Datasite's CHRO on women as dealmakers and the future of work

• Datasite surveyed over 240 US dealmakers, men and women, on work, technology, travel and wellbeing.
• LaMere argues for a work-life blend over balance, with leaders modelling healthy boundaries.
• Datasite introduced recharge days that do not come out of an employee's holiday balance.
• She frames flexibility and retention as central to competing for talent in M&A.

Most podcast appearances by a data room vendor are sales pitches. This one is not. Deb LaMere, the Chief Human Resources Officer at Datasite, joined the Becker Private Equity Podcast to talk not about the product but about the people who use it, and about the research Datasite ran on them.

“Datasite is a leading technology provider for the M&A industry, here to empower dealmakers in investment banking, corporate development, private equity and the legal professions all around the world.”

Deb LaMere, CHRO, Datasite

LaMere describes Datasite as a leading technology provider for the M&A industry, built to empower dealmakers across investment banking, corporate development, private equity and the legal professions. The hook for the conversation was a study: Datasite surveyed more than 240 US dealmakers, men and women, about how the pandemic reshaped their working lives, from technology and travel to the pressures specific to women in deal roles.

“We surveyed over 240 US dealmakers, both men and women, and asked them everything from work-life blend to technology and travel.”

Deb LaMere

Her central idea is a reframing. Rather than a work-life balance that pretends the two can be kept apart, she argues for a work-life blend that accepts they no longer separate cleanly, and she puts the responsibility on leadership to model it. Sending an email at 9pm is fine, she says, as long as no one is expected to answer it at 9pm.

“The recharge days didn't come out of your balance. They gave you the time to say, I need to walk away for a few minutes and take care of myself.”

Deb LaMere

The most concrete output was operational. Datasite introduced recharge days, time that does not draw down an employee's holiday balance and can be taken in an hour, an afternoon or a full day. LaMere frames it as equipping managers to treat people as a long-term resource rather than something to burn through in a couple of busy years.

For a buyer evaluating Datasite, the value of the episode is indirect but real. A vendor that surveys the profession it serves and publishes the findings is signalling authority in the M&A market, and the culture LaMere describes is the kind that tends to sit behind a well-supported, long-lived product.

Positions Datasite as an authority that researches the M&A profession, not just a tool vendor, and signals a people-first culture behind the platform.

This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity Podcast.

Thrilled to date to be joined by Deb Lamere.

Deb is the Chief Human Resources Officer at DataSite.

DataSite is widely famous in the deal and private equity business for what they do.

But they've done a specific study about issues impacting women as deal makers.

I want to talk a lot about that today.

What are the issues that she sees that Deb sees?

What are issues that women deal makers encounter?

And a lot more.

And what can be done about it?

Deb, can you take a moment and introduce yourself?

And just take a moment to tell us about DataSite.

Sure, yeah, absolutely.

Thanks for having me today, Scott.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Deb LaMaire, CHRL for DataSite.

And DataSite is a leading fast technology provider for emerging acquisition industry that, you know, we're here to help empower field makers and investment -making, corporate development, private equity, and the legal professions all around the world with the tools to help them succeed.

So it's been, you know, a really busy year for everyone, I think, and it's been really great for us as an organization then too.

And take a moment on, how did you come to focus on issues particularly impacting women as dealmakers?

And as we see the universe change and evolve, you know, I've been in the deal world for 30, 40 years now.

And back in the day, there were a handful of leading women as dealmakers.

You sort of knew where they were in whatever law firm or bank you were part of.

because they were few and far between, but quite powerful, quite frankly, and quite impressive people, incredibly impressive figures, because they were leaders at a time where there weren't enough women leaders, and there's still not enough women leaders.

But how did you come to focus on issues impacting women as dealmakers?

Yeah, I think it's actually, no matter what it says, it's an issue that's near here to my heart too, is how do we help support women in the workplace, particularly those that are dealmakers?

You know, the way the world has kind of changed.

I mean, that little thing called the pandemic that we ran into in this last year has really brought an interesting light into things.

And I like to believe in a work -life blend versus a work -life balance in pre -pandemic.

You know, I believe that a work -life blend was, you know, you never could leave home at home or work at work.

So how do you build the perfect blend?

And then the pandemic brought work all the way home.

And it's just one of these pieces where the women dealmakers are already balancing a lot on their place.

And now you've brought work completely home.

And now it's been kind of pivoted back into the workplaces or even still kind of have a hybrid working model.

How do we help to continue support the women dealmakers that are out there?

to be able to, you know, really get the work done.

And so what we did was we took an opportunity to survey over 240 US dealmakers, both men and women across the US and just ask them a variety of questions.

You know, that went anywhere from, you know, that whole work -life blend all the way to technology, travel, all of those pieces that, you know, were pre -pandemic during the pandemic as now as we're coming out of it and just kind of understanding what's going on.

They're talking about how we can help support each other throughout, it's throughout event too.

So let me ask you a question because I love this concept of the work life blend versus real life balance.

And we all know how this is evolved over the years and you've been a professor for a long time now, not as long as me, but for a long time.

And so it's so in the old days, we're able to leave the phone in the car at night and go to sleep and you really did that in separation.

Then at some point everything completely blended together were the personal life of the children and making sure that they can get you and the phone that you used for work completely blended together.

So it was no longer the ability to look at just kids email or just our friends emails or whatever.

It was all blended together and it takes an unusual human being to be able to ignore the work email until nine tomorrow morning.

So how do people deal with this concept that everything's a blend today versus a balance?

How do people deal with that?

Yeah, and I mean that that's where it like again where I like saying that blend because you can never you'll never be able to leave work at work anymore and how do you kind of?

Integrate that in and you know, I think it also starts with leadership though to that It starts with leadership and kind of role modeling something that you know There's a step back of do you really need to send that email to everyone at 9 p .

m.?

Or could you draft it and send it out later because I mean even myself, you know, Hey, I've got some downtime at night.

It's a quiet period.

I can crank through emails, but I don't want to necessarily set the expectation that everybody else needs to be on when I'm on.

And so it's one of those where, okay, I can work on my email, maybe send them an address, but also just set that expectation that just because I'm sending out an email.

doesn't necessarily mean you have to respond to me right away because how I blend with my life is going to be a little bit different than somebody else's people and with your with theirs.

So I think that that's part of it too is it starts with leadership and how how we can be role models and examples for our employees then too.

And as we move into this more probably long term hybrid workplace of some sort.

I mean, it's not going to be all in the office.

It's probably not going to be all at home, although in some industries it might be.

What advice for either supervisors or for the dealmakers themselves to try and, and it's particularly on the deal at universe, where there's so much money at stake to go out and use to so much 24 -7.

What advice do you have for people?

How do people get better at managing this work -life plan so as to maintain sanity and to find some safe spaces for them and their families, children, whatever it might be?

or their own life, whatever it is in their life.

Yeah, you know, one of the things that we did at DataSight to help kind of manage through a lot of these pieces is we had something that was a great success for us last summer was kind of these mental health days.

I mean, I think we call this kind of this wellness day where, you know, you've got vacation, you've got PTOs, you've got those things, but you want to save those for those times where you're going to take a vacation and you're going to walk away.

But we also know that there's times where it's like, I got to throw my hands up in the air and say, I need to walk away for a few minutes.

And so what these recharge days really did was, and it didn't come out of your balance.

It just gave you that time, whether you wanted to take it in an hour increment or four hours or all day.

It gave you that opportunity to just say, I've got to walk away for a few minutes here, take care of myself from a personal standpoint and be able to do You know, we've integrated the recharge days more into how we do business and how we work through things.

And I think it does come down to.

And again, it's kind of equipping our managers and leaders to have tools in their toolbox to to again support people to be able to take that couple of minutes to walk or an hour or however long you need to walk away and just kind of have that that recharge moment because we do want to make sure people are bringing their best selves to work.

and allowing for that opportunity to be able to do that.

And that was a huge success for us as we put in those recharge days for our employees when we did that then too.

But I think, again, it's going to be interesting to see as we move through, and I think this has been a big piece on all of the age of our own minds of talking about how do we move through?

How do we make sure we get leaders of right tools in their toolbox to not only support that work -life blend, but also continuing builds with everybody in the office, how do you bring that culture and that inclusivity into everyone when they're when they're remote and just managing their remote teams and two?

No, and truly a fascinating question.

And part of this is the constant perspective of leadership that our people are a long -term resource.

They're not a short -term resource.

They got to be viewed as a 20 resource, not a one -year resource.

So you have to be so cautious about providing a culture and an ability for them to recharge them to balance and blend their lives and so forth, so that you're not just trying to get everything you can out of them within a couple of years.

You really view them as, no, they're long -term people, they're part of our long -term everything, so we don't want to burn them out, men or women.

Right, right, exactly, exactly.

I mean, there's this whole, you know, mental well -being, I think we saw a lot during the pandemic.

And it's not going to end anytime soon because, you know, we're still not out of some of the pandemic features that are here and as we're pivoting into, you know, this new hybrid world of work that is, you know, the mental well -being of employees, whether it's men or women, is of the utmost importance as we continue to pivot forward.

There's still a lot of pressures that are going on out there and how do we allow them to bring their best selves to work?

I mean, if anything, there's as much or more pressures as the world is busy with business, but everybody's short -staffed.

So you've got the challenges.

I mean, the biggest, you know, people talk about culture and an organization, compensation and organization, you know, people having opportunities to thrive in organizations, a lot of different things, and the ability to work with some flexibility is as important as anything.

you know, organization needs enough capacity enough people to make that real, don't they?

I mean, you can't, you can pretend, but you can't do it unless you got enough capacity.

Exactly.

I mean, I think, you know, the interesting pieces, we've always talked about the world of work, changes and changes and changes and, and either pre -2020, it was the world of work and there was this, you know, war for talent and the war was over and the employees hit one.

And now we're at a new war for talent sets out there.

And again, the employers are pushing employers to once again think differently about how we're going to support them and have them support them and how they do their work and partner with them and all those pieces.

And so we're going to start to see some things.

And that's where I think what we saw out of the survey event too was just the mental well -being and the balance that's there.

Some of them have seen that, hey, I've got to spend more time with my children.

How do we help support some of these things that have been a revelation and a positive piece during the pandemic?

How do we build cultures and organizations that continue to allow people to continue to build those relationships and continue to enjoy some of those things that they found were positives out of the pandemic?

I mean, really so that they can enjoy their entire life, not just the work or personal life, not just the work or family life, but they built it to really thrive and fall.

And you can certainly see like we've had remote workers forever.

And you certainly see that there will be some mix of that forever because for so many people that are magnificent professionals, it just gives them more time in their day.

So it allows them more time to both relate at home and to relate at work.

And so it seems like you'll have some of What's the building forever?

Exactly.

Well, you know, it's interesting.

Like everyone's like, oh, remote work.

What a new concept.

It's not.

We've been, I mean, remote work is something that exists as far before the pandemic.

And it's something that I think all of us have always struggled with.

But the struggle there was, you know, you've got teens in an office that, um, which is one person may be working remotely and calling in and how do you get them involved in the culture.

And now, You know, you're gonna have this hybrid where half the team may be in the office and then half the team may be at home, but that it's always a different mix base on this game.

You know, depending on what different employers are going to do.

And so it's again, how do you just keep that, you know, building out that camaraderie and I think technology plays a big role in that.

I know we all get the Zoom fatigue at part of it, but again, it's just the constant communication.

I think listening is a big piece too.

with a lot of this as well, like successful relationships, a lot of it has to do with listening.

And you know, when you've got a remote workforce or people in a hybrid remote situation, it's again, you know, listening, interpreting and being there, you know, having that open communication of being transparent.

No, absolutely.

And it's fascinating that flexibility, I think it's so valued by quite frankly, women and men, deal makers alike.

so valued and you see fastening some of the companies now getting out in front on, you know, we're gonna minimize work from home, we're gonna not allow remote work, we want everybody back in the office.

And I tend to think they don't really totally mean that, but it comes out that way.

And I wonder how aggressively the J .

P.

Morgan's the Goldman Sachs were saying this, we'll really push it, or whether in reality like the old days are with lots of exceptions, but the general methods are trying to send as I reach me back to the what the reality is going to be on that?

Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to start to see what that looks like in the next few months quite honestly.

I think, you know, we're just hearing from the dealmakers and, you know, what they're looking for and, you know, what we've been seeing in the news in terms of, you know, really not just the dealmakers with tech companies that are coming out and saying, oh, we want you back, everybody back into the office said.

You know, I think a great example was the Apple employees that were there who then wrote the open letter.

And so I think there's not it's not a one and done.

I think there's a lot of discussions that are happening out there and a lot of people are having the conversations.

And so what we've done at DataSight particularly as well, you know, we not only do a kill maker survey, but we've been serving our own employees to really talk to them and have them part of, you know, what's next.

for this world of work.

What's next for us as we think about the remote versus in the office versus hybrid, all of those pieces because you know there's some that thrive and want to be in the office every day all day.

There's those that our loving kind of balance of being in the office in for a few days but at home for one or two days and that those who are really thriving from a remote.

So we you know we want to hear from employees from that standpoint so we've been serving our own employees and asking of questions, and I think it's helping us to evolve and figure out what's right for our own environment.

And again, it does come back to, you know, it's not a one -size -fits -all for every single organization, but there is a big piece of, you know, taking and planning engagement surveys, listening to employees, about what they're thinking.

Because in some cases, I mean, as I mentioned before, there's this more for talent is heating back up again.

And, you know, now, if people have been in a position where they're like, hey, I love this gig that I got going on.

And somebody comes knocking on the door, you know, before, where they might have not listened to that recruiter anymore, they may be listening to that recruiter.

So, I mean, I think if there's a lot of revolving still to do, I think we're all learning as organizations.

And I'm gonna be kind of GGHR.

But I'm excited to see what happens next.

And getting the employees involved in those conversations is a big piece about what's going to happen next.

Yeah, we couldn't agree more with the tone and what you're talking about.

So interesting.

I want to thank you for thinking the time that you want to stay in the Beckham Private Equity Podcast.

Devlamir, the Chief Human Resources Officer at Data Site.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit with us.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.