- Dave Carhart, vice president of people at Lattice, said the pandemic created new levels of burnout.
- Carhart said it's critical for HR to represent a human voice within the workplace.
- This article is part of Most Innovative HR Leaders, a series about talent heads who are innovating company culture, DEI, and employee experience.
COVID-19 created a dizzying number of uncertainties for leaders and employees alike, but Dave Carhart knows the power of clarity to make that uncertainty a little easier to tolerate.
"Through both policy and leading by example, I've worked to maintain an approach of radical transparency throughout the pandemic that helped to combat the feelings of anxiety and uncertainty COVID created," said Carhart, the vice president of people at Lattice, a people-management platform.
In turn, Lattice has managed to triple in size over the past 18 months, Carhart said, crediting his team's "deep commitment" to company values, strengthening an employee-focused culture, and helping workers navigate new challenges.
Carhart has worked in human resources for over 10 years and joined Lattice during the pandemic in June 2020. For his commitment to leading Lattice's employees through the pandemic and other workplace challenges, he was recently named one of Insider's 2022 HR Innovators.
"Work was stressful in 'normal' pre-COVID times, but the pandemic has created new levels of burnout and exhaustion," Carhart said.
He quickly worked with his HR team to embrace a remote-first hybrid workplace. And while he didn't have all the answers to what would happen next during the pandemic, he said he tried to make every effort to keep the Lattice team updated in real-time whenever the company learned new information.
Carhart oversaw the rollout of many other benefits, too.
Soon after he began in June 2020, he helped launch Lattice's "Recharge Days," designated days where the entire company is off with "the explicit goal of stepping away from work mentally." The program proved so successful that it was expanded and made permanent. Lattice's annual calendar now has six Recharge Days on top of national holidays and flexible PTO.
"It's an example of how we are taking lessons from what were initially temporary measures and building them into the 'new normal' that we are moving into," Carhart said.
Beyond transparency, Carhart said it's important to him that Lattice is committed to using its platform and product "to inform and educate others, as well as learn and better ourselves." From a DEI perspective, he added, "I also recognize that based on my own privileges, that I have a personal responsibility to this work."
In 2021, Carhart oversaw the launch of three partnerships that have helped Lattice build its pipeline of diverse technical talent.
The company partnered with Path Forward to create two "returnships" for individuals returning to work after taking time off for caregiving. It's since hired and converted the employees to full-time engineering employees.
The company also partnered with Techtonica to fully fund a participant for the company's coding bootcamp for low-income women and non-binary employees.
Finally, through a partnership with Basta, which provides training, career guidance, and placement support for students of color who are the first in their family to graduate from college, Lattice has hired a number of individuals into its sales and customer experience teams.
"Personally, I believe that there's no single act that ensures an inclusive culture on its own," Carhart said. "Instead, people teams and leadership teams need to make it a priority and consistently identify opportunities to make processes, protocols, and programs more inclusive."