27th September 2022
Meet Inspirathon speaker – Dana Aldis
Meet the Inspirathon 2022 speaker, Dana Aldis. Sign up free for the Inspirathon
Dana Aldis is the Head of People at Avail Car Sharing, a subsidiary of Allstate Corporation. Avail’s People team is responsible for creating and maintaining an inspiring, engaging workplace. Prior to joining Avail, Dana was Homesnap Inc.’s SVP of People & Customer Experience. Homesnap was named a Washington Post Top Workplace and Inc. Best Workplace during her tenure in 2018, 2019, and 2020.
Before joining Homesnap, she spent 5 years at LivingSocial where she led various HR, training, service, and operations teams. Dana holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of Virginia and a Master’s Degree in Organization Development & Knowledge Management from George Mason University.
Why do you do what you do?
I do what I do to try to help people feel happier. Employee engagement research consistently shows that, when people are happy at work, they are more satisfied with their personal lives, eat healthier food, exercise more, etc. This knowledge makes the work of practitioners in our field highly purpose-driven.
Describe your talk in 100 words
Avail Car Sharing is a peer-to-peer car sharing company, which means that our customers borrow cars owned by real, local people. We take care of the car exchange, cleaning, inspection, and insurance process so it’s easier for borrowers and owners to hit the road. All non-field employees at Avail Car Sharing have the freedom to work remotely within the continental United States. While this comes with many advantages for our employees, we continue to implement new practices to address the natural challenges that come with maintaining a fully remote workforce. We look forward to sharing several of our initiatives and hearing ideas from the Inspirathon attendees.
What problems will your talk solve for our audience and why is it needed?
The silver lining of the otherwise bleak COVID-19 pandemic is that it has forced businesses to figure out remote work. Many corporations and their leaders have changed their philosophies on remote work; trust was built, creative communication and engagement mechanisms were fostered, and focus improved. Remote work has dramatically enabled work/life integration. Suddenly parents can make it to 5:30pm soccer games, dogs aren’t alone in the house all day, and the stresses of a long commute have disappeared. Since the work/life integration that comes with remote work is so important, it is our duty to figure out how to keep employees feeling connected and inspired despite being physically apart. Though we’re still learning and growing as a company (!), Avail would like to share a few best practices and hear what’s working from the other inspirers and speakers.
What valuable insights, strategies, tools or techniques will our audience walk away with?
We will relay our thoughts on the importance of working remotely but gathering frequently (and flexibly), share our hiring and EVP strategies and how they’ve evolved over time, and define key engagement channels and mechanisms that have worked for us (as well as some that haven’t).
What do you think will be the major differentiator of the workplace of the future, as opposed to the way we work today?
I’m a broken record, but workers of the future will expect work to fit into their personal lives, rather than the opposite. Struggling to make time for families, pets, and other loved ones will be a thing of the past.