Episode 235: Why HR Must Confront Covering to Build True Inclusion and Psychological Safety (with Rami Tzafrir)
Have you ever downplayed a part of who you are just to feel accepted at work?
Maybe it was your background, your beliefs, or even just your personality. That quiet act of self-editing - called covering - is more common than many realise, and it comes at a high cost to individuals and organisations alike.
In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, host David Green is joined by Rami Tzafrir, Senior Director of Talent, Organisation and Learning at HiBob, to unpack powerful new research on covering in the workplace. Together, they explore why this behaviour is not just a personal issue but a signal of deeper organisational challenges and what HR can do about it.
Key topics explored in the conversation include:
What covering really means, and why so many employees do it
Headline findings from HiBob’s global research on identity in the workplace
Which groups are most likely to cover, and why
How covering impacts performance, engagement, and career progression
The link between covering and psychological safety
What HR can do to create cultures of transparency and trust
The complex role AI may play in either reinforcing or reducing covering
This is a conversation that challenges traditional ideas of inclusion and calls for a more human approach to organisational culture.
Want to build a culture where people feel free to be themselves?
Download HiBob’s new report, “Hidden at work: The human cost of covering in today's workplaces”, at www.hibob.com/covering.
[0:00:00] David Green: Have you ever had to hide part of your identity at work? Maybe it was something about your background, your beliefs, or even just your personality, something you felt you had to downplay to fit in or be accepted. This behaviour, known as covering, is more common than many organisations realise, and unfortunately it comes with more consequences than we thought. I'm David Green and today on the Digital HR Leaders podcast, we're diving into new research conducted by the fast-growing HR platform HiBob that explores its very topic and why it's an issue HR leaders can no longer afford to ignore. And to help us get a sense of the main findings from the study, I'm joined by one of the people behind the research, Rami Tzafrir, Senior Director of Talent, Organisation and Learning at HiBob.
In our conversation, Rami shares some of the headline insights from the report, and we explore the deeper cultural and psychological factors that contribute to covering. We discuss the connection between covering and psychological safety, how global social dynamics may be influencing the workplace, and why this issue goes beyond individual behaviour to the heart of organisational culture. We also look at the role of HR and how leaders can create environments that encourage authenticity and inclusion, as well as how emerging technologies like AI might either help mitigate or unintentionally reinforce the need for covering. It is a conversation that will definitely challenge the way we look at inclusion in the workplace. With that, let's get the conversation started.
Rami, welcome to the show. It's great to have you on. We've known each other for quite a few years now. Could you start by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself, your role at HiBob, and maybe HiBob's progress? We've had your colleagues, Niret, Sarah Reynolds and Ronni Zehavi on in previous years, and every time I speak to someone at HiBob, you've made significant progress. So, I think it's good for listeners to hear that as well.
[0:02:18] Rami Tzafrir: Definitely. Thank you, David. First of all, it's a pleasure. You're right, we met I think when Insight222 was still starting, right? You'd just founded it. I remember we met up in London, and I've been following you since then, and it's exciting to finally sit down. And you mentioned a couple of names that would have had other data heroes or mentors that have been on your show, this is a real pleasure. My name is Rami Tzafrir, I lead the Talent, Organisation and Learning globally at HiBob. I've been at HiBob for three years; before that, did all sorts of different odd jobs, wanted to be a veterinarian at first, and ended up doing research, clinical research and then moving into quickly realising that wasn't really my future, and moving into HR, doing talent management, leadership and development. And three years ago, making the move to HiBob, which is a very different industry, very different company from what I've done in the past, but it was the first company that I felt really did HR, right, that the purpose, what we did, what we promoted, what we built and created as a product was HR, and that was the place for me to be.
Really exciting days for HiBob. I think we're across the one million employee mark as a footprint. We really are an HCM platform that helps modern, mid-size-plus and multinational companies really put their people first. That's the way I see it. I know there's a lot of corporate-type definitions of what it is that we do, but I think we really help people at the end of the day. We help making work more personal, more inclusive, and really live and grow the way that people live today.
[0:04:16] David Green: Well, we actually use HiBob at Insight222 as well with our team, and yes, I can certainly validate it's a very helpful part of how we deliver to our people. So, thanks for that, Rami. Now, at Hi Bob, you've been leading a study around a concept known as covering, which obviously has links with psychological safety, which is a topic we've discussed previously on the podcast. Could you explain to our listeners who don't know what covering is, but also what brought you to study this topic at HiBob?
[0:04:54] Rami Tzafrir: Definitely. Covering is downplaying or hiding aspects of who you are, like your background, your beliefs, mental health history, anything possibly that you can think of in your past and how it impacts you today, in order to meet real or perceived expectations at work. The term was originally coined by Kenji Yoshino, an NYU professor, a law professor, out of all things, and I think it really gave us a language. I feel it gave us the first time a language to really explain or articulate some of the phenomena that we were feeling at work, but we couldn't describe it, or at least the frameworks that we had until then were too dimensional for us to really understand the depth of what inclusivity means. And it's something that interests us.
I think that one of our key principles at HiBob is that we drink our own Merlot, which is definitely better than eating our own dog food. But it means that we don't only support other companies, we want to understand the human being. And for us, that meant making the transition from performative inclusions, or inclusion where we actually talk about or signal it, to actually feeling safe and showing up and expressing vulnerability, so from a performative to a lived inclusion. And in order to do that, we felt that we needed more tools, right? I think there were all of these signals that were coming up. I think our external and our internal value proposition is almost identical. We are people-proud externally and internally as well.
That being said, there's certain things that, within the company, kept nagging at me. For example, there's a survey question, an engagement survey question, where we ask, "If I feel stressed or experience challenges, I feel comfortable to voice this". And that for me is just a zero-tolerance question, right? I expect us to be at the 100% favourability. We had high marks, but not 100%. And that is one of the things that started me thinking as to what are people telling us, what are they not telling us? Engagement survey questions, we all know, are very important. They show us or tell us a lot about the organisation. But I feel they're telling us things that are expressed and not necessarily suppressed behaviours, and that is what covering is trying to get at. So, it's not necessarily what's visible in an engagement survey. Someone might feel engaged, someone actually might feel engaged and included, but they're still hiding parts of themselves in order to be perceived as more professional. And that is what we try to get at.
I think traditional DEI metrics don't necessarily do that, this is not saying we don't use those, right? We have a set of questions on our engagement survey that focus on DEI. But those I think focus or get more at the sentiment or a presentation, not really what it means, what the emotional labour is for an employee to feel when they feel they need to blend in. Did an employee just come up to us and say, "I'm struggling. Everything is great, I'm happy with the work-life balance, with my compensation, I enjoy the work that I'm doing, but I'm struggling because of X or Y"? And that is really what started us thinking, "Is there a different framework that we can look into, that we can create, that we can investigate to go in deeper?"
[0:08:38] David Green: And if people are covering in the workplace, then they can feel, as you've alluded to there, Rami, they can feel stress, anxiety, reduces their sense of belonging, have negative impact on their wellbeing; and then, from an employer perspective, potentially has an impact on their performance as well. And obviously, HiBob is a company that's growing very fast. I'm not sure how many employees you're up to now, but I know you're growing very quickly. So, it's really important that, as you said, I like the phrase, "Drink your own Merlot", actually, I'm going to use that one as well; but as you said, it's very important. Obviously, to your clients, you're talking about the importance of this. So, as you said, it's important that you reflect that yourself within the organisation, isn't it?
[0:09:26] Rami Tzafrir: No, definitely. Part of us drinking our own Merlot is that we're thought leaders, right? We feel responsible that anything that we do internally, we don't just recommend someone do something, we actually try it ourselves. That's part of the philosophy. And in order to really understand this concept better, we partnered with HU-X. HU-X is a boutique consultancy, it specialises in OD, in leadership. It has world-class programmes and advisory services, but they also lead some original research. And we felt they were the perfect partners for us, both because HU-X is the human experience, they want to improve the human experience, we want to improve the human workforce. So, it's an amazing match and both companies are really passionate about this. That's why we found ourselves endless weekends working on this, although this wasn't part of our formal day job, but we really wanted to understand this, we wanted to create a new framework, which we did. And we spent over two years working on this study, and it was one of the most eye-opening experiences I've ever had.
You mentioned what the impact is. Some of the data that we saw, it's validated preconceptions that we have, and some of it was very surprising. So, patterns that were validated or expected, obviously I think anyone who has ever worked anywhere knows that people sometimes conceal parts of themselves in order to navigate that workplace. I think I've learned that in my first fast-food interview when I was 14. There's certain things that you need to maybe express or show differently in order to get the job and do well at the job. But what surprised us was the intensity and the emotional weight that that carries. So, 97%, this is a study that we ran in the US with over 2,000 participants, 97% of respondents say that they cover at least some of the time; and 67% that they do so often or always, more than two-thirds. So, that really tells us that it's not a niche issue, right? It's really something that's structural, it's widespread, I call it an epidemic.
So, that was sort of obvious and with hindsight bias, some people say, "Well, of course". But the magnitude of it surprised us. And on the other hand, there were findings that were really surprising as far as the content itself, not just the magnitude. We built a framework. The framework has sort of five layers. It doesn't just look at the demographics, but it looks at roles and responsibilities, it looks at your values and beliefs, it looks at your personality factors. At the core of it, it looks at your wellbeing, your both physical and emotional wellbeing. So, some of them are very easy to observe and some of them are really core and central to your experience as an employee. And we think that that sort of five-layered framework really gives you the depth to understand inclusivity. And that's where we started seeing the interesting data.
We checked over 40 factors that people might be covering. And I think if you go back to how this entire work originated, I think we all have our demons, or we all have the things that we feel like we need to cover or had covered in the past. But this study really showed us that there's so many different factors that you would not even expect people to need to cover; people who, they're caregivers, or people who suffer from IBS, the smallest and most unimaginable factors that you might not consider as a work issue, people carry and cover with them. So, we saw that people mostly cover for the same reasons. It might be different things, but they cover for the same reasons. They cover in order to maintain a professional image, they think they want to avoid discrimination or seek social acceptance. So, again, I say think, because some of this might be perceived and some of this might be actual, I don't know all the workplaces that exist out there.
But the cost, as you had mentioned, David, is really tangible. It's stress levels, lower performance, lower innovation, lower engagement. 43% of respondents said that they feel they would be further ahead in their careers if they did not need to cover.
[0:14:18] David Green: Shout out to our sponsor for this episode, HiBob, who brings us Bob, the industry's most usable HCM platform. New HiBob research shows 97% of employees cover parts of who they are at work, hurting engagement, innovation and wellbeing. Want to build a culture where people feel free to be themselves? Download HiBob's new report, Hidden at Work: the Human Cost of Covering in Today's Workplaces, at hibob.com/covering, for insights HR need to lead the way forward.
We're recording this episode on 20 May, I know the report is due to be published in June. Hopefully it will be published by the time this episode comes out. If it is, we will provide a link in the show notes as well. But obviously, I'm coming at this fresh as well. So, I was just listening to you there, Rami, and I've got quite a few follow-up questions, really. So, maybe let's get into some of the specifics. Were there any specific trends across demographics, seniority levels, or job types that stood out in the data?
[0:15:46] Rami Tzafrir: Yeah, I mean you're right, the report will come out. The report at the moment, if it doesn't grow between now and June, is 30 pages long, so definitely we won't cover all of the insights there. But I think one of the most interesting things is that we say covering doesn't discriminate, we've seen it across the board, so it impacts almost all employees. But it shows up very differently. So, based on your identity, based on your power, based on the context in which you're operating, it will show up differently. So, for example, one of the things we looked at was generations, or your seniority within an organisation. It impacts across the spectrum, but for example, younger employees, or Gen Z specifically, reported higher level of covering of certain things, such as mental health, self-care, socioeconomic level and background, and for various purposes, right? I think some of these are assumptions. This is where we're getting to hypotheses that I feel like it's our take on it, but we're not seeing the real causality there.
But across the board, I mean, even one of the things that really surprised me was C-suite leaders, so C-team leaders that reported surprisingly very high levels of covering. Now, when I was studying OD, one of the key concepts, as probably, David, you know this as well, positional power equals personal freedom. We're not seeing it here. If you're at the C-suite level and you still feel like you need to invest a lot of your energy in covering, what does that mean? Now, given they cover different things, they cover health issues, burnout, ideological views, but that was very interesting. We saw diverse covering or different types of covering, depending on your industry, your organisational culture. Some of this was expected, so obviously if you're a very high, competitive, dog-eat-dog type of culture, you're going to be covering more, versus if you're a family, formal, small or governmental type of organisation.
What surprised us that actually companies that describe themselves as creative and innovative show a higher level of covering, which is a contradiction, right, because we expect actually those cultures or those ambiences to not have covering in order for them to be more creative and innovative. Hierarchy was also a very strong one. So, hierarchy, I feel, amplifies the need to self-edit, so who do you cover from? We see that there's direct managers and senior leaders. People cover less from HR but still it's almost 30%. So, that question is, "What is HR's role and how do we support people if they feel they need to cover in front of us?" We saw that there's different covering across hybrid workers. So, whether you're one day or five days in the office, we see different covering profiles. I can go in deeper into some of these, but I'm just mentioning at the high level.
Obviously, gender differences. So, both men and women cover, but they cover different types of aspects of criteria that we looked at. Women cover more emotional health and personal lives; men cover more ideological beliefs and professional histories.
[0:19:38] David Green: Yeah, it's interesting, you mentioned the socio-economic one. So, obviously, people can tell by my accent, I'm in the UK. And I learned quite early in my career that you were judged by the way you speak. And I'm from a town where people don't speak the Queen's English, shall we say. So, my form of covering was to change the way I spoke, and I'm sure this will resonate with a number of UK listeners as well, whether it's a regional accent, or whether you're from the south of England and you drop the odd vowel, it's judged upon. So, people probably cover their socioeconomic background. I can see that. And you said that the survey was done in the US, and I think it's similar there, I guess, as well. And I guess what this means is, covering means you're not really being your true self in the workplace, doesn't it, which isn't good.
I mean, on some of the demographics that you mentioned, Rami, what's your view or what does the data tell you why some demographics are more prone to covering than others?
[0:20:55] Rami Tzafrir: Yeah, so you mentioned that we did this in the US, and one of the insights that I didn't mention, which was extremely interesting to me, is we actually looked at political ideologies. We had from very conservative to very liberal. And one of the things that surprised me at least, is that very liberal employees, contrary to what seemed to be common sense, actually showed the highest rates of covering. And definitely now with the US and politics, there might be reasons for that. But oftentimes, I think that was not because of any sort of internal work repercussions or anything that was structured within the workplace, but with the need to cover from peers, for example. So, the context is extremely important.
I think some of the interesting things we saw, because it's universal, right, it's universal, so I think that the main reason or the main differences that we're seeing is what pressures or what different types of pressure different groups have, and that's where the conversation should start. I think the data doesn't provide the answers, it just highlights what you should be looking at. So, obviously younger employees want to gain credibility and in different contexts, in different places that may mean different things. But you were talking about the accent. I mean, imagine me, born in Brazil, lived in 15 different countries. I don't have any sort of English accent and I don't have a name that sounds or resembles anything that might be common in a US company. How do I get along? So, as a young employee, that was completely different to me. And I remember even people suggesting that I change my name in order to do better in my career, which I didn't. But young employees want to gain credibility, senior leaders want to maintain their authority, but they have a lot more visibility. So, what does that mean for them?
I think we saw, for example, bisexual employees, because they have these multiple dimensions that they need to navigate, show the highest covering rates of every subgroup that we looked into. I think high-pressure industries, again, they discourage vulnerability, right? You have to be always on, there's no room for slowing down, there's no room for mistakes, and so forth. So, I think the main question is, because we can't give the answers to every single imaginable scenario, is understanding that it's universal and think of what the pressures are for that specific role in that specific organisation, and that will help you understand why. A lot of what I found surprising, and I think it's a very important insight, is that covering doesn't only happen because of fear of exclusion or what's happening around you and in your climate. Sometimes it's internalised pressure, right? It's the pressure to conform to what your expectations are of yourself and your role. And I think I won't go into this, I know this is not going to be an inclusivity podcast, but there's different terms; there's masking and covering, those are very different things. Covering, I think, is really sublimating or really trying to really internally also cover certain things that are not just external.
[0:24:38] David Green: I want to take a short break from this episode to introduce the Insight222 People Analytics Programme, designed for senior leaders to connect, grow, and lead in the evolving world of people analytics. The programme brings together top HR professionals with extensive experience from global companies, offering a unique platform to expand your influence, gain invaluable industry insight and tackle real-world business challenges. As a member, you'll gain access to over 40 in-person and virtual events a year, advisory sessions with seasoned practitioners, as well as insights, ideas and learning to stay up-to-date with best practices and new thinking. Every connection made brings new possibilities to elevate your impact and drive meaningful change. To learn more, head over to insight222.com/programme and join our group of global leaders.
Would you say that covering raises the question on the level of psychological safety within an organisation; or, given the study was done in the US, do you think it's more of a wider geopolitical issue; or, would you expect to see similar things in other countries, which I personally would, but it'd been interesting to hear your thought on that, Rami?
[0:26:13] Rami Tzafrir: Great question. We asked ourselves that as well, right, I think how much of this is maybe geopolitical, how much is really human. I think it's definitely psychological safety, regardless of where the study is happening. That being said, I think safety is shaped also by what people carry with them, what they bring with them into the workplace from the outside world. I said earlier what they bring from the outside world internally also, so their perception, their value scale and so forth. So, I don't think it's an either or, I think it's both internal and external forces at play here. I think there's certain climates or regions where it might be more difficult, more risky, there might be more noise, but it's definitely a combination. And I think you can see that because even in US-based companies that we've looked at, it's not evenly felt across the organisation. So, there are people who cover more in certain teams, with certain managers, based on their identity, you know, "We've been through two acquisitions lately". I don't think it's just a geographical and it's not just a company culture, it's a combination.
Covering definitely increases with outside tensions. I know that there's all of these events that have happened during the last two years, more even if we go back not even thinking of COVID, but thinking of Ukraine and other places that have triggered and impacted us. I think the external world impacts us. I think it's up to our managers and leaders. I mean, we can't control the external world, but we can at least try and build a culture where we respond with trust and not with fear. That's one of the key insights that we have. So, inclusion needs to be lived, right? It's not just stated, it's not posters. What's within your remit of control, impact it in a way that builds trust.
[0:28:24] David Green: And I guess as managers and HR professionals, I suppose we think about how that impacts us, but we also need to think about how that potentially impacts the organisation and certain people within the organisation, I guess, as well, which is quite complex and quite challenging.
[0:28:40] Rami Tzafrir: Before I moved to Bob, I worked for a corporate, a huge corporate, had nearly 90,000 employees. I thought moving to a smaller company was going to simplify things. It did not. I think at the end of the day, we're a group of unique individuals; whether it's 20 people or 200,000, I think their complexity is still there. And that's why I like our framework, because it doesn't limit it just to demographics or something that's very menial. I think the only way we can tackle this at an employee level is by listening. And one of the great findings of this survey is that the survey itself, so our research tool, was an intervention. What we saw was that people who had actually completed the survey, their attitude towards covering, their understanding of it, their optimism about it was highly increased.
So, I think the first thing to say is start by listening, because covering is often invisible until you create space for it, for people to have that awareness. So, it doesn't necessarily mean run our survey, you could do any sort of reflective team exercise. We had storytelling sessions run, which were with our leaders, which was amazing. And any of that type of dynamic work can create the space for you to be aware of the covering and try and reduce it. Managers, obviously, as you mentioned, are key, in a very ironic way, because they're key because they're the main audience, right? Most people cover from their managers, but they're also the pressure point. There's a reason why people cover. So, I think they can also be one of the most impactful solutions for us. And a lot of the work that we're doing is with managers. How are they showing up? How are they incentivising, covering? What tools do they need? Hopefully, one of the things that we'll have later on, one of the first deliverables that we want after we post the report is a manager checklist, what can managers do in order to help reduce covering and tackle this.
[0:31:02] David Green: And if we look at HR, obviously you're an HR professional, Rami, and obviously HiBob is empowering HR professionals in its customers as well, what does this mean for HR? What can HR professionals listening to this episode do to support a more transparent culture and minimise covering in the workplace? It sounds like the first thing to do is listen and actually start talking about it.
[0:31:27] Rami Tzafrir: I think this is huge. I think one of the things that made me laugh when I told you we were looking at these 40 different factors that people cover from, we saw that we were talking about the workplace itself. We saw that about 30% of people cover that they feel they do not have enough work, and 30% of the people cover that they work too much. And there's all of this spent energy on people trying to find the alignment exactly of what the organisation is expecting from you, instead of just saying, "Look, there might be periods where I'm busier, and there might be periods where I work less, but we're all invested, and we're all in this". So, there's a lot of energy that goes into unnecessary expenditure.
I think we should look at this, HR should help the organisation look at this from a strategic, not from an empathy perspective, empathy is extremely important, but look at this from a strategic perspective. If I were to mention anything else that impacts performance, you would immediately want to tackle it, right? But when we say it's covering, people say, "Oh, this is a soft thing, why should we look at this?" No, this is impacting performance. So, I think we should look at this from a leadership perspective, from a culture perspective, it should be a design challenge, right? Let's look at our environment, let's look at our systems, and what can we do in order to reduce this self-editing; what can we do to reduce covering? And that's why I think inclusion is not a value, I think it's a capability, it's a skillset. We should look at it. How do we how can we practice it on a day-to-day basis, so that energy that we spend on covering can actually go into innovation, can go into performance, can go into creativity. And therefore, this concept is not siloed in DEI. Sometimes I get annoyed, pardon my passion, when people think it's just a DEI issue. No, I think it's a real performance and organisational performance issue.
[0:33:31] David Green: Yes, because as you said, everyone, all types, seniorities, demographics, all experience, covering, as you said, it doesn't discriminate against people. You could be the CEO perhaps and you can experience covering. So, yeah, as you said, it's not a diversity issue, it's a culture issue, it's a performance issue that we need to address.
[0:33:54] Rami Tzafrir: David, I don't know whether this is possible on the podcast or maybe I ask people just to pause the recording now for a minute, but really take a minute and think, "What is it that I'm covering?" That would be interesting. Part of what we're getting from the survey is we get the snippets of people sending us short anonymous testimonials, which is beautiful. One of the things they want to have on our website is all of these sort of micro-stories or these instances where people are sharing with us things that they've covered and how they feel about it.
[0:34:25] David Green: So, moving on, obviously we can't talk about anything at the moment without talking about AI. It's definitely a topic that is high on the agenda, I know it is for you at HiBob as well, particularly working in HR. How do you see AI playing a role, either maybe as a potential solution or something that supports covering, or maybe as a risk when it comes to addressing covering and supporting greater authenticity in the workplace?
[0:34:53] Rami Tzafrir: Yeah. First of all, we are doing a lot of work on AI. I think AI, personally, is something that's been interesting for many years, still when it was not AI, what is referred to still as machine-learning and so forth. But I think AI is also a trigger for a lot of covering. That's at least what I'm seeing. I think a lot of the resistance to AI and change with AI comes from people needing to cover because of that, am I using it; am I not using it; am I using it appropriately? So, that in itself I realise is also a trigger for covering, but I think it can also be a solution. AI, at the end of the day, is what we do with it, right? I think AI is an amplifier. It can be used for good or for bad. It can reinforce covering or it can help reduce it. And we are responsible, we, I mean, HR and leaders, on how it's designed and how it's used. It can be a real risk, because all the biases that we have can be amplified if the data that we use is not the right data. So, if we're only focusing on performance and the time it took you to do something, then are we reinforcing overworking; are we reinforcing conformity; are we reinforcing doing things just the way that they were done before, which is the complete opposite of covering? So, I think we need to use it intentionally in order to reduce covering.
Our focus, at least as a company, is how do we use it to personalise; how do we use it to make sure that we're not using a template, or we're not using a one-solution-fits-all, because we know that that is what causes covering, right? When you think you need to behave like other people, when your deliverables need to be exactly like other deliverables, when there's an office barbecue even, it's not during work, but you need to behave like your peers. So, I think the personalisation aspect, and that's where we're focusing a lot of our work on AI, is at solving that and giving you the best solution for you. We have an AI Mind, we call it, programme which is not just what AI can do, but it's what is the mindset that it's reinforcing. I think there's no way around it, right? I think people talk about a burning platform. I think there's no platform. Platform is gone, we're in the water. So, we need to realise how we use AI for the power.
[0:37:41] David Green: Yeah, and actually you raise a really important point about AI being perhaps a trigger for covering. So, as you said, "I'm using AI and it's helping me get my work done and it's giving me some time back and I don't necessarily want to admit to that, because maybe that won't go down well", or, "I'm working so hard I haven't got time to out-skill myself on AI and I'm fearing I'm going to get left behind. But I don't want to tell people that I'm not using AI because if I'm not using AI I might be at risk". So, yeah, and I think this leads quite nicely to the question of the series, Rami, which is a question we're asking everyone in this series of the Digital HR Leaders podcast. How can HR, so we're thinking wider now obviously than covering, how can HR use AI to improve employee experience and wellbeing?
[0:38:32] Rami Tzafrir: That's a very interesting question, and I think we don't have the answers yet, right? I think we're part of the Feedforward Collective, this group of Ethan Mollick and a couple of other AI thought-leaders. And our CEO's Roni Zehavi's slogan is, "Do more with more". My take on it is, "Do more of what's interesting, or do more of what's unique to you, or do more of what you enjoy doing". So, I think part of our role is really to see how AI can enhance the human. There's certain things that no matter what, only you can do. We have three tracks that we're working on with our executive leadership: one is how can you be more human with the help of AI; and the opposite, the human AI collaboration; and the third is how do you reimagine work so that AI can create more space for purpose? So, not how can your output be higher, but if you get that additional, whatever the unit is that you're measuring, time, productivity and so forth, how do you use it for something that's meaningful to you and not just do more of the same?
HR, I think is the conduit for it, right? I think even in some of the studies or explorations that we did, even with tech teams that you're expecting they would be the highest intake of this technology, you're seeing resistance. I think HR and AI can help enhance that employee experience, I think a lot of it through personalisation. So, how do we listen to employees? How do we listen to them earlier and better? Covering can be seen. So, the signals of covering, I think we can find out what those red flags are to help us know that a certain employee is covering. And it's just promoting that more thoughtful check-ins, supporting our managers, a lot of our focus is on how do we support the managers. And we've all been there, right? You know, you have seven direct reports, how can you really be focused on your day job and supporting those seven unique individuals? And not even AI, I think Gen AI can help us close that, strengthen those feedback loops, and so forth.
[0:41:11] David Green: Rami, I've really enjoyed our conversation. I think a lot of people will really be interested in hearing more about covering, which may be a concept some listeners will be aware of, but many, I suspect, aren't. So, thank you so much for being a guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast. As I said, when the report is hopefully live, when this podcast goes live, we will put a link to the report so people can access it in the show notes as well. But other than that, Rami, can you let listeners know how they can find you on social media, find out more about the work you and your team are doing at HiBob, and of course, find out more about HiBob itself?
[0:41:53] Rami Tzafrir: Definitely. So, first of all, on LinkedIn, we thrive on collaboration. We have a very strong and vibrant community, but you don't, like Insight222, you don't need to be a customer of HiBob in order to reach out and start the conversation. So, I would say download the report, reach out to me on LinkedIn, or our company, HiBob. Hopefully later on, we'll be able to have you run the survey or find an equivalent survey that you can run internally, but definitely we would love to start the conversation.
[0:42:34] David Green: Well, Rami, it's been a pleasure speaking to you. And having been fortunate enough to speak at one of the HiBob customer events, where you did have non-customers as well, Heartcore, I can certainly provide a lot of credit to the community that you're creating and the change movement that you're creating at HiBob in the industry. So, thanks very much for being a guest on the show.
[0:42:56] Rami Tzafrir: Thank you, David.
[0:42:58] David Green: Again, a big thank you to Rami for joining me and for sharing his thought-provoking insights into the hidden dynamics and consequences of covering in the workplace. It's a topic that doesn't always get the attention it deserves, but as we've heard today, the implications of covering are wide-reaching, not just for individuals, but for how organisations build culture, drive performance and retain talent. But before we come to an end, I want to take a moment to thank you for being part of the Digital HR Leaders community. Whether you're listening on your commute, on a run, in between meetings, or with a notebook in hand, we appreciate you being here and taking the time to grow with us.
At Insight 222, our mission is to empower HR and People Analytics Leaders to drive lasting business impact. So, if you enjoyed today's conversation, it would mean a lot if you subscribed, rated the show, and shared it with someone in your network. For more industry insights and learning resources, I also recommend visiting insight222.com, following us on LinkedIn, and subscribing to our weekly newsletter at myHRfuture.com. That's all for now. Thank you for tuning in and we'll be back next week with another episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast. Until then, take care and stay well.