The power of mindfulness & community (feat. Marie Szuts | Figma)

Figma's VP of People tells Mai about how a solo desert quest got her thinking about mental health, and how two colleagues and an espresso machine revitalised company culture at Figma.

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Transcript

Marie Szuts 0:00

so it meant suddenly that someone's health insurance, which they kind of needed anyway, was materially helpful to them in like what was a large out of pocket expense and how. Huge. Because again, it's like a financial consideration is keeping people from care that would be helpful to them and the company can do something about it. I never, in my life, otherwise had gotten flowers from somebody because of a health benefit that I put in. Like literally, like employees were so grateful about it and I was very, very moving in a way. Right. And sort of in some ways, like you think, wow, like why don't more people think creatively about how to do this, because like that really.

Mai 1:27

So, Marie, thank you so much. First of all, for your time being here, sharing this space with me,

Marie Szuts 1:35

Well, thank you so much for having me today. I'm really delighted to be in conversation with you. I think these topics are incredibly important so by way of introduction, uh, I'm Marie Suge. I am the VP of people at Figma and, uh, you know, Figma is a design platform. For teams who build together. And that mission really resonates a lot with sort of how I want to do my work in the world for a company that really has at its core, this idea of, of collaboration and people working together and, you know, Have a particularly traditional HR background? No, I didn't go to school for HR. I didn't sort of academically orient myself in this way, but found that, um, through, throughout my career, I really, you know, the things that have brought me joy and I've found sort of innately, I'm really interested in are about people connection and about communicating culture. it's, to some degree, that's all the people operations is, is finding what people are passionate about and figuring out ways to, to connect them.

Mai 2:35

So just like an ice breaker, do you have any moment or event in your life that shifted your perspective on mental health?

Marie Szuts 2:46

I think I can think of a few different points in time, but I'll, I'll, let's start with one, I was lucky enough to go to a high school. That was a very experiential place. You know, one that thought not only about the kind of academic. Area of things, you know, here's the things that you need to learn, but also, what is it like to sort of expand the boundaries of, of, you know, what you think, your community could be. And so one of the special things that this place did was, uh, every year, um, had had something called mini course, which was a sort of designated time for people. To take time away from just sort of the grind of high school classes and do something sort of quote, unquote extracurricular. And there were a whole bunch of things you could do, you know, ranging from like go learn how to make stained glass, you know, in a stained glass studio that maybe it was owned by an alum and learn what that's like. One of the mini courses that I did at that time was called vision quest and it involved actually going out to death valley. I'm from California, this high schools in California. And, uh, and doing a camping trip first collectively, but then going out and doing a three-day a nights solo camping where, you know, you actually, like we found your base camp and then you found your solo camp site. um, And in. So doing, you know, and being with your own thoughts and your own self? There is almost no other time in the world where you do something like that, where you are, you know, deliberately and joyfully, like alone and in a place that is. Is a very evocative right. Being in the desert and being sort of, you know, in a physical environment that is, you know, both harsh in a way, but also spectacularly full of life. That was a very profound experience, as you might imagine, where not only again, the prep leading up to it and the group that you were. Um, and, and this is, I think sort of in some ways, the lesson and the takeaway, because this was a group drawn from people across the school across sort of the proverbial cliques, you know, the jocks, the music kids, the art kids, the nerds. And again, I say that a little facetiously, but it's true, right? Like there are people, there's a proponent, a center of sense of identity. Kind of creating when you're high school, you're trying to figure out who you are. And so these were not people who typically interacted socially Shocking, no one after or even during, right. This experience, the bonds forged at this like core like molecular level with each other where you were sharing something. And seeing like, you know, and that kind of cosmic sense, like, yeah, one another's shared humanity was really remarkable. And, um, you know, the, again, this sort of experience of like being, uh, you know, on your own with your own thoughts, quieting, what's usually happening and then returning into community. I mean like the sweetest sight in a way, right. Is to come back to base camp and see people. I mean, you know, just you're flooded with emotion and so. I, you know, again, I really found that experience to be very, um, you know, just sort of changing in a way, like what mindfulness can do to sort of shift your own inner critic and, you know, and also like your inner strength.

Mai 5:57

Absolutely. I guess these two components, like the social part and the impact of how. Different people with different backgrounds, with different interests, can bond and connect from a very deep level, which is we are all humans. Right? And then you have like the more personal experience, which you were talking about, Your thoughts and, quiet and team the mind and all that. So from the more personal part, what do you feel is still remaining in you? What thoughts are triggered in you or experiences that you can say, oh, I recognize this, I also had it when I was there by myself with myself.

Marie Szuts 6:44

I think, um, being so busy is sort of something that people use in a way as, to like stave off the quiet, like, you know, what would happen if I were alone with my thoughts, I have to kind of constantly fill it up. This is why we scrolled into our phones all the time. Like we, you know, again for can't be bored anymore and this, this type of stuff. And so I think to me, Recalling that, that, you know, in fact there is so much expansiveness and value in that moment of like literally sheer and total. Uh, availability, if you will. Right. You know where you're not distracted by lots of demands, because I do find that, um, you know, I, I, whatever you wanna call it, I'm sort of an overachiever. I like to do lots of things. And so to have to weave that in with like doing nothing, also being valuable, I think that's the thing that I sort of, you know, try and. As a pillar that like doing nothing is deeply profound and, um, actually serves right as a boost to all of when you're doing something you do it again, not so much better, but just in a, in a way that is going to be more connected and interesting. Yeah.

Mai 7:58

Many, many times we. Doing mode and that disconnects us from the emotions. And for many of us that might be a defense, right. So when we are going through tough moments, we suddenly are even busier than ever. Right. And we use it unconsciously, as, um, way of dealing, um, like a coping mechanism. I'm wondering, I

Marie Szuts 8:24

mean, again, doing something is the, it feels like it's the thing to, you know, oh, we've got to do something We have to solution it. We have to, you know, again, when somebody is not feeling, you know, I mean, well, if somebody is kind of going, yeah, Our impulse is to want to fix them. And it's, again, it comes from a place a lot of the time where you don't like to see somebody you love in pain, like, you know, and so the, you know, again, the right. right. I need to do more. Um, you know, and I want, I want them to kind of get over it, get, get quickly, quickly go. Right. You know, are you better yet? Because again, Generally in, um, I'm finding like an American culture, Western culture into like sitting with discomfort is really hard and, um, and makes people feel, um, challenged in a way that, to your point, like they, they go to a coping mechanism because it's an, a defense mechanism because they don't, you know, how bad can it, can it get well, might get really bad. So, you know, I better, I better save this off now.

Mai 9:33

Yeah. And I think you hit the nail when saying discomfort because many people talk about negative emotions, right? It's like, they are not positive. They are negative. They are uncomfortable. Yeah. They are. Yeah. They are, they are not pleasant to feel, but it doesn't mean that they are not positive as well. And sometimes we want to escape from those. So what do, what things do you feel, affect your mental health nowadays?

Marie Szuts 10:01

So, I mean, Overall, right. We are still in a global pandemic. you know, the past couple of years, in particular, right? Like thinking about resilience is very much on my mind, right. In this, you know, sort of sense of, this, the surge capacity, right. Where people have, you know, it's like, you kind of go into the emergency mode, like, oh my God, there's a little bit, yeah. Shutting down like, wow, this is really unprecedented and, you know, sort of get all the headlines. Right. You know, and these unprecedented times, et cetera, et cetera. And so you sort of start in that mode and myself included, right. I have two small children. I have a, you know, very, uh, complex and demanding job. I mean, you know, again, being in the people's space throughout COVID, um, whether your company was thriving, Not thriving. You had a lot on your shoulders and, to sort of append on the family side and caregiving side, what was happening? you know, the surge capacity has been surged out in a way, I think the capacity we have to like be in that emergency mode. Keep asking, dig more, dig more, find more resilience.

Mai 11:05

So how, do you do it to find resilience, to build up that resilience with you, with your kids?

Marie Szuts 11:12

Yeah. I mean, I think the old adage, right? Of like putting on your own oxygen mask, first It's really easy to save that. And it's actually quite hard to do it. And I do see that, um, you know, again with people teams and myself, right. And so the metaphor I like to use is like, how, how am I going to be a colander, not a sponge. Right. So a calendar is like a SIM, right. Where I'm going to catch the important things and let other things flow through. and, and so like that to me, is it just very, I almost, I think in metaphors a lot. Right. And so that's a powerful image for me of like, you know what I'm thinking, you know, how am I is my day going into my taking on am. I sponging it all up and becoming, you know, completely, overtaken with all of this and. And again, something, actually, I talk about an onboarding for fig on their first day for people coming in. It's like, you know, it's very exciting. You're here and this vision and mission, like, you know, we hired you, not only for the skills that you have, but like we hired you for you and you're going to be a founder and it isn't combatant on us to have a discussion. Right. What does like create that resilience for you and how are you going to do that in an ongoing way, instead of getting into a boom and bust cycle where it's sort of like, you know, run your battery down to zero, oh, I'll have to take two weeks to make it back and then go back and just do it again. Three spiky. For me, you know, it's playing music. Uh, I'm a musician. I met my husband through playing music and, you know, that's a real sort of area where it feels like I can, you know, be, be doing a craft, uh, at a very sort of high, high level, but using just a different like language processor of my brain, I very much believe in music and chamber music. Language. And so how do you connect and, you know, do that with other people, you know, and same thing with my kids who are, you know, budding musicians themselves. Um, so I did, that's a big thing. Or again, I like to do things with my hands. I feel like in the digital age, you know, so much we do is very intense. So I counteract that with doing, you know, things that actually produce a tangible product. I mean, I got, you know, really, for many, many years I've been into, you know, making, making preserves, like that's a sort of jam. I joked that it was just like my pandemic stress project, a lot of gyms. And again, there's something incredibly satisfying about that. And you like, you watch the alchemy of what happens. And then at the end there's like this actually beautiful. But then you can give to somebody to share that.

Mai 13:42

What strategies do you use within Figma, uh, in order to protect and foster mental health?

Marie Szuts 13:50

I think one of the key things about sort of mental health in the workplace is that it is accessible and talked about in more than one way, right? It's not enough for something like this to just have like one. One offering or one area. Because like, that's actually not how our brains work. When you think about how do you interweave this idea of mindfulness, of wellness, of mental health, like acknowledgement and, care within a workplace. you do that in a bunch of different ways. And so, things that I've found that important to do. So even just like in my, my people operations, like monthly meeting where I pull my whole, I have a number of different functions that are, that are in my group and we come all together at least once a month, too. To share, you know, sort of like, you know, highlights. Uh, we, we dissect, uh, when we, you know, do a special shout out to somebody and I, end that meeting every time, actually with the closing meditation. and again, it's people of course of differing, levels of familiarity and comfort with like their own meditation or mindfulness practice or none in their own life. But just that's one time where we say we deliberately call out, you know, Let's take this time to actually focus in word on us and so, um, camera's off and a guided meditation together and it's, really restorative. So it's like, it's five minutes. It's five minutes, like, you know, on a monthly basis. It isn't. Yeah. Necessarily a huge program. People put therapy like sessions on their calendar in a visible way. Right. If people write therapy, they don't write like private or hide it. Right. And we have it from the leadership level too. Like normalizing that as a thing that like you can make time in your day. To do you know, throughout the pandemic, we've incorporated what we've called, uh, COVID recharge days typically sort of upended to a weekend so that there can be a sort of longer stretch where people can really disconnect. And that is a very different experience than taking a PTO day yourself. But your inbox is still filling up, you know, you feel sort of beholden to your other colleagues, whatever, you know, Truly feel disconnected. Well, it's different if everybody is actually kind of paused and, um, you know, I think it needs to be a push and a pull. I think, you know, you can't just keep shutting down the company. We have customers that we're beholden to and that kind of thing,

Mai 15:55

and I think you've touched something very important there, by saying like leading by example, and it starts with the leadership team. So how do you make sure. You have the buying with all the leadership team in making time and valuing, and also sharing this importance to mental health.

Marie Szuts 16:16

I think again, I mean like any sort of initiative that like works, uh, at a company it's like, you're in dialogue with the employees about what's important to them. You know, you can do that through surveys or sort of anecdotes and all these kinds of things. And so I think it's pretty, it's pretty clear to the leadership team that this is something that, is. Just it's deeply important to our employee base, so on the benefits side, uh, there are numerous offerings now, right? In tech companies that lower the barrier to entry for like finding and trying therapists. And, um, we, we haven't used monitor. and when we rolled that out, we actually had a member of the executive team do the rollout and share their own personal experience with access to therapy and that again, and, you know, and it wasn't me, like it wasn't the person who you sort of would be like, oh, well, like Marie's clearly involved with this. And like, you know, onboard. It was somebody else. And so again, that spreading of the like, you know, communication and the, again, the personalization of it, I think is really profound, for others to see that. And, even in our core medical offerings, this is something that I did actually, when I first arrived at big was really listening. Like, what is it? That's important to the demographic here, right? Yeah. You know, you don't need health insurance. Right. You know, here, here in the states and this kind of stuff, but what could I do to make that health insurance more applicable to, to that, you know, what people use this for? And I heard loud and clear, the kind of quote, unquote medical expenses that people mostly had were around actually seeing a, you know, people did they have. And, um, you know, deep connections with, and so weren't necessarily, you know, interested in switching. And so when I brought the medical plan and I actually negotiated it such that, we waive the out of network deductible, for example, like this is something again, sort of U S healthcare, right. You know, men, many therapists, most in fact, out of quote unquote network. And so there's a very high cost burden that is on the individual before they can realize any benefits from their health insurance. Like I changed that. I put that on its head where we waived that deductible, we negotiated a better, uh, rate overall. And so it meant suddenly that someone's health insurance, which they kind of needed anyway, was materially helpful to them in like what was a large out of pocket expense and how. Huge. Because again, it's like a financial consideration is keeping people from care that would be helpful to them and the company can do something about it. That's a really incredibly, um, impact. part of what it means to sort of work here. And I think shows our, our values too. I never, in my life, otherwise had gotten flowers from somebody because of a health benefit that I put in. Like literally, like employees were so grateful about it and I was very, very moving in a way. Right. And sort of in some ways, like you think, wow, like why don't more people think creatively about how to do this, because like that really. And like, again, if you think about it, just in terms of cold, hard ROI for the business That person was more functional and like more able to like do their work and, and, and show their talents. And so it's just like, kind of feels it's win-win on that, side.

Mai 19:30

So now that you mentioned ROI, do you keep track of, the return of investment from mental health or not? Or how do you position yourself there?

Marie Szuts 19:42

I mean, it has so many people, metrics are right. There is to some degree and challenge with, you know, okay. What's what's causal, right? Cause there's so many variables, humans are so complicated. And so I think you can, you can make some hypotheses. at the end of the day, you're going to see that trickle down effect in your metrics and your engagement scores on billing. On psychological safety. Right. Could I make a like total Bulletproof case that would, because I invested in mental health over here, then this happened or we made this many more. Yeah. Um, probably more, you know, and so I'm not gonna waste a bunch of time. Right. Like weaving that together, but I think it's going over, like, it shows up, like, what is your culture? Like, what is, uh, you know, what is your retention like?

Mai 20:27

What is the next implementation or the next step in your agenda? Northern to foster mental health at 15.

Marie Szuts 20:37

I think the things that we're thinking of right now, really sort of, you know, as we get bigger, and we become a definitively more global, company, is, how do we really think globally about our wellness strategy? And, you know, that's not just sort of like, gym memberships and this type of thing, but wellness as incorporated into. Daily work. Right. how do we think about time fragmentation? How do we think about meetings? How do we think about hybrid work, where we're going to have people in offices, you know, as, we open them safely and we're going to have people who are working remotely. So we're thinking a lot about like, how do we find those times and those moments of, people actually physically coming together. and that, you know, even if they are sort of remote workers you know, how might we create what we're dubbing like a summit, uh, you know, of like fig mates meeting together and what are the things that we would do. And the course of the summit to, to build connection, to find that common humanity, to, you know, sort of break down those silos. Again, I think that's been something historically Figma has actually done almost like, sort of by feel. There's a tradition that was born where I had two people, an engineer, and someone from product support come to me. And they, you know, they were both sort of coffee people really into coffee and they like, Marie, we want to, we want to make a cafe. Experience like on the, on the ninth floors we'll bring our espresso machine and on the And I have to say, like, when I was hearing the story, I was like, oh my God, really? Like, this sounds messy. And kind of like what, and what actually they were doing was like figuring out a way for community members. We brought in their espresso machine. They need lattes for four hours a great lattes, by the way. And it was. Moment of connection where people were there and talking, and you know, and that became a Figma tradition called cafe Figma. I then there was like lots of scope creep because everyone wanted to contribute and, you know, people were making made to order AVO toast for each other. And you know, so that's something again, like and you know, we had to go virtual and like, it's, not terrible, but it's not the same when you have to do that in a zoom room, how. Revive that, and, do it in an interesting, like sort of hybrid virtual way. Like what if, a Figma office had on the ground floor cafe Figma and was actually open to the public. I mean, we also turned it into like an art gallery or a maker space. So like, these are the ideas to where it's like, we're thinking about how do we incorporate into our office space into our daily. These moments that are not just the regular grind, right. It's the equivalent of like, stopping what you're doing and like playing some music or, making your jam or this kind of thing, because it switches your modality. And so We have to realize those, but that's kind of an area I'm thinking about. Yeah.

Mai 23:15

And then for this things, it's so needed to think outside of the box and being creative and listening. Cause I was hearing were doubting, but you trusted. And he was like, okay, let's see what happens. And he's trusting that people can TP nun and bring things into culture and into inclusivity and mental health. As much as the people team itself can do.

Marie Szuts 23:37

That is so that's a great point it's like it would be a very different feel if the HR team had come and Hey, can you create this thing that's very emblematic of fig mates is like the generous offering to one another and to their colleagues. And like, if you allow that time and for that to happen, That's so enriching for people. And again, it's so culture building and it's so connecting to the mission and the team as a whole, not just, Hey, here's your TPS report? Right? Like they spent four hours making lattes like that wasn't a job, but it was hugely impactful for them. And for, for others, that is

Mai 24:14

awesome. Just to wrap up, if you could give our listeners one piece of advice around mental health, what would you tell them?

Marie Szuts 24:25

Mental health is something that there is so much dialogue about it. Now, this is such a golden opportunity for you to really think, differently about how you can bring this into, again, not only the top-down offerings, but also just sort of the, the ways in which you, you dialogue about it because like God after COVID right, like, you know, people who didn't think of themselves as therapy, Well, they're, they're thinking about things that, you know, it just like the, the events of the world have shifted things in such a profound way that like our jobs are, how do we lower the barrier to entry on this? Because if somebody is like, confronted with like a giant list of faceless phone numbers, and then they have to kind of call and, you know, maybe do it. No, like actually, tech enabled ways to, to access this really can, of people who. Or maybe it was still working through like their own stigma on these kinds of things. I've had several conversations over the past year with people who I know, like whether it's step upper lip or, you know, just sort of someday, never ever thought of themselves. Mental health care was for other people. And clearly the events of the past year were wearing on them and in such a strong way that they were open to an interested in. Taking some steps towards that journey and the fact that, you know, you, you have these possibilities to offer that, the barrier to entry is very low, really can mean that you, you change the trajectory of somebody's suffering, or, allow them to tune themselves up, it's like, I think just take advantage of this moment to know that this is not a nice to have. This is part of who we are.

Mai 26:06

Yeah. It was such a pleasure hearing you talking to you. It was amazing. I really enjoyed our call once again. Thank you so much for your time and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Marie Szuts 26:19

Thank you so much. It was a delight to talk to you. I feel like we could probably talk for hours. Absolutely.