Humu is a human resource company that uses the power of machine learning to create work experiences that engage, support, and inspire everyone involved. They call themselves an action management platform, working at the intersection of productivity, personal development, and company strategy.
“I think the best way to explain it is that we are a personal-virtual coach,” explained Technology Product Marketer Talia Bailey. “The way that we deliver this coaching and guidance is through nudges, which are proven to improve behavior change over time, versus something like a training or class.”
Humu is all about helping organizations drive meaningful progress — on a company-wide level as well as on an individual level. We had the pleasure of speaking with Talia Bailey — who works with marketing teams and product teams alike — about how Humu got started with Clockwise and how our product has supported their mission of helping employees feel supported, within and outside of the workplace.
How Humu got started with Clockwise
Using Clockwise was an organic choice, said Bailey, as individuals and teams simply started using the product on their own. “It was a person, and then it was a team, and then it was the organization."
Bailey first became intrigued by our smart calendar assistant after hearing about it from a former colleague. Shortly after joining Humu, she decided to try Clockwise out for herself. That’s when she started noticing blocks of Focus Time on her colleagues’ calendars, which led her to realize that other people were using Clockwise, too.
“There was never any top-down statement about using Clockwise…but all of a sudden, it just started rippling out across the organization. Soon enough, we had exceeded our free quota. I was getting ready to put together a business case for why I thought we should subscribe, but before I even had a chance, we’d subscribed to Clockwise!”
Cultivating work-life balance and supporting a globally-distributed team
Humu is a company that emphasizes work-life balance. It’s a value that’s embedded into their company culture (and even their product). For example, Humu encourages their employees to put all of their engagements, professional and personal, on their calendars. As Bailey explains, it’s common to see time blocks for child-care, exercise, and family time. With Clockwise, employees at Humu are better able to honor these commitments. “Before Clockwise, working with all of these personal blocks would have been really difficult.”
And what about the challenges of having a globally-distributed team? “We also have people in basically every time zone,” Bailey said of their team of 100. “The thing that Clockwise really helps us with is finding time — cross-functionally and across time zones — and automating that process so that we don’t have to.”
Less multi-tasking, more ease around time management
Bailey told us that Focus Time, one of the core features of Clockwise, doesn’t just enhance the work she does during the time block, but also outside of it. “I use it for deep work. Often, I use it for deliverables or to catch up on Slacks or pings that I’ve missed during the day because I was in meetings. And also, because I know that I have this Focus Time, I feel a lot more comfortable not multitasking and not trying to do everything while I’m in a meeting.”
The benefits of Focus Time don’t stop there. Bailey has found that Clockwise allows people across her whole organization to feel better supported in how they spend their time.
“For some reason it's easier to protect your Focus Time when you use Clockwise versus just blocking it out yourself,” Bailey said. “There's something about it...I don't know if people respect it more or if it’s because Clockwise isn’t moving meetings into that time, but that's the thing that people have really latched onto and seem the most grateful for.”
How the insights bar translates into “meaningful outcomes for the organization”
A final feature that Bailey said she loves is Team Analytics, which indicates how she and her colleagues are spending their time. Part of Bailey’s job involves analyzing data and figuring out new, unexpected places for the company to find positive ROI.
“I start thinking about that and extrapolating that into meaningful outcomes for the organization. What am I not doing if I'm spending typically 15 hours a week in meetings? That is really interesting to me. The insights are cool and also useful for a business case or proving out more efficiencies or more productivity.”
Since adopting Clockwise, Humu has found it easier to understand how they’re spending their time, improve the quality of their work (more focus, less multi-tasking!), and overall, create a culture that truly puts their values to practice.
