How Can We Foster Belonging if We Can’t Define It?

Interview with Telesign’s Global Talent Acquisition Manager, Jamie Koblinski, for Sharehold’s Redesigning Belonging Research

Published in

Sharehold

5 min readSep 10, 2020

This post is part of an ongoing series in which Sharehold is publicly sharing our in-progress research that seeks to explore and answer the question: What does it mean to belong at work in a time of uncertainty? Are you interested in receiving our research insights when they’re released? Sign up here.

Meet Jamie Koblinksi

Jamie Koblinski is the Global Talent Acquisition Manager of Telesign, a rapidly growing digital identity software company based in Los Angeles. While overseeing teams based in LA, Asia, and in Europe, all of which have grown during COVID-19, Jamie’s on a mission to ensure that her direct reports and new hires are supported and cared for during this difficult time.

As part of Sharehold’s research on redesigning belonging at work for uncertainty, we interviewed Jamie as an HR and talent leader. Her interview highlighted a few themes:

How this time of uncertainty has brought mental health to the forefront of conversations at work
How unconscious bias shows up as silence
The budget required to support belonging and inclusion efforts
Defining belonging from the bottom up

Read on for a few selections from our interview with Jamie:

What does belonging mean to you and for your work?

“Informally, whenever I interview candidates and whenever I check in with my new hires, I’m always asking them these types of questions. We’re not necessarily using the term ‘belonging’, but I’ll ask them, ‘how do you feel about their company? How are you? What support do you need?’”

“It is really important to have these conversations and really understand what belonging is for each person. How can we show up as that for an organization?”

You’ve shared that this period of time, including COVID-19, working from home, and social uprising has had both positive and negative impacts on your team’s sense of belonging. Can you share more?

“[On the positive side,] we’ve had more honest conversations about mental health and about the things we’re struggling with. It put a lens on the fact that people do have issues at work. It’s so easy to gloss over it. Now that we’re at home and all in this together, more people are really shedding a light on their deeper issues. People are saying they need time off. That’s been really positive.”

“[What’s been challenging is that] people are shutting down and it’s harder to get things across. It’s harder to communicate with people. You’re starting to see some of those unconscious biases come out. Their lack of response to George Floyd’s murder is a response itself….

There’s also mental health and dealing with anxiety and depression. A few people who live alone and haven’t seen anyone for 3 months. They’re saying please be gentle with me.”

How has working remotely impacted your work?

“I’m working 12–14 hours per day because I never turn off my laptop or phone. I’m always available.

For me, I feel like I need to be there for my team. I have a team here and in Europe. I like to make my team in Europe feel supported. I have a team in Asia and am having calls with them at night. I have that instinct to want to support people at all times.”

“My team just started a month ago. It’s relationship building. They don’t feel like they can build relationships and they miss the in-person rapport… It’s being able to see people and have those casual conversations. It’s a little harder nowadays to just get on slack or even just pick up the phone and say, like, ‘Hey, did you see that movie this past weekend?’”

“I have my weekly 1:1s, at first just checking in. More like how is it? How are you?… That’s been the theme, talking about their feelings and mental health, what ways I can show up for them… It’s been tough honestly because I’m also that person that likes to be in-person and it’s hard to read facial expressions on the phone, but at least it’s some connection.”

“We just re-upped our budget. I think it was around $200,000 and just re-upped it to $400,000. Honestly, it was [because of] COVID with everyone working from home, the rise in employee relation issues, and people reaching out and asking for help and guidance through this tough time. We increased it to hire more, build programs, and to address these issues.

Does your team talk about loneliness?

“It’s indirect. When I talk to my team about that it’s like, ‘Oh, you live by yourself. How are you doing? What outlets do you have? Rather than: do you feel lonely?’… It’s an uncomfortable topic to bring up as a manager because I don’t want to overstep my boundaries. But I’m also nervous to be as open and vulnerable with them as I expect them to do with me.”

What’s the greatest challenge to increasing belonging at work?

“I just don’t think that people understand what belonging means. I don’t think they care because, historically speaking, they’ve never really known about it or thought about it. [Executives have] been so focused on numbers. Just that definition and introducing it is a big challenge.

If we want to have an inclusive culture, if we want to be an inclusive company, we have to listen to every single person. We can’t just say, ‘I am not the person to say. Or, I’m the expert. Or, I know exactly what this means.’ You have to hear it from every single person and you have to hear from the people whose voices aren’t really heard that often, which means it’s coming from the bottom.”