised my hand and said, “let me help.” I have an innate regard, love, and curiosity for people. I think that eventually was what led me down the path of HR, because people sense when you are genuinely interested and curious about them and care about them. Very early on, I was able to step into situations that were challenging and helped resolve them. Then that sort of snowballed and I continued to learn about business, the labor laws in the United States, and all these different things. I don’t think there’s anything in the function, any sub-function that I haven’t touched. I’ve done it all. I went on to build the HR function in a couple of scrappy startup companies and it was challenging, and it was fun, and it was humbling. I made my share of mistakes and I learned from them. And here we are. Now I’m the Chief People Officer at Headspace Health. And I’m incredibly humble and grateful that I get to steward our community.

You mentioned that you have this curiosity about people, this regard for people and helping others. Where did that stem from?

I think it’s all connected. It is this idea of being a migrant myself. And understanding what it means, to struggle. Understanding what it means to come to a whole different country and having to start over. What has always just blown me away is just the kindness that I’ve experienced from random people at random times, at the most unexpected times. I’ve learned to see that people are fundamentally good, but sometimes they act in ways that make it seem that they’re not. As a result, I became curious about that and what happens in that moment. At the same time, when I came to the U.S., I started my career here. I worked in human resources, but then also embarked on a journey. I got my master’s degree in psychology. So, first, experiencing the kindness of random strangers and people who extended a helping hand when I needed it and those times when I struggled and felt alone, both in the business and in my personal life, then coupled with just wanting to understand people better. Why are people kind? Why do people struggle? Therefore, I studied psychology and became trained as a therapist. All of it, ultimately, led me to Headspace Health.

Who is or was your biggest influence in the industry?

I have enormous respect for my peers and colleagues at all levels of the function. I learn and I’m inspired by people at all levels of the function daily. But I will tell you that my professional influencers aren’t necessarily HR practitioners, because I’ve always tried to think outside of the box. When new challenges came my way, I always thought of innovative ways to solve them and always in collaboration with people. So, I’m not the type of person who goes behind closed doors and figures out, “Oh, this is what our new policy should be.” My M.O. is, I talk to my people. Every company is different. Every culture is different. So very early on in my career, I found David Kelly an ideal influence. He is a thought leader, as it relates to human-centered design. So, whatever you design, whether it’s a business process, or it is a business policy, or people experience, you use the principles of design thinking. That starts with talking to your stakeholders and hearing what their experience is like and gathering ideas and then collaboratively creating a solution to meet that challenge and then iterating, because you don’t always get it right the first time. You get it wrong, often, but you get to the right place by getting it wrong and then iterating. David Kelley is huge for me.

Another person that I follow is Vivek Murthy. He’s the U.S. Surgeon General, and he’s written an incredible book. It’s called, “Together.” In that book, he explores the healing power of connection, and of course, my wheelhouse. He’s a mental health advocate and I’m a huge fan of his. He says that as humans, we are innately wired to connect. We thrive in community. We are built to forge lasting bonds with others and to help one another. And we are simply better together. He also talks about the loneliness epidemic in our country, which has never been more rampant than during the pandemic.

There’s another pair I look up to and they’ve written books. They’re Chip and Dan Heath. They’re researchers at Stanford University and they’ve written two books and one of them is called, “Switch.” It talks a lot about change management and what happens to people when change happens and uncertainty and how to navigate it. The other book is, “The Power of Moments.” You may have heard of them, but I highly recommend them. And “The power of Moments,” it breaks down the anatomy of creating moments that matter to people. Moments that have emotional impact. I think that is never been more important than now, when creating an exceptional employee experience has become a key differentiator, vis-à-vis the Great Resignation, and some of the things that we’re seeing in the world right now.

What’s your best mistake and what did you learn from it?

When I first heard the question, I really like that you call it, “best mistake,” because I genuinely appreciate opportunities, mistakes as opportunities to learn. There is no innovation without the courage and willingness to get it wrong. The curiosity and the resilience to keep trying, even though you get it wrong, and the understanding that the pathway to the optimal state is an ongoing process. It’s an ongoing process of iteration, of learning enough optimization.

I have embraced myself as a lifelong learner, or I’ve embraced the idea that I am a lifelong learner. And to embrace that is to embrace perpetual and relentless curiosity. No matter how much we think we know something, or how long we’ve been in a profession, nothing is static. Life is change. So, for better or for worse, we must look at our function with fresh eyes every day. I get uncomfortable around people who are rigid in their assumptions and who claim that they have all the answers, because they’ve been on the job for 20 years and there’s no growth, no evolution, in a fixed mindset. So, there’s no one, to answer your question, best mistake that I’ve made. I made many mistakes along the way. Big ones, small ones. Each a growth opportunity. But I think that what I’ve learned from that, is to embrace a growth mindset fully and wholeheartedly.

As leaders, we make our lives infinitely harder when we position ourselves to have all the answers. It’s okay not to know and it’s okay to explore it together with your team members. It’s awesome and fun to iterate together. And that leads us to innovate together. So, the growth mindset, in my opinion, is the glue of super solid teams and super solid leadership, really.

What’s your favorite part about working in the industry? What’s your least favorite part and how would you change it?

Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, the first part of it comes to me easily. That said, this gets to the second part of your question. Humans are complex. Everything that makes working with people so delightful and so magical, can also make the job really hard sometimes. And there’s nothing we can change about that. We’re even built for this. And we engage from this place of deep care and love for people and building safe communities, that allow people to show up fully and unleash their creative genius. Or we govern from a place of fear, which is an approach that, I talk about this internally, too, that creates transactional workplaces.

So, when you govern from a place of fear, you foster a transactional workplace. And I’ve seen a profound shift in the HR domain over the last two and a half, three years, where we previously tended to keep our trade secrets close to the chest and we bought into these paradigms, like the war for talent, and I have to keep my staff close to the chest so I can win this race. Those are all narratives that have kept us from being more collaborative as a discipline. HR leaders realized, at the onset of the pandemic, that we needed each other, that the generosity of sharing thoughts and ideas and resources can hyper-fuel our collective growth and the advancement of our function, which indeed it has. We didn’t know what to do, how to navigate the pandemic. So, we came together, we started talking, we started supporting one another, sharing ideas, at a level I had never seen before.

As an HR discipline overall, we have moved mountains in the last two and a half to three years. We have fundamentally changed what the workplace looks like. My wish and hope is that this change is sustained and ongoing. We’re simply better together, to quote Dr. Murthy, one of my inspirational people. At Headspace Health to support that momentum, we rolled out these manager and leadership workshops because we realized we needed to share what we know. We needed to share what we learned and support our clients and our members through this time and beyond as well, because the pandemic isn’t over. We’re still in it. And the impact of it… I’m going to go a little bit on a soapbox for just a half a minute.

The impact of the global mental health crisis on employees has been enormous. Employers are in a unique position to help, but managers and leaders need tools to normalize discussions around mental health, and to lead their teams and organization through these unprecedented times. The people need help through one-on-one care and support to navigate this time. Just to give you an idea of the scale of the problem, close to 1 billion people around the globe, are living with a mental health disorder. More than 75% of those people worldwide, receive no treatment for the condition, at all.

The symptoms of depression and anxiety skyrocketed during the pandemic. In the workplace, employees and the employers pay the price. We’ve done some research and it shows that employees with unresolved depression experience a 35%, I think, reduction in productivity, resulting in 210 billion annual economic loss in the U.S., due to absenteeism and reduced productivity, medical cost, et cetera. So, it’s a big challenge and it’s a problem we must solve. I’m so glad to be part of that initiative because it’s something we just absolutely must tackle. Okay. Off the soapbox I go.

It sounds like, of course, through your experience, you really care about people, and you want to help them feel safe and comfortable, which is important in the industry. Would you care to elaborate on that?

Absolutely. I posted this on LinkedIn once, good people operations is about deeply caring for people. It’s that simple and it’s that hard. That was the post. And there was a lot of resonance. People private messaged me when I posted this, so I know that that is felt by colleagues, I think, across organizations. We’ve been stuck in a never-ending pandemic, ongoing fights for racial justice, political polarization, including a fear for basic human rights everywhere, a war in Ukraine, an economic downturn. As HR leaders, we have an opportunity to be key differentiators.

Back to your statement, about me caring about people, I’m going to quote another person that I look for to inspiration, David Kelley from IDEO. My wish and my daily work, in service of everyone at Headspace Health, and any other organization, for that matter, to find their calling, to find that being in their organizations feels like working with friends. That we all feel safe and inspired, to express our ideas fully and wholeheartedly, and that we are engaged in what feels like important and meaningful work.

That’s a calling, really. It is dedicating yourself to that purpose every day, repeatedly. And sometimes that means you go to bed, and you think, “What am I doing? Do I really want to do this?” Then you sleep on it, and you wake up and with unequivocal certainty, this is exactly what you want to be doing, to steward those communities where that can happen for people.

How can company leaders make HR a value within their organization?

I think what we’ve learned over the last three years, is that not partnering with HR, or people operations, as I call it, as an integral strategic business partner, is no longer an option. I read this yesterday. Somebody wrote, “50 years ago, more than 80% of the value reflected in an organization’s balance sheets was tangible stuff,” inventory, equipment, merchandise, dollars, et cetera. “Today, more than 85% of the value on the balance sheets, is intangibles.” Intellectual property, brand value, and a host of things directly tied to human capital. So, people are today’s value drivers.

As a discipline, HR is catching up fast, but we also still have some work to do on building fluency, as it relates to communicate our value. That includes gathering and strategically using metrics and data to make our business case, in powerful and compelling ways. I’ll tell you; I feel that this is our moment. And I hesitate to talk about silver linings in the context of the pandemic and all that we’ve been through in the last three years, but it has created a unique opportunity for our function, and we must seize it. Now is the time.

Where do you see the industry heading in five years? Or are you seeing any current trends? And a little curve ball I like to throw in there, if where you see the industry headed is nothing that you like, where would you like to see it go?

Oh, I love a good curve ball. For those organizations who want to stand out and stand strong, understand that the workplace has fundamentally changed from a transactional to a relational workplace. That means that creating an exceptional employee experience is absolutely vital. It’s no longer, “I’m coming in, I’m doing thing A, B, C, D, E. I’m gathering my paycheck and then I’m going home.” That’s not where we are today. The workplace has seeped into our homes with remote work, and various other things, but the employee experience, we’ve had to really reinvent that over the last two and a half years. Back on the soapbox I go. Providing mental healthcare to support your people in navigating what seems like this constant avalanche of unpredictability, has become table stakes.

When we think about the primary challenges that we are trying to solve in HR, retention, engagement, productivity, attracting talent, they all tie it back to truly caring for your employees, and particularly during these uncertain times for your employees’ wellness, offering sound care. Sound, easily accessible care, of body and mind. We are very good about offering healthcare, preventative healthcare, that allows you to take care of your body. And that’s very important. But we need to get just as good at providing offerings that take care of the mind. We’ve seen that. There’s research. The numbers are staggering. You see it now, very starkly. The bottom line shows you when you don’t. People leave. That costs money. People go on disability leaves. That is expensive. So, we can’t afford not to do that. Secondly, that is, for me, the top flag. Secondly, we need to remain flexible and empower our people with the freedom to choose where, when, and how they best work. Finally, and we’ve seen this as a theme through the Great Resignation, which I call the Great Re-Evaluation, people are re-evaluating their lives. Is this what I want? Is this, what I’m doing, worth a life, my life?

People want to be engaged in what feels like meaningful and purposeful work. Are they making a difference in the world? What is your company stance on social issues? People care about that. So those are the three things for me. One is the employee experience and providing the care that people need right now. Stay flexible, create meaning and purpose and the ability to do purposeful work that people can connect to and feel good about.

What are you most proud of?

I’m grateful and I’m humbled to have the privilege to serve and steward our people and our community at Headspace Health, through this unprecedented time. So, let’s just start with gratitude. I am proud, proud of the culture that we have fostered. I’m proud of our employees who daily step into their jobs leading with compassion, courage, and vulnerability, each in their respective roles. We each have countless opportunities to lead every day, no matter where we sit in an organization.

At Headspace Health, we have a practice of asking one another, “How are you really, really, really?” It’s not a mistake. “Really, really,” twice, means we’re here for your response. It means we turn off Slack. We put away our phones. We shut down email to fully show up for one another in that moment and for what you have to bring into that moment. That is an act of leadership that’s happening all across our organization. I’m also proud that diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, is woven into our operating values, to seek out diverse perspectives, ensuring that all voices are heard and intentionally inviting perspectives, different from our own, to the discussion.

DEIB, diversity, equity inclusion, belonging, is not reduced to a department or an OKR in our organization. The imperative of inclusion and equitable practice is a concept that we continuously weave into our fabric. I like to say, so that it’s not just second nature to do these things, but it is who we are. So, there’s a lot that we can be proud of, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to rest on our laurels. Going back to the growth mindset that I talked about earlier today; we have work to do. We still have a lot to learn, and we are here for it and show up for it every single day. So, the culture that we’ve been able to build together – and then this is not me. I haven’t built that culture. The culture, for me, is a bottom-up exercise. You can dictate a culture top down, but it is lived bottom up, with people who are engaged and bought in and feel ownership of that culture. I think we have done that really well, so I’m proud of that. I am grateful to the people that I work with, and all the employees at Headspace Health, for being a part of that.

Do you have any advice for people entering the profession?

For people entering the profession, stay curious. Seek to add value every day. Lead in your own way, every day. You don’t need a big title to do that. The work is about genuine care, curiosity, active listening, human kindness. Those are our most powerful currencies. That is the fuel that catapulted me up through the ranks. That consistent commitment to active listening, human kindness, collaborative problem-solving. Powerful, powerful currency. Technical skills can be taught. Heart, curiosity, a genuine love for people, cannot. If that’s what you feel, and if you feel called to this work, stay curious. My grandma used to say to me, “You cannot successfully lead without first understanding what it means to serve.”

So, in that spirit, I see to serve every day. I did back in the day when I was an EA and I still seek to serve every day today. I consider myself a steward and as an in-service to the people. As an immigrant, I’ll tell you, this is what worked for me. It may look different for different people, but worry less about fitting in. Or fitting in to climb the ladder. Instead, stay true to yourself and in sync with those who you have chosen to serve. Then follow that calling and stand firm and rooted in your values so that every day you can get up and say, “I may have messed that up yesterday or made mistake ABC, but I stayed true to my values and to what I’ve committed to as a human being.” Those are the things that will get you through the hard times. That will then also allow you to celebrate the wonderful times and wonderful moments that we have as HR leaders in this profession.

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