Most leaders don’t see how to employ HR as a strategic pillar of the business and this leaves a lot of professionals feeling somewhat frustrated. In this interview series, we talk to HR professionals and in-the-know business leaders why and how HR should help drive company decisions.

Pavel Bahu is the Global HR Director at Trevolution Group, where he leads the company’s HR strategy and oversees the global HR team. He has been with Trevolution since 2015 and has implemented various HR initiatives, including a company-wide competency model, an online candidate testing system, and a cross-departmental performance management system.

Hi Pavel, welcome to the series! Before we drive in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your journey so far?

Growing up in Moldova, a small country with a limited job market, I knew I had to go the extra mile to achieve my career goals. After completing my bachelor’s degree, I decided to continue my studies in Canada, where I was exposed to a different culture and way of working. This experience helped me understand the importance of hard work and sparked my wish to change things for the better. I wanted to implement that experience and thinking in my daily life. 

When I returned to Moldova, I landed a job in the project department of a retail chain, but I knew it wasn’t the right fit for me. I took matters into my own hands, started working as a freelance travel agent at night to challenge myself, did everything to gain new skills, and aimed to achieve new professional heights. After a while, I got my big break—I was offered the HR manager position despite having no experience in that field. 

The next few years were a whirlwind of growth and change. I helped the Moldovan Dyninno team grow from 120 to 1500 people, and eventually in 2019 took on the role of Global HR Director for Trevolution.

The first year was spent getting to know everyone and understanding the way we run business in other parts of the world. The second year was the most challenging in my entire career as it was the pandemic year. We managed to recover and are now in better shape than before.  

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting and what lesson you learned?

The biggest lesson I learned when I started my role was the importance of clear communication when implementing new processes.

At the beginning of my career, when implementing a new assessment center, I initially believed that people would understand its additional value without me having to go into details.

However, I quickly learned that it is crucial to clearly communicate the business purpose and added value of a new process to the operations team. They are very results-oriented and want to know how their time and resources will be used effectively.  

In my first attempt, the implementation was unsuccessful because I did not effectively communicate the value of the Assessment Center procedure, and it was perceived as a “black box” by the team. 

However, I had a further opportunity to implement it in a new department, and I ensured to involve the department manager in the development and implementation process from the very beginning. This led to successful implementation. This experience taught me the importance of constantly sharing the value of a new process with the team to ensure buy-in and support. 

It’s important to keep in mind that in HR there is no one-size-fits-all blueprint for success. Each organization has its own unique culture and structure, and it is the role of HR to adopt general principles that will work within that specific context. 

Success cannot happen alone, it’s a team effort. It’s important to involve all the relevant business stakeholders in the decision-making process and in implementing new strategies.

Only by having everyone on board can you truly succeed. HR is not rocket science, it’s about championing better work and working lives. It’s a simple objective but it requires effort, communication, and a deep understanding of the organization’s culture, structure, and goals.

Something that’s always helped me during difficult times is my passion for continuous innovation; I’m always looking for ways to improve and learn more. That’s why I’m always on a quest to learn and acquire new knowledge.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are?

When I started my career, I never imagined ending up where I am today. Dyninno Group’s founder, Alex Weinstein, was the one who saw some potential in me, despite my lack of experience in the HR field. I would not be where I am today without his support, and I will always be grateful. He’s not just a manager, but also a wise mentor.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life? 

In any type of activity, it’s important to understand that failures are a natural part of the process. As Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” 

Instead of seeing failure as a negative outcome, it should be viewed as an opportunity to learn and grow. Analyze the reasons behind the failure and think about how to mitigate those factors in the future.  

Thinking back on your own career, what would you tell your younger self?

It’s crucial to be upfront about your plans and get as much feedback as possible. Numbers are a great way to ground discussions and keep things real. 

A good rule of thumb is to always be on the lookout for potential problems and nip them in the bud. When it comes to growth, think big! 

Imagine what it would take to make your plans ten times bigger, and ten times bigger again, and then work backwards from there. Without a clear vision, it’s hard to make big things happen.

Let’s now move to the central part of our interview about HR. Why do you think HR deserves a place in the boardroom and in high-level decision-making?

HR plays a vital role in driving company decisions by offering a unique perspective on employees’ needs, concerns, and limitations. 

As the link between management and the workforce, HR professionals can forecast the impact of decisions on employee performance, engagement, and retention and offer solutions to drive better outcomes for the company. 

By involving HR in the decision-making process, business owners can gain a deeper understanding of the impact of their decisions on employees and make more informed, well-rounded decisions. 

This leads to improved employee morale, retention, and productivity, and, ultimately, a more positive and supportive work environment that drives business success. 

However, it’s important to remember that while HR’s role is to advise and mitigate risks, the ultimate decision-makers are the ones who are also taking on the most significant risks.

From your experience, how can HR people and culture professionals ensure they’re involved in strategic planning processes? 

It’s a multifaceted role that requires a broad understanding of the business. It’s important to have a solid understanding of finance, legal and compliance risks, and how they can impact the bottom line. 

A good way to gain this understanding is by developing your financial acumen, understanding how investments and transfer pricing work, and how to think in terms of currency and risk management. 

It’s also important to stay close to the business and understand where it’s heading. In terms of strategy, it’s not about what we do, it’s about what we don’t do. It’s about focusing our efforts and not spreading ourselves too thin. 

HR plays a critical role in this by aligning its efforts with the overall business strategy, keeping an eye on market trends, understanding where the industry is headed, and being aware of the current global economic situation.

A lot of folks believe that CHROs would make great CEOs, but often they’re overlooked. Why do you think that is?

In my experience, most CEOs come from finance or have a background in the industry they’re leading.

For example, you’re not likely to find an HR professional leading a tech company; they tend to come from an engineering or IT background. The same goes for pharmaceutical or other STEM companies. It’s rare to find an HR person leading a company, but it’s not impossible. 

Being an HR professional means being “T-shaped” specialist, where you have a broad understanding of many topics and deep knowledge in one specific area, like HR itself or business management or psychology.

One option to advance to CEO is to become a “W-shaped” specialist, where you have two areas of expertise and can uniquely combine them. For example, an HR professional with a background in IT or data analytics can use that skill set to create innovative HR solutions, like predictive analytics, to cut costs and identify risks. 

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that career paths can be flexible and unconventional. An HR professional can still succeed and reach leadership positions; it may require outside-the-box thinking and strategic career moves.

What skills can HR folks work on to become more effective business partners?

One thing that an HR professional can’t operate as a given is ethics. It’s the core of the profession.  

It’s crucial to understand the company’s goals and be able to align HR initiatives with them. This means being able to think strategically about the workforce and how to optimize it to support the overall business strategy. You should also be able to communicate and negotiate effectively with other business leaders and stakeholders and have the data analysis skills to make informed decisions. It also means being able to manage projects related to HR initiatives and having emotional intelligence, cultural sensitivity, and a continuous learning mindset.

It’s all about understanding the company’s needs and concerns and aligning your efforts to support the organization’s overall goals. It’s a lot to take on but, with some focus and effort, you’ll be able to master it.

Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important ways that HR can help drive company decisions?

1. Aligning HR initiatives with company goals. Make sure all HR initiatives align with the organization’s overall business strategy and goals. For example, suppose the company is looking to expand into new markets. In that case, HR can help with an employee development program to ensure that the workforce has the necessary skills to support that expansion.

2. Providing data-driven insights. For example, by analyzing employee engagement and retention data, HR can identify areas where the company needs to improve and make recommendations to leadership on how to address those issues.

3. Managing talent and building a strong workforce. By identifying and developing high-potential employees and implementing effective succession planning, HR can ensure that the company has the right people to support its growth and success; 

4. Fostering a positive and supportive work environment: By implementing policies and programs that promote employee well-being, HR can help improve employee morale, engagement, and retention and ultimately drive better business outcomes.

5. Managing risks and compliance. Implementing effective compliance programs and policies to minimize the risk of legal and regulatory violations, HR can help protect the company from costly fines and penalties. 

At Dyninno Group, we prioritize our people because they’re the ones driving our revenue. So, instead of starting with a financial goal like “let’s make $50 million next year”, we gather information from each business unit about their bottlenecks and how we can improve processes to increase our headcount and drive the business forward.

From there, we have discussions with Support departments and HR to understand how many people we need to enable sales personnel and ensure growth. 

We then get buy-in from each key stakeholder and work with Marketing and Finance to understand the costs of salaries, commissions, bonuses, and cost of lead generation. This way, when we present our plans to the business, we can show them exactly how much money we will make via each business unit and make informed decisions about where to focus our growth efforts. 

This approach is more effective because everyone has already agreed on the numbers and structure of the organization rather than feeling like the numbers have been imposed on them.

Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen businesses make when faced with hard decisions? What should one keep in mind to avoid them? 

One of the keys to making tough decisions is to have a plan B in place. Sometimes decisions are irreversible, and it’s essential to have a backup plan in case things don’t go as expected.

Take the Covid-19 pandemic as an example. Many businesses immediately furloughed employees, but we decided to go with the way of restructuring working hours, shifts, and pay to keep everyone on board. 

We knew the uncertainty of the situation and wanted to retain valuable talent and expertise. We unfortunately lost some people, but we also reached out to try and bring them back down the line. 

In crises and crisis management, it’s important always to have a plan B or even a plan C. Being prepared can help mitigate the consequences of tough decisions and keep your organization on track.

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with and why?

If I had the opportunity to meet a deceased historical figure, it would be Plato—the ancient Greek philosopher who is considered the father of Western philosophy. 

But if we’re talking about someone who’s still alive, I would love to sit down with Yuval Noah Harari, the historian, anthropologist, and futurologist. 

He has a deep understanding of the history of mankind and his books are thought-provoking. I would be curious to hear his thoughts on how the world has changed since he wrote his last piece on 21 lessons from the 21st Century, and whether he stands by his predictions or if he sees things differently now. He’s not one to speak publicly often, so it would be an interesting conversation.

Thank you Pavel, some great insights in there! How can people follow your work?

My pleasure, feel free to connect with me on Linkedin.

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One of the first initiatives in my role as an HR Generalist for my new employer was to develop a formal hybrid work model that would fit the organizational culture, meet the needs of employees, and maintain compliance.

We have employees in retail settings working on-site, most corporate office employees have varying hybrid schedules, and the IT department is almost all remote workers.

We’ve worked to cultivate a distinct and strong culture, based on the values of sustainability, creativity, and quality, and we want all team members to feel part of it, regardless of where they work.

Before we can dive into how we nurture a hybrid workplace culture, we’ll briefly discuss company culture—what it is and how it’s formed. Then I’ll share some of the strategies I’ve used to cultivate my company’s culture in our hybrid work environment.

• What is workplace culture?
• How is culture formed in an organization?
• How is nurturing a hybrid workplace culture different?
• How to nurture a hybrid workplace culture

What Is Workplace Culture Anyway?

Everyone has their own definition, so I’ll quickly summarize. Culture is the lived representation of a company’s values, mission, vision, and strategy. It’s the norms that dictate behavior in the workplace, from written policy to unspoken rules.

Culture is present in how people communicate with their peers and approach their superiors, how conflict is resolved, and is seen by the customers and felt by all employees.

Company culture significantly impacts productivity, innovation, employee satisfaction, and morale, ultimately impacting the success and sustainability of the organization.

As the famous Peter Drucker quote goes “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

How Is Culture Formed In An Organization?

Culture is formed by instilling the values, mission, strategy, vision, and codes of conduct into every part of a business. It starts from the top down, so it’s important that business leaders model the core values and the desired behaviors and attitudes.

For example, as mentioned, my company’s culture is based on the values of creativity, sustainability, and quality.

These values permeate through the organizational culture: innovation and creative ideas are encouraged by senior leadership demonstrating an appetite for risk for all ideas, from new product design to ways to increase efficiency.

Artistic expression is encouraged through personal appearance and physical workspaces. Our workplace is furnished with the same pieces we sell in our stores, and is configured to encourage collaboration.

Senior leadership dresses casually most days, and everyone’s encouraged to do the same. This creative expression through personal appearance is even written into our dress code in the employee handbook.

How is nurturing a hybrid workplace culture different?

In a traditional onsite work environment, culture can be more easily observed and adopted—for example how people interact with each other, how they dress and conduct themselves generally, the company values displayed around the office, events and socials, and whether office doors are open or closed.

Of course, hybrid and remote teams miss out on a lot of this, so we have to be more intentional about nurturing the culture we want.

Hybrid and remote work required us to adapt our culture. For example, a culture of trust and autonomy is more necessary to support the nature of remote working. Companies may need to proactively build and reinforce these cultural values to ensure they’re upheld in a hybrid work environment.

Something we found was that onsite employees weren’t connecting as well with the fully remote workers, and newly hired fully remote workers were having a harder time collaborating on projects that needed big creative ideas.

Many of our employees need to collaborate across departments to develop new products and materialize creative designs, and we found that hybrid teams were struggling with idea creation (creativity). That team made the move to be strategic about coordinating their days in the office, which I will talk more about below.

Now that we know what culture is and how it’s formed, I’ll go into the strategies I have used to nurture our company culture for teams in a hybrid setting.

How to Nurture A Hybrid Workplace Culture

Conduct meetings in person and on video

In this slightly clunky web/in-person setting, it’s much more engaging to be able to see all meeting attendees than only hearing their voices, and it means cultural norms are more easily observed by all employees. 

If not already equipped, webcams can be installed in conference rooms to make the process easier.

Leaders can encourage cameras to be on for scheduled meetings, while ad hoc video calls or meetings can be off-camera if desired. This gives remote workers a better employee experience, while also being mindful of “zoom fatigue.”

Also, we ask everyone to add pictures on email and messaging apps. Adding a face to a name on the screen is an easy way to increase the feeling of collaborating with a teammate instead of just emailing a name on your screen.

Recognizing when people uphold the company values

A great way to instill your values is to recognize people for upholding them.

For example, your company may use a public recognition channel in Slack, Teams, or another instant messaging app to celebrate when a team member demonstrates one of the values in a positive way.

We also started a weekly email newsletter with a shout-out section. Anyone can recognize a fellow team member for showcasing our brand in a positive light, collaborating across teams, or demonstrating our values through their work.

Be strategic about days in the office for hybrid employees

As great as async work can be for productivity, we found that having coordinated in-office days helped overcome the challenge of creativity in our idea-generating teams.

This will look different for every company, but we’ve found it’s better to let teams decide. Your company may prefer density days, where more employees come in on certain days, or maybe office space is at a premium, so teams have to space out their in-person days. 

A few examples of how my company handles it:

• Talent Acquisition team schedules their in-office days based on in-person interviews, typically Tuesdays and Thursdays.
• The Product team is in the office on Monday to receive samples from vendors.

Onboarding

Sharing the company’s values, mission, vision, and strategy with all employees is key to ensuring that everyone knows how their work contributes to the organization as a whole. 

It’s certainly not something that can be shared once in onboarding and then never mentioned again, but it’s a great place to start.

A great onboarding plan can work for onsite, hybrid, and remote employees with a few minor adjustments to format and delivery.

New hires at my company meet with an HR representative on their first day to finalize onboarding (most of which is completed electronically prior).

Onsite employees meet in person, while fully remote employees meet via Zoom. We strive to have hybrid employees onsite for the first week, so they can meet their team in person. This helps to form bonds and assimilate people into our culture.

Employee feedback

Providing a platform for employees to share their thoughts and ideas is a great way to get feedback on lots of things, including culture.

My company sends out periodic pulse surveys to different teams and occasionally the whole company. These quick surveys give leadership an understanding of employee sentiment on a particular topic e.g. how to best calibrate a hybrid model.

We used the pulse surveys early in our return-to-office rollout to inform our decisions on timing and to ensure we were meeting the needs of employees as they returned to the office.

Hold regular check-ins

Regardless of whether you’re hybrid or not, managers should be scheduling regular check-ins with their teams and direct reports. These can be quick and informal or more structured depending on the culture of your company and team.

Regular check-ins are important for giving employees an opportunity to express any thoughts and concerns, and for leaders to reinforce values and ways of working.

Related read: How To Run An Effective One-On-One Meeting With [Template]

Hold an all-hands event

Consider the cost of having fully remote folks on-site (or offsite somewhere if you prefer) at least once a year if the company hosts a large onsite function. 

Getting everyone together is a great way to help build strong relationships and a sense of community. It also gives fully remote employees the opportunity to experience the company culture in person. 

We held an onsite meeting last summer at our corporate office outside on the patio where everyone was invited to participate in an afternoon of food and activities.

We offered buffet-style food service and bartenders made craft cocktails. The most popular games we set up were a volleyball court, cornhole, and giant Jenga. We found it was a great way to build comradery with folks who work together but don’t often see each other in person.

It also gives the chance for company leaders to reinforce cultural values, typically through presentations and employee recognition/rewards. You might even want to run sessions where people collaborate on reflecting on past scenarios and identifying instances where cultural values were upheld.

Doing what’s right for you

Hybrid and remote working have had a huge impact on us as a business, and mostly for the better. There have been some challenges along the way but, using the methods above, we’ve come to a place where our values and ways of working are consistently expressed across the business.

Some more resources to help you build the culture you want:

• Company Culture: Why It Matters And How To Improve Your Own
• 5 Subtle Signs Your Workplace Culture Is Turning Toxic (And How To Fix It)
• Types Of Company Culture: Which One Are You?
• How To Build A Culture Of Innovation (with John Carter from TCGen Inc.)

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People analytics is transforming the way organizations manage their employees. By utilizing people analytics, businesses have witnessed an 80% boost in recruiting efficiency, a 25% increase in company productivity, and a 50% drop in attrition rates. It has become essential for understanding employee behavior, identifying key performance drivers, designing better work environments, and improving hiring practices.

But how does it all work? What exactly is people analytics, and why do you need it in your organization? This article will answer those questions and show you where to begin with people analytics.

So let’s dive into what people analytics is, the process behind it, and why you need it in your organization.

People Analytics: The Basics

People analytics is an approach to examining the people processes and functions in a business, with the aim of elevating these systems and achieving long-term success. It leverages data from human resources and other areas of the organization to generate insights that can inform business decisions and drive improvements in operational efficiency.

People analytics is also referred to as HR analytics or workforce analytics, and they are interchangeable terms.

Analytics tools for people can enable organizations to discover trends, pinpoint performance drivers, optimize work environments, and enhance recruitment strategies. By analyzing employee behavior and measuring engagement, businesses can leverage people analytics to proactively identify and mitigate potential issues before they become major problems.

 By combining data from multiple sources, such as surveys, customer feedback, and internal systems, people analytics can create a comprehensive view of the workforce. With this data-driven approach to people management and performance management, organizations can gain valuable insight into their teams and drive strategic decisions that will benefit their bottom line.

From its initial adoption in the middle of the 20th century, people analytics has seen a substantial evolution. Going from prescriptive to predictive analytics allows organizations to plan ahead of time for their operational dynamics. This transition may be attributed to the incorporation of advanced data science, interactive data visualization, and machine learning into people analytics, which has considerably increased its potential.

Why Is People Analytics Important?

By using people analytics, leaders can obtain valuable insights into various aspects of their workforce. For instance, this data can help determine the cost and investment required to bring new hires up to speed, allowing businesses to optimize their hiring and onboarding processes. Additionally, people analytics can provide insight into the reasons for high turnover rates, allowing business leaders to address any underlying issues and improve employee retention.

People analytics can evaluate the effectiveness of learning and development programs, allowing businesses to identify areas for improvement and adjust their strategies accordingly. By analyzing employee data over time, people analytics can provide insights into the factors influencing an employee’s decision to leave within a particular time frame.

Overall, the proper utilization of unbiased data from people analytics can have significant benefits for businesses, including saving time, energy, and money. By taking advantage of these insights, companies can improve their operations and enhance their workforce, leading to long-term success.

How Does People Analytics Work?

People analytics is an increasingly popular tool for organizations looking to make informed decisions about their workforce. But how exactly does it work?

Essentially, people analytics involves extracting information from an organization’s existing HR software and using various mathematical models, algorithms, and machine learning techniques to generate visual representations such as charts and graphs. These visual aids are designed to assist leaders in making informed decisions related to talent management. More advanced people analytics platforms can even act as a central hub for merging disparate people and business data, allowing for a more comprehensive analysis.

So what differentiates analytics from transactional reports? The answer resides in its capacity to manage both current and historical data, use artificial intelligence to draw insights, and eventually offer meaningful suggestions. In contrast, transactional reports often only provide basic HR data and lack the capacity to discuss the causes of a specific issue or provide alternative remedies.

To put it simply, while reports provide raw data, analytics provide valuable insights that can guide effective decision-making. By using people analytics, organizations can gain a deeper understanding of their workforce and make data-driven decisions that improve productivity, retention, and overall business success.

The Benefits Of People Analytics

Diversity and Inclusion

By collecting and analyzing data on hiring practices, employee demographics, and performance metrics, HR leaders can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their current diversity initiatives and identify areas for improvement.

People analytics is particularly helpful in addressing unconscious bias during talent acquisition, which can lead to a homogenous workforce and overlook individuals from underrepresented groups. By identifying patterns of bias in the recruitment process, HR teams can implement targeted strategies to reduce bias and increase diversity, such as blind resume reviews or diversity quotas. Data analysis can also help HR professionals make the right hiring decisions by identifying and attracting diverse candidates through targeted outreach and recruitment efforts.

Increase Productivity

Organizations can identify areas where they can improve productivity by tracking and analyzing actual hours spent on activities and comparing them to an optimal target time. This may include streamlining workflows, eliminating non-value-adding activities, or improving training and development programs. By making data-driven decisions and focusing on areas of improvement, companies can enhance their productivity and improve business outcomes.

Applying people analytics in business strategy can help organizations identify and address employee burnout or overwork issues. By leveraging data-driven insights to identify work areas where employees are possibly overburdened or experiencing significant stress, organizations can proactively implement measures to mitigate these issues and enhance employee well-being. This, in turn, can improve the business’s overall productivity, efficiency, and long-term sustainability.

Reduce Turnover

People analytics is a powerful tool for improving the employee experience and reducing employee turnover, which can have negative consequences such as decreased productivity and increased expenditures.

When organizations focus on a specific role or group of employees, they can use people analytics to gain insights into why employees are leaving and develop targeted retention strategies to address those issues. For example, data analysis can reveal patterns such as a lack of growth opportunities or low employee job satisfaction.

With this information, organizations can implement targeted retention strategies such as offering career development opportunities or increasing employee engagement initiatives to address these issues and keep workers engaged and satisfied throughout the employee lifecycle.

Unlock The Power Of People Analytics for Long-Term Business Success

People analytics has become an essential tool for modern businesses in understanding their employees and making data-driven decisions that lead to long-term success. By using data analytics from multiple sources, including HR, customer feedback, and internal systems, people analytics can:

• create a comprehensive view of the workforce
• uncover trends
• identify drivers of performance
• predict potential issues before they arise
• improve employee retention

So, what’s next? If you’re intrigued by the power of people analytics and want to learn more about how it can help your business, be sure to check out more articles on our blog.  And, if you want to stay up-to-date with the latest insights and trends in people management, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.

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Most leaders don’t know how to employ HR as a strategic pillar of the business and this leaves a lot of professionals feeling somewhat frustrated.

In this interview series, we talk to HR professionals and in the know business leaders, to share what companies can gain by having HR helping to drive company decisions. 

Doug Dennerline began his technology career as an HP sales representative in the Bay Area of San Francisco many moons ago. Today he’s CEO of Betterworks, a performance management tool used by some of the world’s top companies.

As Vice President of HR Transformation at Betterworks, Jamie brings over twenty-five years of experience in delivering organizational development, HR transformation and employee engagement strategies that contribute to business performance. Her portfolio spans multiple industries and sectors working both within those organizations as an HR practitioner as well as supporting them as a consultant across the entire spectrum of human capital practices.

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Hi both, welcome to the series! Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

Jamie Aitken: After graduating from university, I moved up to Canada and started working for a public sector division of the provincial government doing strategy and communications relating to mine reclamation. I also did graphic design for an organization that investigated airplane accidents—I credit this work for both my skill of thinking outside of the box to solve puzzles, something I’m still fascinated with today.

Doug Dennerline: Our company Betterworks actually began in the Objectives and Key Results space—think Fitbit for enterprises—where you can see how you’re progressing with goals on a regular basis. Over time, we’ve morphed it into being more than just a goal application, but working to replace the antiquated annual performance review process. This shift was vital, reflecting the demand for regular, ongoing feedback in the workplace that we’re seeing as Millennials and Gen Z enter the workforce.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Jamie Aitken: Early in my career, I was working in change management for a large national retailer in a corporate office. I was coming across resistance from different parts of the organization, and was getting irritated. My then-boss had to remind me that I was the common denominator in each of those situations and, as a change practitioner, I was actually doing exactly the opposite of my intentions! This helped make me a lot more savvy about how I navigate organizationally, realizing not everybody would immediately be your ally.

Doug Dennerline: When I was a leader at Cisco, we used voicemails as our primary internal communication method. At the time I was having some difficulty with how one of my direct reports was performing, and was going to forward a voicemail message from that person to HR as evidence that they were not a fit for the company. Instead replied directly to that individual! I’ve since learned to be very thoughtful about both what I say to people and how I treat people.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

Jamie Aitken: I credit a former HR practitioner colleague of mine, Manal Kemah, for drilling down every HR meeting into one simple reminder, “How is this going to help the business?” It can get easy to get swept away by the newest shiny workplace trend, or get bogged down in creating processes that we find interesting, but as HR practitioners we always have to remind ourselves how we can best support the business.

Doug Dennerline: One influential person in my life was a close friend and former colleague, Rick Justice. We became very close friends bonding over both being expats running companies in Hong Kong. I ended up working for him at Cisco. We lost Rick to cancer last year, but the way he treated people with empathy, the way he truly cared about the people that worked for him, will stay with me always.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life? 

Jamie Aitken: My favorite life lesson is that you always have choices, even when you don’t think you do. If you feel backed into a corner, you have the choice of how to react. It can be hard to recognize this choice, especially if the situation is clouding your better judgment, but if you’re willing to take a deep breath and not respond out of fear or anger, you’ll be able to see those choices and act in your best interest.

Doug Dennerline: Know people, don’t just manage them. It’s also important to show up to work as the same person every day—no highs or lows—so that the people you work with know they can depend on your stability and consistency. 

Thinking back on your own career, what would you tell your younger self?

Jamie Aitken: Be equally courageous and patient. You’ll need the courage to create and innovate, but you’ll need the patience to realize that your motivation for change and your capacity for change will not always be at the same level and to be patient and respectful to others who may not move as quickly as you.

Doug Dennerline: Early in my managing roles, I had high expectations for the people around me and did not tolerate diversions from those expectations well. Now, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume positive intent for their actions.

Why do you think HR deserves a place in the boardroom and in high-level decision-making? Can you help articulate how a company will gain from that?

Jamie Aitken: The real question is, why hasn’t HR deserved a place in the boardroom before now? Human capital is an organization’s biggest asset, as CEOs keep quoting in annual reports, but it still doesn’t carry the same weight in the boardroom. The workplace turbulence we’ve seen post-pandemic, like The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting, are starting to bring this issue to the forefront, but it’s got a long way to go.

Doug Dennerline: I believe one of the most critical roles a CEO can have on their executive team is a strong, operationally-minded HR leader.

A great HR leader is one who is curious about the business and strategy, not just the people. CEOs should recognize that their HR leader can act as a business mirror to ensure the leadership team has the goals of the company in mind.

From your experience, how can HR people and culture professionals ensure they’re involved in strategic planning processes? 

Jamie Aitken: Demand a seat at that table. In terms of assets, think of employees and company culture like another piece of necessary machinery that needs to be focused on in terms of financial resources, maintenance, upgrades, etc., but it’s been overlooked until now.

Doug Dennerline: You have to earn the respect of the leadership team, which is unfortunately not something you can necessarily teach people. It’s knowing when to be diplomatic and knowing when to bring up a difficult conversation in a diplomatic way so that people can be heard. There’s an innate quality that you need. Beyond that, it’s a matter of building a background of handling and learning from different situations that arise.

A lot of folks believe that CHROs would make great CEOs, but often they’re overlooked. Why do you think that is?

Jamie Aitken: I actually think the skillet that CHROs build throughout their career doesn’t necessarily align with the public’s current perception of CEOs—there’s a stereotypical assumption that CEOs have to be a certain level of ruthless, which is on the opposite side of the spectrum from the empathy we expect from a CHRO. We’re seeing a current shift in executive competencies right now that leans toward empathetic leadership, but there’s still a disconnect.

Doug Dennerline: Unfortunately, we see all too often HR people hiding behind the policies of HR, such as making it difficult to manage out poor performers without having every I dotted and T crossed regarding all the written communication about their poor performance before you can get them moved out of the organization, which can actually slow the organization down. This can lead to leadership teams having the perception that HR practitioners won’t be able to run a company, which I disagree with. Good, strategic HR leaders can definitely run a company well.

What skills can HR folks work on to become more effective business partners?

Jamie Aitken: Listening is the most important skill across the board. HR practitioners would also benefit from learning skills typically reserved for CEOs and CFOs, like honing their finance, data, and business acumen.

Doug Dennerline: You have to be curious about the business. Who’s the customer? What’s the selling methodology? Why do they buy? These are the questions you need to ask to become a more effective business partner. It also helps to be excited about the organization’s mission and products.

Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important ways that HR can help drive company decisions? Please share a story or an example for each. 

Jamie Aitken:

1 . Have data at hand. It’s all about quantifying traditionally non-quantified data points so that you can make data-driven decisions and provide those kinds of insights to the organization. Implementing a human capital management system allows technology to uncover data points that would otherwise be scattered across a million different pieces of paper around the world.

2 . Foster a collaborative executive team and make sure it’s a cohesive unit. The gift that we bring from our perspective and our experience is bringing that to the very team that we are on without being a facilitator. In that way we are an active participant, but also taking on that role to ensure that the team is cohesive and work to remove friction that would get in the way of the effectiveness of that team.

3 . Have the mindset of the CEO (Chief Empathy Officer, that is). Think of empathy as a strength and a core part of your skill set. Being the model for empathy allows others to adapt to and adopt a people-centric mindset when making company decisions.

4 . Company culture extends beyond HR. CHROs tend to be the organization’s ‘culture carrier’, but it’s actually something that the entire executive team should be responsible for. This allows leadership to get involved in a meaningful way in change initiatives and bring that mindset into all of their business decisions.

5 . Focus on business outcomes. HR should be able to explain why retaining or disposing of approaches makes both “sense” and “cents” to the business – to borrow a phrase from Leapgen co-founder Jason Averbook. Rather than focusing on a new technology or process that will make life easier for HR, explain how the business benefits. HR competes with other functions for investment dollars and must be able to articulate a compelling business case.

Doug Dennerline:

1. Have a strong understanding of the company’s strategy, and then help to promote the strategy by making sure the company is future-proofed leadership-wise to have the skills they’ll need to get you to where the strategy’s trying to take you. 

2. Be a mirror to the leadership team, especially the CEO. This will help make sure the people they are hiring and developing have the skills to get the organization where it needs to be

3. Build a competent team. You’ll need all the right human resources capabilities in order to build a company culture that can win against your organization’s competitors.

4. Be a trusted listener. Since they have an ear to the ground, HR can serve as a sounding board for leadership, especially in terms of communicating difficult conversations between individuals—they’re more likely to tell a trusted HR leader as a means of mediating the conflict.

5. Be visible and accessible. The best way to build confidence and trust within the organization is to be more forward-facing and amongst the people than any other role.

Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen businesses make when faced with hard decisions? What should one keep in mind to avoid that? 

Jamie Aitken: The most common mistakes I’ve seen are acting out of fear, acting too quickly or slowly, and acting without consulting others. 

Doug Dennerline: The biggest mistake I continue to see is waiting too long to make a decision that needed to be made. For example, knowing that someone on the leadership team isn’t a good fit but waiting too long to do anything about it. Every amount of time lost waiting for that decision counts against the success of the business. Another mistake is not voicing your opinion, which is a big part of being a diplomatic HR leader.

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have a private lunch with, and why?

Jamie Aitken: I would have loved to have lunch with Anthony Bourdain—it would have been an eye-opening experience and the food would have been magnificent.

Doug Dennerline: I’d love to have lunch with Tiger Woods. His accomplishments and perseverance are astounding, and I just want to ask him a bunch of questions about how he was able to do that.

Thank you both for your insights! How can our readers further follow your work?

We can both be found on our LinkedIn profiles (Jamie Aitken and Doug Dennerline), as well as our upcoming book Make Work Better: Revolutionizing How Great Bosses Lead, Give Feedback, and Empower Employees, which publishes in April.

More insights from the series:

The post To Be A More Effective Business Partner, Listen And Be Curious appeared first on People Managing People.

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Most leaders don’t view HR as a strategic pillar of the business and this leaves a lot of professionals feeling somewhat frustrated. In this interview series, we talk to HR professionals and business leaders in the know to share what companies can gain by having HR should help drive company decisions.

Cydney Roach is the Global Chair of Employee Experience at Edelman. She has 25 years of experience helping create value for Fortune 500 clients by focusing on the people dimension of business transformation and has deep subject matter expertise accelerating performance via change management, strategic communications, leadership alignment, and employer brand and culture, particularly in complex global merger integrations, IPO readiness, and spins.

She has worked previously with Simon Sinek to help clients define and activate their purpose-driven cultures, particularly those that drive diverse and inclusive cultures.​  

Hi Cydney, welcome to the series! Before we drive in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I became a creative director when my boss (who had a serious anger management problem) threw a desk phone through a plate glass window onto Third Avenue in NYC (and in the process threw away his career).

There was a global print campaign to be presented to the client the next day. I filled in and essentially received a battlefield promotion—an inglorious but colorful way to become a VP/CD at age 26. I loved developing concepts and bringing them to life in beautiful print and wacky TC ads. I was riding the last fumes of the Madmen era and it was a very fun ride.  

After a stint in the middle east working for Saatchi and BBDO in developing markets, I returned to NYC, took a left turn into consulting at Deloitte, and then EY’s human capital practices making a very happy landing at Edelman 6 years ago.

It’s been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Wasn’t it Freud who said there are no accidents, just the subconscious leaking out? The funniest mistake was going into an interview for a Creative Director role and mistaking the Chief Creative Officer for his admin.

But, in the end, the mistake had a happy ending because the exec was happy to be mistaken for someone half his age (hello vanity!) and the admin thought it was hilarious and ended up doing me lots of favors when I was eventually hired to that team.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I’m so grateful to my mentor at Deloitte who saw my passion and ambition for innovating human capital offerings and gave me license to operate and color outside the lines—a big gift when you keep in mind that Big Four consultancies are essentially risk-averse.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life? 

“If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” This quote sums up what it means to be a successful advisor in professional services since our purpose is to help clients stay ahead of the pack, see around corners, and anticipate what’s next. 

From a personal perspective, it’s the impetus that led me to want to live and work in places like Cairo, Paris, Jerusalem, Gaza, Dallas, NYC, and London in order to gain a global perspective—critical to serving multinational clients. 

Thinking back on your own career, what would you tell your younger self?

He who hesitates is lunch. Don’t limit yourself with expectations of perfection. Dive in, iterate ideas and keep moving them along.

Let’s now move to the central part of our interview about HR. Why do you think HR deserves a place in the boardroom and in high-level decision-making? Can you help articulate how a company will gain from that?

Employees have never had more material impact on business. The ability to design and execute a talent strategy that delivers the business strategy is now a board-level concern because the war for talent has never been more complex. 

But, perhaps more importantly, there’s been a sea change in the employee/employer compact. No longer is shareholder value the sole focus of the board. And, today, employees sit at the intersection of a company’s entire multistakeholder ecosystem; their influence on all other stakeholders is unprecedented. 

Yet heretofore, their voice was seldom heard at a governance level. HR is the manifestation of the worker voice. Worker voice matters because human-centric organizations are good places for business and society.

From your experience, how can HR people and culture professionals ensure they’re involved in strategic planning processes? 

The complexity of today’s operating environment demands new types of data to inform strategic discussions. This new data goes far beyond typical workforce analytics and even encompasses insights on talent risks and opportunities derived from large bodies of unstructured data.

The best way to sum this up? Last summer, within a span of 8 weeks, I had calls from over a dozen C-suite leaders all asking for the same thing. This is how the CCO of one of the world’s largest software companies summed up the need: “Cydney, while I have engagement surveys and pulse survey data, that’s only the top of the iceberg. How can I understand what’s below the surface of the water?” Employee sentiment and the ability to predict it can avert crises and create armies of advocates.

A lot of folks believe that CHROs would make great CEOs, but often they’re overlooked. Why do you think that is?

Human capital has never been perceived as true capital. In a world of shareholder primacy, the realm of HR stood in a distant shadow. Despite the old saw “treat employees like customers,” their value has only recently been felt. This is HR’s moment. 

What skills can HR folks work on to become more effective business partners?

In addition to mastering the complexities of finance, become passionate about data and the insights it can bring. These will, in essence, become your competitive advantage.  

Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the most important ways that HR can help drive company decisions? Please share a story or an example for each. 

1. Deliver a differentiated level of information your board needs to make people-related decisions. 

When recovering from a crisis in 2021, one of the world’s largest heavy industry multinationals struggled to get real-time, warm data on raw employee sentiment that was critical to their reputation recovery. They knew they couldn’t rely on survey data alone, given the inherent bias that accompanies even the best-administered surveys.

When the board asked for real-time, warm data, their CHRO worked with her data and analytics team to create a set of data that combined their own engagement surveys, traditional workforce analytics KPIs (such as the ability to attract and retain talent), and employee experience data flows from all their international sites.

This provided leadership with a continuous stream of insights on the volume and velocity of employee sentiment on crisis-related issues. That intel informed decisions that sped reputation recovery. 

2 . Prepare to take on significant accountability for delivering your company’s next large-scale business transformation.

Because “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, and HR typically supports culture-shift programs, CHROs can drive better transformation decisions by redefining culture as behavior-led strategy execution instead of focusing on a culture solely informed by values. 

When Europe’s largest performance materials company launched a new strategy to future-proof it against competition, the leadership team identified their top strategic value driver. Then their CHRO and HRLT, working alongside their partners in the business, defined the behaviors and ways of working that were critical to supporting those value drivers for the workforce segments most associated with them

This accelerated the attainment of business objectives with a precision focus where needed, instead of trying to “boil the ocean” of culture.

3 .  Represent the worker voice. 

Workers are a rich source of strategic and operational insight for the companies that employ them. And yet, only 30% of American workers surveyed by Gallup reported that, at work, their opinions really count. 

By recognizing, seriously considering, and acting upon employee voices, employers can build a community where trust is stronger. 

In June of 2020, the CEO of a leading global pharmaceutical company met with his leadership team and told his CHRO to set in motion a mandated return to office for all employees. 

Sensing this would ignite a highly unfavorable employee reaction, the CHRO quickly gathered data regarding the unwavering productivity of its remote workers, the stances other CEOs were taking on flexibility, and powerful sentiment insights from their own people. 

Forty-eight hours after calling for RTO, the CEO reversed his decision, citing, in his words, “the voices of my own people spoke to me loudest of all the data.” The CEO as Chief Empathy Officer.

4 . Partner with your CMO colleague to align the Cx and Ex. 

Today, your brand promise for consumers and employees must be one and the same. In essence, they are reciprocal because, as behavioral science tells us, human beings expect reciprocity i.e employees expect to be treated the same way as customers!

In 2022, the US’ largest pharmacy retailer was set to launch its new consumer brand, accompanied by a set of employee behaviors designed to reinforce the customer brand promise in stores.

The CHRO pioneered a collaboration with the CMO to join forces and make the employee brand promise reciprocal to the consumer brand promise: to ensure a positive, healthy, and safe experience each time they entered a store. This created a virtuous circle of positive outcomes. 

Our own Edelman Trust Barometer data tells us that consumers are now watching how companies treat their people. The data revealed that “90% of consumers  want brands to protect the well-being and financial security of their employees and suppliers, even if it means suffering financial losses…” 

Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen businesses make when faced with hard decisions? What should one keep in mind to avoid that? 

I often see this mistake in transformative mergers or other difficult transactions: leaders focus on managing deal value not realizing that, no matter how elegant the deal strategy, it’s only as executable if the people who must deliver on it are engaged. 

Leaders often ignore the need to communicate, manage painful and uncertain change, design clear operating models, or simply take a human-centric approach to the transformation because they are so focused on Wall Street. 

Another hard decision: the inability to sunset ways of working that are no longer serving the organization. New behaviors must be aligned to new operating models and strategies and take the employee value proposition into consideration…. not dictated by tradition.

Culture shift is the hardest work in the realm of HR, yet it is at the heart of large-scale business transformation. 

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have a private lunch with and why?

Hands down Christiane Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank since 2019, previously the Managing Director of the IMF, former French Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry (and the first woman to hold each of those posts).

Perhaps even more phenomenally, she rose through the ranks of Baker McKenzie to become its first female Global Chairperson in 1999. I’d love to have a conversation with her about human capital, how its valuation can be better considered in economics, and how a more human-centric approach to labor economics is long overdue.

Thanks so much for your insights, Cydney! How can our readers further follow your work?

Linkedin or the Edelman website.

Other interviews in the series:

• Why Strategic HR Leaders Should Rotate Through The Business
• Why CHROs Make Great CEOs And How They Can Make The Switch
• Why Strategic HR Deserves A Place In The Boardroom

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Companies are always on the lookout for talented people. In this interview series, we talk to seasoned HR professionals to pick their brains for ideas and insights on finding the right talent for our organizations.

Hollie Castro is Chief People Officer at Miro, a hugely popular visual collaboration platform with a team of 1,500 people based around the globe. Prior to Miro, Hollie was Chief Human Resources Officer and SVP, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) at YETI. She has over 20 years of experience designing people and operating practices for global businesses including companies like Cisco and GE.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before diving in, our readers would love to get to know you. Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to this specific career path?

I started my career in sales and marketing, but, while getting my MBA, I discovered that I love business and the human dimension of business was what really piqued my interest. 

More specifically, I love working with companies where humans are considered their most important asset. In these environments, people become the center of the business strategy. Over the course of my career, I’ve been fortunate to play a role in fostering such human-centric cultures at companies as diverse as Cisco, YETI, and, now, Miro.

The human condition is constantly evolving. Factors that didn’t use to be influential are now reasons that people join and stay at companies—including employers’ commitment to sustainability, focus on well-being, and flexible return to work policies, to name a few. 

In fact, Miro’s recent  “The Ways We Work” survey shows that the option to work remotely replaced growth opportunities in the top three qualities workers look for in a dream job between pre-pandemic and today.

How the intersection between head and heart shifts over time in response to both macro and personal circumstances absolutely fascinating to me. For example, that same survey shows that workers from Generation X are more likely than their counterparts from other generations to value jobs that offer a high salary and the option to work remotely; their priorities reflect their life stage, as they’re often juggling work with taking care of kids, as well as parents.

There’s no proven formula for transforming workplaces to address these ever-changing factors. It takes a willingness to deeply listen to employees, experiment, and iterate—all acts that initially attracted me to a career in HR and keep me energized to this day.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you first started? Then, can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

In terms of how you’re remembered, how you resign and exit a position is more important than anything else you did at a company, so do it with grace. The notion that you’re going to stay at a company for the rest of your life is long gone, but, when you dismount badly, it can be a career wrecker.

Earlier in my career, I didn’t understand this. Simple things like giving ample notice, building a strong successor, and leaving a detailed work transition plan is paramount. Maybe the most important nuance that I had to learn is that leaving a company is not about you, it’s about the people you leave behind. Focusing your energy on leaving them in a positive position is key. The journey is long and the relationships that you build will serve you years later.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” and how that was relevant to you in your life? 

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” Marianne Williamson

For most of my career I was the only woman in the room and many times I was the youngest person. This was very intimidating, and I often found myself questioning if I was good enough, smart enough, deserving enough. There was a key moment after I had my daughter when I realized that all of these doubts were in my head. The quote was something that lifted me up and inspired me to deeply explore my gifts and talents and lean into them.

Are you working on any exciting new projects at your company? How is this helping people?

Since I joined Miro in September, I’ve been on a listening tour, learning as much as I can, soaking in the culture, and witnessing the company’s values in action.

It’s been an amazing experience! One of Miro’s core values is iteration. I’ll be taking insights from my listening tour and using them to experiment and iterate on what’s working and what’s not working for employees in today’s environment.  

Along those lines, one of the most exciting things Miro is introducing is a new workplace design concept called “Living Lab,” which redefines what an office should be and includes space for nature, well-being, and meaningful interaction. It’s organized based on individuals’ and teams’ evolving needs and preferences.  

How we work is fundamentally shifting. Hybrid teams are now commonplace. Employee expectations are evolving and workplace culture must evolve with it. While other companies are shuttering offices, Miro is investing in its Living Lab concept and opening up these new spaces in Amsterdam and Austin, to start. 

Miro worked with Makers of Sustainable Spaces aka MOSS Amsterdam and NorNorm to create:

• A botanical sanctuary where 6-8% of the space features plants, anchored in research that 5-8% of space featuring nature leads to improved cognitive abilities
• Plants in stairwells attract more people to use the stairs (and move)
• Over half (60%) of the space is dedicated to collaboration, 40% for focused work
• A parents room for nursing
• A Tatami room which doubles as a meditative, restorative space and multi-faith haven
• A co-working cafe to gather for meals, happy hour and more

Sound amazing! Now let’s jump into the main focus of our series. Hiring can be very time-consuming and challenging. Can you share with our readers a bit about your experience with identifying and hiring talent? What’s been your most successful recruitment-related initiative so far?

There are a few things that come to mind, but definitely having a clear understanding of the values that ground your culture, as well as a strong balance between skills and competence to do the job and being additive to the company culture.

One of the things that I love about Miro is that we take a 360 view in our hiring process. This means we get input from employees, peers, and hiring managers on our interview panels. I am also a big believer in team interviews that feel inviting and engaging to a candidate. 

Finally, really creating an individual experience for the candidate by building a relationship with them to understand their personal situation is key.

Once talent is engaged, what’s your advice for creating a great candidate experience and ensuring the right people go through the process?

I generally believe that the earlier in the recruitment process you begin demonstrating and talking about values, the more likely candidates that share those values are to stand out in the process and pass through it.

At Miro, we put our values in every job description and our recruiters and hiring panels know that they should be prioritizing values alongside competency when screening and scoring candidates.

Often there is pressure to get a role filled quickly, but, in my experience, being tenacious and patient enough to hold out for the right candidate is mission-critical.

Based on your experience, how can HR and culture professionals work with the broader organization to identify talent needs?

I believe that there are two important elements to support the identification and advancement of organizational talent needs.

First, it’s critical that HR professionals deeply understand the business. I have heard many times that we are “people people,” but, in my mind, the best HR professionals are business people who happen to be experts in the discipline of people. 

Understanding how your business makes money, who your competitors are, how the landscape is shifting, and the overall business strategy, allows HR professionals to bring invaluable insights to the table. Being able to anticipate what will be needed before it is asked is a trait I believe is present in truly strategic HR organizations. Using data to inform these insights is a powerful way to advance the talent agenda.

The second element that I believe is important is really listening to the organization on a frequent basis and, in turn, communicating how you are experimenting and designing solutions that serve their needs.

Communicating when an experiment isn’t successful, what you learned, an how you will iterate is often just as important, if not more, than socializing when a solution has been successful.

Is there anything you see that recruiters, internal or otherwise, do regularly that makes you think, “No, stop doing that!”?

I think one of the missed opportunities I have observed is when recruiters don’t understand that candidates are also potential customers. It’s essential that every candidate has a delightful experience, even if they don’t get the job.

What’s more, it’s important for recruiters to remember that top talent always has a choice. An interview is a two-way process, and selling the company and opportunity honestly is as important as vetting the candidate’s interests and skills.

With so much noise and competition out there, what are your top 3 ways to attract and engage the best talent in an industry when they haven’t already reached out to you?

1. Employer branding is important, and we try to amplify the stories about why Miro is a great place to work. That includes having a strategy for workplace awards and telling stories about the diversity in our organization. We also rely heavily on referrals, and you need a truly great workplace for people to consider inviting their friends to join the team.

2. We have a strong user-to-employee pipeline, meaning that there are a lot of Miro users who are passionate about our product and are engaged in our community. We look for opportunities to bring these people onto our team, even if it means creating a role that’s custom-fit to their background. This pipeline is especially strong in our Customer Success organization, where our most passionate users join Miro and help some of our most valuable customers be successful with the product.

3. Think ahead about the type of talent you will need in the future and build relationships with them even if you don’t have a role today. It is every people manager’s job to be a recruiter. We are all talent scouts and, regardless of your function, it is critical to think about your role through this lens.

It is every people manager’s job to be a recruiter. We are all talent scouts and, regardless of your function, it is critical to think about your role through this lens.

What are the three most effective strategies you use to retain employees?

1. Listen, learn, and respond. Hybrid and remote work can make it more difficult to know how someone is really feeling or how someone is really doing. So as leaders and managers, we have to completely rethink how we engage, how we check in, how we listen, how we communicate, and how we stay in tune with the happiness and engagement of our teams. Now more than ever, people want to be seen, heard, and recognized. Leaders and companies that really listen and respond to employees’ needs will retain top talent.    

2. Create strategies that honor individuals’ new ways of working. There’s a shift going on in the workplace. When I was growing up, you stood out by being the first one in the office in the morning and the last one out at night. But now, employees strive to stand out through work quality and impact, while integrating their work and life in a way that works for them.

The organizations that become known as great workplaces for the next generation of talent will be the ones that enable high-quality work and, in doing so, cultivate employees’ pride and sense of ownership. And they’ll do so while allowing their talent the space and time for rich lives outside of work to pursue their own interests, whether those are side hustles, hobbies, or spending time with family and friends.

3. Continue to set the bar high and reward leaders at every level. Treat people with respect and reward results. In “The Ways We Work” survey, of the 850 knowledge workers who said their relationships with their managers have improved in recent years, 40% pointed to their manager encouraging their growth and giving them new challenges as the top reason. Sometimes growth opportunities mean moving up and taking on more responsibility. Sometimes it is a lateral move to broaden your skills and better position you for future opportunities. Employers that focus on professional development will win, creating a more inclusive workforce where all employees’ talents are encouraged and skills developed.

Here is the main question of our interview. Can you share five techniques that you use to identify the talent that would be best suited for the job you want to fill? Please share an example for each idea. 

1 . Curiosity is a critical characteristic. I love to ask questions that help me explore how their minds work. Curiosity is a trait that is teachable when children are growing, but it’s also something people are born with as part of their DNA. It is harder to teach adults to be curious.  

2 . Learner’s mindset. I like to explore a time when someone failed, which isn’t the point of the question. The point, for me, is that our best learnings tend to come from our failures. How self-reflective are they? How did they change their approach based on their learnings? How do they share learnings with others? Learner’s mindset and curiosity go hand and hand.

3 . Agility and adaptability. In today’s world, the ability to adapt and be agile is the name of the game. One thing that is certain is change. I like to ask questions that lead me to discover how rigid someone is or isn’t. How adventurous are they? Do they take calculated risks and do those types of risks align with our culture?

4 . Resiliency. I like to explore a time when things were tough to get a sense of their resilience. What did they do? What structures did they lean on to guide them through? How did they approach it and what did they learn? How they approach small challenges that are thrown at them now may offer insight into how they will lead when times are difficult down the road, during the peak of their leadership years.

5 . Vulnerability. The best leaders I know are the ones who are willing to share their vulnerabilities and failures, ask for help and “be human.” Especially when interviewing people leaders, I love to explore how they do or do not do this. How do they create connections with their teams to allow for people to share their vulnerabilities back?

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have a private lunch with and why?

Condoleezza Rice comes to mind. She’s an incredible leader and has had to navigate so many difficult situations with potentially disastrous consequences. She has overcome some of the most difficult barriers. She also has many diverse interests and seems incredibly interesting. I would be fascinated to get to know her and learn from her!

Thanks Hollie! Some incredible insights in there. How can our readers continue to follow your work?

I encourage your readers to check out the MiroBlog, where we share Miro’s unique perspective on workplace trends, product updates and tips for how to be successful on Miro.

More from the series:

• How To Identify And Engage The Best Talent For Your Organization
• Spreading Your Talent Pool With Diverse Talent
• Why Recruiters Shouldn’t Be “Selling” Jobs

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Companies are always on the lookout for talented people. In this interview series, we talk to seasoned HR professionals to pick their brains for ideas and insights on finding the right talent for our organizations.

Kirsten Renner is the Senior Recruiting Lead for Accenture Federal Services’ National Security Portfolio and possesses more than 20 years of technical recruiting experience. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland University College where she studied Human Resources Management.

Hi Kirsten, welcome to the series! Before diving in, our readers would love to get to know you. Can you tell us the backstory about what brought you to this specific career path?

My career journey started fresh out of high school with a temporary front desk position with a federal contractor in the early 1990s. From there, I ended up teaching myself to code and wrote a small component of a remote profile maintenance application. 

Next, I transitioned into a helpdesk role that eventually led to building and managing desktop support teams, both at an ecommerce start-up and then a local municipality.

Fast forward to early 2000, and I combined my love for technology and team building by going into technical recruiting where I have remained ever since. 

I always ended up leading initiatives and programs with a focus on process, which naturally led me into management roles. Who knew that my pesky need to “fix things” would turn out to be one of my superpowers?

In 2016, I took on the role of Director of Recruiting at Novetta, later acquired by Accenture Federal Services, where I now run the National Security Portfolio recruiting team and assist the greater Accenture Federal Services recruiting program with overall process improvement and re-design.

It’s said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you first started and what you learned from it?

Picture me, attending my first-ever security conference in 2010. This was my chance to get to know and engage with the community I was recruiting in.

I met and connected with some folks and ended up following them around the rest of the weekend, from session to session. 

We wound up in a penthouse suite where the press was interviewing people conducting a technical demo, and folks were chatting in small groups. I walked up to two people who were talking and causally said to one of them, “Hi, I’m Kirsten. You look familiar.” He politely nodded and kept talking, so I took the hint that my icebreaker wasn’t successful and walked away. 

Turns out, he was the founder of not only the conference I was attending but another giant conference; and was a famous person in Infosec. Hence, I suppose, that’s why he looked familiar! 

Lesson learned—do your research and know before you go! Lucky for me, and a testament to the character of the individual, I was not called out for my embarrassing social blunder.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” and how that was relevant to you in your life? 

I was fairly new to an organization and was just assigned to a new boss. I was leading a small team of recruiters and a new requirement had them stumped. I ended up fulfilling the requirement myself and reported it to my boss during our next weekly check-in. Instead of congratulating me as I expected, he said “It’s not your job to be a hero.” 

My initial reaction was to feel unappreciated, but, when I pressed him further on it, he patiently explained that if I had the ability to do something my team couldn’t, my job was to teach them how to do it. 

My whole outlook on my purpose as a leader changed that day. I realized the most fulfilling thing I would ever do in my career is build up the people I lead and help them succeed. 

I will never forget that lesson and it made me so much stronger and better at being a leader in recruiting. I now harness the strengths of individuals on my team by encouraging them to lean on and teach each other. No heroes or contests, just one well-oiled machine built by many components of talents and strengths.

Bonus quote from me:

Awesome quote! Now let’s jump into the main focus of our series. Hiring can be very time-consuming and challenging. Can you share with our readers a bit about your experience with identifying and hiring talent? What’s been your most successful recruitment-related initiative so far?

The secret ingredient is ‘re-training the thinking’ and focus of managers and recruiters away from individual requirements and onto the candidates themselves.

Recruiting is not a puzzle in which one individual fits neatly into one spot. It’s bigger than that.

These matches are based on a myriad of factors that are about more than a quick resume-to-req comparison. People need to feel cared for, and recruiters who believe in the missions they support are driven to make these matches come to fruition.

Once talent is engaged, what’s your advice for creating a great candidate experience and ensuring the right people go through the process?

When recruiters and hiring managers are really making the focus about people, there will be cross-functional collaboration. Managers and candidates should not be limited to just one chance to make it work.

I liken it to friendships and dating. What if we gave all our relationships only one shot at an interaction, how lonely and sad would the world be!?

Offer options and chances. Restaurants offer more than one menu item for a reason, right? Look at an individual’s willingness and ability to grow and learn as their first qualifier to gain the skills needed to do the work!

If Janet has the skills to do ABC on your team, but expressed an interest in learning XYZ over on Sally’s team, you should give Janet that option. Both Janet and Sally will remember it. Janet wins, Sally wins, the organization wins, and guess who is going to send referrals for ABC on your team… It all comes full circle.

Based on your experience, how can HR and culture professionals work with the broader organization to identify talent needs?

It’s a two-part formula that balances a true partnership between recruiting and hiring teams with real-time analysis of supply and demand.

The ‘supply’ in this equation is the individuals engaged with recruiting that a mutual interest has been established with. The demand is the open (and forecasted) requirements. 

Frequent and regular communication, translated into reports that can be analyzed, will ensure the right focus by recruiting, which results in the production of the right pool of individuals to be considered. It’s all relationship based.

Is there anything you see recruiters, internal or otherwise, do regularly that make you think, “No, stop doing that!”?

I have 3. 

• If you are a recruiter, STOP thinking about profit. It’s none of your business. Let the business handle that. You are the conduit between the managers you deliver available talent to; and the human beings who want to be matched to their next best opportunity. You just figure out what the talent pool needs to do the work, and then deliver.
• STOP sending people boilerplate mass messages. Communities are small. If you can’t take the time to craft a personal message to me, you’ve started the relationship off poorly.
• STOP passing people around. If you pass me along when I don’t fit “your” needs, instead of walking me to the finish line, I’m not feeling very special. There are plenty of other companies hiring right now that will do better.

With so much noise and competition out there, what are your top 3 ways to attract and engage the best talent in an industry when they haven’t already reached out to you?

Super simple: Be honest; dedicated and available. If you believe in the work you support, it sells itself. You can’t fake it.

Honesty means being upfront—people remember and appreciate that. Dedication speaks for itself, and availability is often translated into the time you take to really engage. A recruiter who is listening and making their intake with a candidate about the person—not a box-checking exercise against a job description—creates a more meaningful candidate experience.

Years ago, I told a candidate that, as much as I wanted to fill my opening, I believed someone else had something that was a better match for what they said they really wanted, and they were hired into that other job. And guess what—that person appreciated the feedback and never forgot what I did.

Not only did they end up sending me a ton of referrals based on the experience, years later, I did end up hiring them.

I wish we weren’t called “recruiters”, or even “talent acquisition” for that matter. It sounds so impersonal and makes it seem commodity-based. The best of us are “partners” and “agents”. We are “advocates”. We make meaningful connections that lead to teams doing critical work.

What are the three most effective strategies you use to retain employees?

Take everything I said about recruiting here and make it work for retention. If you think of what you’re willing, as a company or hiring manager, to do to attract candidates, use that same methodology when caring for your existing employees.

This includes listening and ensuring they have the paths in front of them and that they stay challenged and fulfilled. Are you listening to your employees? Creating a growth path for them? Ensuring their needs are met? If you’d do it to convince a candidate to join, you should do it for your existing talent pool to stay!

Here is the main question of our interview. Can you share five techniques that you use to identify the talent that would be best suited for the job you want to fill? 

1.  Know the work. Really know it, learn it, read articles, and take classes. I’m not saying you have to be a cloud engineer to recruit one, but it doesn’t hurt to understand the technologies. A few of my recruiters have gone so far as to get technical certifications. One of them, Jamal Drake, took attending technical competitions to the next level and participated—and won! That is exceptional recruiting by way of genuine meaningful engagement. And that one’s going in my book!

2.  Connect to the target audience. What are you trying to fill? Every business area has interest groups, conventions, and conferences. Get involved. Where are they going? Go there. Who are they listening to and what are they saying? Listen. Who are those people connected to? Connect. Be an involved member of their community offering useful content—starting with learning. People love talking about the things they love and people who love something enjoy teaching it. Ask. This has especially been the case for me in tech. I have never met an engineer that didn’t want to answer a question about the work they do. Ever. It’s a magical thing.

3. Build genuine relationships. Remember the story I told about helping someone find a job with someone else? I’ve done things like that countless times. It becomes your reputation, your legacy. It’s meaningful and makes all the time it takes to do the work so worth it.

4.  Collaborate not compete. Recruiters and managers who share everything multiply the chances of success for other managers, recruiters, candidates, the organization, and themselves. It’s an unbeatable truth. It’s counterintuitive at first, but, if you trust it, it works.

5. Volunteer. Many years ago, I learned the incomparable value of volunteering from Kathleen Smith, an executive at ClearedJobs.net, and a leader in countless community initiatives and programs. I remember watching her go like an energizer bunny. Giving and giving. Then she asked me to help. I’m so thankful for each and every opportunity to give back. It’s wild how it feels like a gift right back to yourself as your giving helps others. Thanks to Kathleen for pushing and teaching me.

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have a private lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this. 

Barbara Corcoran. I love her personality, sense of humor, toughness, and heart of gold. I also admire that she was a waitress and then receptionist (both of which I have also been) who turned a thousand-dollar loan into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise (not because of the dollar amount, but because of her gumption and drive to want to be her own boss, and she made it happen!).

Thank you so much for your insights, Kirsten! How can our readers continue to follow your work online? 

LinkedIn is a good way to start, but you can always see what talks I’m giving, what volunteering I’m doing, (or race I’m running) as well as other shenanigans I’m up to on Twitter @krenner.

The post Why Recruiters Shouldn’t Be “Selling” Jobs appeared first on People Managing People.

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“You know this isn’t going to make a difference, right?” one of my team members challenged me as I signed off the budget to provide each of our 350+ employees with a $200 ‘wellness stipend’ to spend on activities to improve their physical or mental health.

As Chief People Officer of a global marketing agency, one of my biggest challenges was ensuring people felt supported as we navigated the challenges caused by the pandemic and the intensity of agency life.

Over the years, we’d focused on creating a fantastic culture, but the Best Place to Work awards we’d won over the years didn’t give us immunity to these new challenges as people reassessed what they wanted from life and adapted to new pressures and ways of working.

For a period, we saw increased attrition and more mental health leaves. Employee surveys reminded us that many felt disconnected from work and each other.

While providing people with a personal well-being budget went down well, I wasn’t under any illusion that it would fundamentally counter these issues or improve employee mental health. 

Our situation was far from unique.

In 2022, Gallup reported that 60% of workers worldwide are ‘emotionally detached at work’. We continue to hear about the ‘great resignation’ and ‘quiet quitting’, a term that describes employees reducing the effort they put into their jobs. 

Studies show that nearly 81% of workers face some form of burnout or mental health issue with 68% of employees saying their daily work has been interrupted by these challenges. Deloitte estimates that poor mental health costs UK employers up to £56 billion annually. 

In 2021, Mindshare Partners shared the grim news that 68% of Millennials and 81% of GenZers have left their roles for mental health reasons. Employees are rightly demanding more from their employers, with 91% of US workers now believing that a company’s culture should support mental health, up from 86% in 2019.

Given the profound human impact and phenomenal cost to businesses, leaders must develop proactive strategies to support their people. Over the last few months, I’ve spoken to 50+ CEOs, MDs, Chief People Officers, and HRDs. All recognize the forces impacting their people and businesses. None have got it all figured out! 

Some are taking a holistic approach to building a mentally healthy workplace and are making meaningful progress. Most are feeling overwhelmed at the scale of the challenge, and have implemented a range of initiatives but don’t know what’s making a difference and what’s not. 

A minority acknowledge that their efforts are purely performative, with their marketing teams encouraging people to switch off on Mental Health Awareness Day, or simply training a couple of people to become Mental Health First Aiders and sticking their faces up on a sheet of paper next to the office coffee machine. This chimes with a recent Aon survey which found that less than half of UK businesses have a comprehensive well-being strategy.

Over the years, I’ve worn all of these hats. From not knowing where to start, to launching various initiatives under the banner of supporting employee mental health, to learning to think much more coherently about how well-being needs to be baked into organizational culture.

Some of what we tried made a real difference. Some didn’t. Some had a short-term boost but didn’t sustain impact over time. Honestly, I couldn’t always say which was the case as I didn’t always make it a priority to assess impact.

I don’t have all the answers but, with the benefit of some distance now I’ve left my CPO role, I’ve been able to reflect on what I got right and the mistakes I made. I’ve distilled this down into 4 principles which aim to help leaders grappling with the significant challenges impacting their businesses and people.

The examples I share are not intended as ‘best practice’ as much as stories to spark ideas for how you might apply these principles to help safeguard mental health in the workplace.

1. Work to measure impact

While studies have found that investing in employee mental health can offer a real return on investment (ROI) only 3 in 10 UK employers have a designated budget for health and wellness. 

Out of those, less than 1 in 10 actively measure ROI of their well-being programs. This means that the majority of HR teams are having to build the investment case, raid other budget pots, or figure out how to drive change without spending money. Sadly, we all know which budgets tend to be cut during economic downturns. Life doesn’t get any easier for already beleaguered People Teams.

I wish I’d been more disciplined about evaluating the different programs we ran. Understanding how many people were actually using our Employee Assistance Programme (which provided people with access to free therapy) was always a challenge.

The resilience speakers we brought in shared fantastic advice, but we didn’t know whether anyone changed their behavior as a result of listening. That wellness stipend… well, we knew how many people spent it, but not whether it improved how they were feeling.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the combined impact of all of these activities contributed to a more supportive culture, but the lack of impact data did make it hard to know what to do when budgets got cut or more money became available.

It was easier to decide to reinvest in a program we had piloted when we had tangible impact data that showed significant improvements in the well-being and connectedness of participants.

So whatever you’re doing, take the time to figure out what’s actually working: 

• Don’t just measure how many people show up to the presentation, but follow up a couple of weeks later to see if anyone is doing anything differently as a result. A simple email (with just 1-2 questions to make it easy for people to reply) does the job. 
• Look at whether employee engagement metrics shift after you introduce new initiatives. 
• Look at behavioral data, too. Is there a correlation between participation and retention? Are programs reducing absence or sick days? 
• If you’re working with external partners, ask them to share evidence with you that proves their programs work and sustain impact over time.
• Share this data with whoever’s signing off budgets and don’t be afraid to stop doing what’s not working and double down on what is!

2. Utilize your company’s existing eco-system to avoid overloading people

‘Not another company initiative?!’ — Frustrated workers around the world bemoaning employers asking them to take part in well-intentioned initiatives which compound rather than alleviate the issues they’re trying to solve.

I definitely struggled with this. It’s easy to get carried away by launching too many initiatives and overwhelming people. We started to make more progress when we used our company’s existing infrastructure to amplify our well-being strategy. Two things proved particularly effective: 

2.1 Repurposing existing time for activities to support well-being rather than asking more of people.

We’d repurpose a recurring team meeting to swap stories on how we were all dealing with what was going on in the world. We took over an all-hands meeting and gave everyone money to go for a coffee to build a relationship with someone they didn’t work with every day. 

We also launched ‘Focus Fridays’, clearing people of client and internal meetings to give them time to do deep work. Fridays also provided time for people to take part in more extended learning and development, such as a four-week program to train people in therapeutic talking and listening skills.

2.2. Use your company values to encourage desired behaviors

Most companies will have a set of corporate values. Looking at these with a fresh lens offers ripe territory for ideas to support employee well-being. 

One of our company values was ‘Show The Love’, a reminder to be kind to others and take time to celebrate progress. We redefined the behaviors linked to ‘Show the Love’ to remind people to also take care of themselves. 

Another of our values was ‘We Before Me’, a push to focus on the team and step in to help others when needed. We were proud of this aspect of our culture but came to recognize that any positive behavior taken to an extreme can have negative consequences. 

We heard from people that overly focusing on ‘we before me’ could lead to people sacrificing their own well-being to serve others. We reframed this value, stressing that ‘We Before Me’ was not about ‘solving people’s problems for them’ or ‘having no personal boundaries’.

We also gave everyone in the company a ‘Me Day’ so they could take an additional day off and expense a small amount to do something meaningful to them. We encouraged people to share stories and photos on social media to inspire others to take part.

While this refocusing of our values didn’t change everyone’s behavior, it shifted the paradigm for many, and we saw more people truly switching off during vacations and drawing clearer boundaries around their working day.

3. Focus on activities that proactively strengthen the collective, rather than reactively ‘fix’ individuals

It’s easy to fall into the trap of focusing on solutions that remedy individual ill health—promoting access to free therapy sessions available through an employee assistance program, asking people to talk with a Mental Health First Aider, teaching resilience skills which put the onus on the individual to change their behavior. 

These reactive ‘fixes’ are an important part of the mix, but they fail to tap into a major driver of positive mental health: the power of the group.

There’s a wealth of evidence that demonstrates that social interconnectedness, and the quality and strength of the relationships that we have with co-workers, has a powerful influence on our physical and mental health.

US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, noted “creating stronger connections in the workplace matters. Connections which are the most meaningful are those when we feel we are seen and understood by another person, where we feel we can truly be ourselves.” Bruce Daisley sums it up nicely in his book, ‘Fortitude’, concluding that ‘true resilience lies in a feeling of togetherness’.

With this in mind, many of our most impactful programs were fundamentally about driving connection, as we tried to mitigate the sense of isolation many felt through increased remote working and a reduction in the serendipitous encounters in the office that enabled people to build connections outside their day-to-day teams.

A couple of ideas that worked well for us that might work for you:

3.1 A mental health & connection program

We partnered with the social enterprise, Talk For Health, to take 50 members of our team through a group-based program that scaled the benefits of therapeutic talking.

Participants developed empathic talking and listening skills and were trained to set up and run their own ongoing groups.

It led to significant well-being improvements (measured using the WHO5 scale), reduced depressive symptoms, and strengthened relationships across teams, offices, and geographies. 

In fact, participating in this program myself, and seeing the impact it had on people, was what inspired me to leave my CPO role and start a business in this space.

3.2 Humanizing the team for new joiners

One of our departments grew significantly during the pandemic, but because team members were spread across various different locations new starters reported that they were feeling lost. To counter this, the team created a simple Welcome Pack which was sent to all new joiners. 

Each team member contributed a slide sharing their story and a photo of who they were, not just their job title and position on the org chart. In their first week, new starters received the pack and added their own slide to the deck.

It cost nothing and, interestingly, that team experienced the lowest level of attrition and highest employee engagement scores across our company. They also had the highest annual revenue growth!

While I’m sure this deck alone wasn’t the driving factor, it’s illustrative of the approach that the team leader took to making time and space for intentional relationship building.

4. Embrace the power of role modeling to shift culture

53% of C-Suite executives have said they struggle with mental health issues. It can be incredibly powerful in reducing the stigma about talking about mental health at work if senior people in your organization speak openly about their personal challenges. 

True, there’s a line to be walked between sharing and over-sharing, but I received incredibly positive feedback from people when I started being open about my own challenges.

I remember sharing in a staff meeting that there were a couple of times during the pandemic when I had broken down in tears at my desk at the end of an exhausting day. It was an exposing moment for me, but my instincts told me it would create permission for others to be vulnerable if they knew that senior leaders were struggling too.

Role-modeling positive behaviors you want others to emulate can go a long way to building a more mentally healthy workplace:

• Encourage leaders and managers to create boundaries around their working day 
• Ask senior leaders to openly share when they’re taking a ‘mental health day’ to recharge, or leaving early to prioritize a kids’ play or sports event
• Encourage people to stop sending emails when they’re on vacation, or when they’re off sick.

In my experience, you’ll never get everyone on board with this, but those that do it will create permission for others to do the same. 

Part of my own self-care strategy is getting out in the fresh air for a walk or a run. I’ll often pick up litter at the same time. I’d do 121 phone calls while on a walk, allowing both of us to escape our computers, and then I’d post about it on LinkedIn or our staff chat channels to encourage others to do the same.

If I was working from home, I’d go for a run during an all-staff meeting when I didn’t need to see my screen and then speak up at the end, slightly out of breath, to let people know I’d been making space for exercise during my day.

Thinking intentionally about how I could be a good role model was great for my own mental health, and also helped me deal with my personal tendency to want to rescue people. 

I learned that part of my role as a leader was to create the right environment to empower people to adopt behaviors to support themselves.

Wrapping up

I hope that these principles and reflections have sparked your thinking around how you can support your people and develop a culture that supports employee wellbeing.

Some argue that mental health initiatives are not the right way to build sustainable and mentally healthy workplaces; that they distract leaders from dealing with the systemic issues which impact employee mental health—having a good manager, a clear sense of purpose, being treated equitably, and feeling like you belong.

We worked consciously on all of these things too, but they’re complicated and take time to get right. Even the world’s best organizations aren’t perfect, and in an increasingly complex, ever-changing world that constantly surfaces new challenges for the people who work in and lead our organizations, the work is never done.

In a world where these problems no longer exist, perhaps the need for workplace mental health programs will be reduced. I hope so. But I struggle to see a world where leaders don’t need to invest intentionally in ways to improve mental health if they’re serious about creating high-performing, supportive organizations that people want to work for.

There is definitely a risk of well-being initiatives becoming performative, tick-box exercises that don’t make a difference if they’re not integrated into other tenets of a company’s people strategy.

The opportunity (and challenge!) for leaders is to ensure their strategies for supporting employee mental health are linked to the very ‘real work of culture change’ so that they ‘move from seeing mental health as an individual challenge to a collective priority’.

Please reach out in the comments with any questions or ideas.

Some further recourses:

• How To Identify, Pre-empt, And Deal With Workplace Burnout
• 10 Best Employee Wellness Platforms For Employee Health & Well-Being
• Improving Work-Life Balance While WFH: 12 Tips For Teams And Orgs
• How To Create A Mental Health Strategy That (Actually) Works (with Debbie Lang Pearmain)

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In our Office Snacks series we interview members of our community to delve into their varied buffets of experience and come away with juicy insights and ideas.

Join us in our next installment below as Sebastian Tindall, Director of Learning and Development at Vitality—shares his insights with us.

Hi Sebastian, welcome to the series! We’d love to get to know you better, where are you based?

I’m based in Stockport, UK. It rains a lot but I was born here so I’m used to it.

How did you get to where you are today?

Not long out of university, I landed a graduate scheme with Santander where I used to get parachuted into different parts of the business that were underperforming.

I’d get put anywhere in the country where a contact centre wasn’t doing so well and was given three to four months to work with the people and turn it around.

I absolutely loved it! If you got it right and worked with the people you could completely transform someone’s performance. I started to get some real success with it and turned around some big contact centres.

I learned that it wasn’t about coming in and being like a bull in a china shop. You have to help people through the process and understand that, although you probably weren’t welcome in the first place, you really had to win people over from a credibility perspective and know what you were doing.

Eventually, I realised that could be a full-time job and, actually, that’s what I want to do—I want to help other people do their job and help them succeed.

How do you describe what you do to others?

It depends who it is. If it’s one of my friends, every time I explain my job it’s a bit like Chandler Bing in Friends. Nobody has an idea of what I actually mean—I think it must be the way I explain it!

But, when it’s internally, it’s equipping people to be able to perform their job to the best of their possible ability.

I think that’s the easiest way.

How do you approach learning and development at Vitality?

We’re very performance-focused as a team. 

When people come to us saying we need some training on X, which is a knowledge-based activity, we’ll say, “Well, yeah, but what do you actually need to do?”.

We take time to unpick the issue and make it clear we’re not here to just enable people to know everything, because it’s completely false endeavour and it’s a pointless one. We act like a commercial entity so we need to focus specifically on tasks. 

For example, we’d ask something like “What do you actually need to be able to do in your first 30 days to be proficient in that job?” And then that’s the focus. We can lay other things on afterward.

I think this approach has really helped conversations in the organisation because it helps people understand that there is a quantifiable purpose to having an L&D department which is performance enablement, not just knowledge-based (which is very limited).

What are your favourite tools that help you with your job?

So the people we’re helping’s main diet of work is really technically focused. There’s an ever-evolving body of products being launched, so we’re focused on being there to help people service them.

There are a number of tools we use, for example nudge-based technology that’s incorporated into our login systems e.g. when someone comes in it will test them on key processes and we can scrape that information. 

There’s also a lot of rapid digital content that we try and embed into people’s roles. Again, that’s task-based, but we also use digital adoption technology as well so we can see how long it takes someone to process a particular task.

From there we can see what’s taking the longest so we know what to focus on and how we can better support people.

What’s your favourite part of your job?

First off, I like being connected to the commercial part of the business. It’s like, “This is how we make money, we understand that, this is how we’re going to help enable that.” 

But more than that it’s enabling the purpose of the business. We are here to help our members live healthier and happier lives, so how does what is Im doing enable that? 

And the second part is that we generally draw people from frontline roles and give them their first L&D job.

Over 80% of the team comes from frontline roles and we train them up, pay for their qualifications, and help them develop.

That’s the stuff that really keeps me motivated. It’s making people’s careers in L&D, seeing them grow, and seeing them kind of find their vocation for the future. That’s without doubt the most rewarding.

What would you say is the most challenging aspect?

The pace and the volume of change. If you delivered L&D by the textbook it would never work here because there isn’t time and it would restrict innovation. 

When you’ve got somebody trying to launch something that’s market-leading, you can’t sit there and say “Great, it’ll take two months to train these people out because you know, we’ve got 3 classrooms etc.”

We’ve had to completely change the way we operate, which is quite atypical.

For example, you come to us with a change. Rather than roll out 50 hours of training, we’ll benchmark and test people and see which parts of that change are intuitive because, if it’s intuitive and people get it straight away, you don’t need to train anyone, you just need to point them towards the resources that are there.

So we test there, and, if it’s intuitive, off it goes. If it isn’t, then it immediately raises the question of why we’re rolling it out and that’s a different conversation.

So, if you’re rolling out a new product, you’ll test your people on how okay they’re with it naturally. If they do require some training on it, what’s the next step?

When we test for intuitiveness we identify the areas that people will struggle with. That feedback goes to process owners, and then we’ll work with them to say, “Well, do you wanna change that or not? ”

Through the process, we also identify the most critical things that people have to get right, and then they’re the focus for the resources we will place in the most convenient places possible

That means that, when someone contacts us, the key information is easy to access and the learning experience can continue as people develop in the role.

There’s far less cognitive load on people because, you know, there’s actually such a small amount of information that you can administer in any single dose. Our approach is to empower them to develop on an ongoing basis.

That’s the difference, to get people by so they can learn “in the flow” and teach themselves over an extended period of time, which has allowed us to reduce speed to competency by over 30%.

It’s a process that works, but it takes a lot of time to explain in organisations because they sit there and say, “Well, you’re not training people on everything,” and we say “Nor should we be”.

Overall, we’re targeting ourselves on training people less, but equipping them to do their jobs better. It’s a bit of a tough one to rationalise, but that is both the hardest and the best bit about the job here.

What’s been your most successful initiative to date and why?

I think the best thing has been reimagining our induction process. It sounds really commodity-based and simple, but we’re working in an organisation where there are some really nuanced products.

Quite often when people contact us, particularly when they’re making a claim, they’re in a moment of need. They’re possibly not well or they need medical support, so it’s how do you make your organisation quick enough so that, when there are staff-level fluctuations and growth, you can still get your people ready in the required time to be able to deal with the ever-evolving myriad of contacts that you might receive as a business.

We have forensically looked at data points like speech data, what topics are mentioned in calls, the common issues that people talk about when they contact us, the secondary mentions to capture the typical “Whilst I’ve got you on the phone” type queries.

The critical task, then, is to cater to enough of that demand to help our members without overloading new staff—we have done this mathematically and I have loved informing that balance. How does taking X out impact our member sentiment vs the impact on speed?

You’re trying to reduce cost and speed, but you can’t really compromise on quality. The great news is that we have done that, we have reduced initial instruction by over 25%, reduced speed to competence by 30%, and new staff have never performed better.

What would you say is the biggest misconception about L&D?

I imagine many people feel the same way about their job, but whenever anyone comes to L&D asking for something and they think they already know the answer.

People will come to you and say they think they need some classroom training on X, which is strange because I would never dream of telling someone how to do their job. You talk through the problem first and then the solution comes a distant second.

I’ll always start that again by talking about being a solution agnostic. If the answer’s training, brilliant, but, if training isn’t the answer, then we’re not gonna sit here and train people for the sake of training them.

Let’s do an analysis together, and, if we are part of the solution, fantastic. But it’s such a strong data focus in the early stages. People will come to you with a kind of conjecture or sentiment or feeling, and it’s not to be completely discounted, but the business case prevails.

You’re collecting lots of data from all different kinds of places. Where do you collect it from?

There’re a lot of places. Using the same information that our operational leaders pore over is something we take great pride in because there’s nothing worse then when you come to a team and they don’t understand your challenges. 

By the time someone’s coming to you with a problem and presented it, if you don’t understand it, you’re kind of on the back foot already. It could even be too late. 

If you’re looking at the same information the operational leaders are looking at and going to them with potential challenges, that’s a completely different relationship than you might find in any support function in an organisation.

You can’t be presented with the analysis after it has happened, you have to be in the room when the analysis is happening. You need to be there when problems are discussed, not when the conclusions have already been drawn.

If a company is just starting out with L&D function, what is your number one piece of advice?

Start collecting data. Find out what data’s the most prevalent and the most used in your organisation and then start to understand it.

If you can understand the links between the data, the conversations that the data sparks, then you’ll be far better equipped when you do get into those meeting rooms—you’ll be speaking their language and that is the number one thing that’s going to ingratiate you. 

There’s nothing worse than L&D departments going “We’ve cooked up this new programme for you and it’s on coaching and you’ll love it and it’ll really help you,” and it’s not anything to do with the problems being facing right now. 

That way, they’re not going to see your value. They will see you as an isolated support function and not part of their team 

Last, and most importantly, what’s your favorite office (home or otherwise) snack?

Snyders Buffalo Pretzel Pieces. They’re like toasted pretzel pieces that have been soaked in Buffalo sauce. They are nothing short of life-changing—I would just like to disclose that I get no financial incentive from promoting this snack so passionately!

What’s your favorite office snack?

Work in People and Culture? Want to share your ideas?

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Before becoming a leadership coach, I spent 24 years in the US Air Force as a fighter pilot and senior military leader, leading more than 1,000 military and civilian personnel both at home and abroad. Over time, I realized that many of the lessons I learned in the cockpit also had broad applicability to my role as a leader as well.

Fighter pilot culture is unique. We spend our lives working in a high-stakes environment, where we have to make split-second decisions to survive, and where training missions can be just as dangerous as actual combat.

Because of this demanding environment, we have to be able to reduce stress where possible so we can achieve a high-level of performance, while also acknowledging that some level of stress can be a good thing. It’s a balancing act.

Here I’ll take you through some of these ideas and methods to reduce stress in the workplace while also offering some opportunities to embrace stress and use it to your advantage.

Methods you can use to reduce stress in the workplace

Adopt a wingman culture

During a mission, wingmen provide critical mutual support to ensure the flight is safe. They’re responsible for looking out for threats to the formation, either on the ground or in the air. 

The flight lead is responsible for driving the flight to the target, navigating obstacles and threats, and is primarily forward focused. A wingman is primarily responsible for checking the flight’s six o’clock position, the area directly behind an aircraft where we can’t see on our own. 

Wingmen provide critical mutual support and always ‘check six’ for unseen threats. These tasking priorities ensure each element of the formation understands the part they play with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, reducing the workload and taking some of the stress off of the flight lead.

You can cultivate a wingman culture on your team by ensuring that team members understand the role they play on the team and where they fit into the bigger picture. This means communicating to team members how the work they’re doing is critical to shared success and how it contributes to overall goals and objectives.

Leaders should incentivize an environment where teammates look out for one another, provide mutual support when needed, and will cover down when another teammate is feeling overwhelmed. Foster a mentality that lifting others helps elevate the performance of the team.

Adopting a wingman culture means that each team member feels part of something bigger and more important than themselves.

Communicate priorities

It can feel overwhelming dealing with multiple competing priorities. However, if we focus on what’s most important first, then we can lead our team successfully in the face of challenges.

“Aviate, navigate, and communicate” is a simple phrase we learn early in pilot training that helps us through demanding situations. 

When we face an emergency, we learn to slow down and focus on what’s most important first: maintaining control of the airplane. Then we navigate, gaining situational awareness of what is going on around us and figuring out where we need to go. From there, we communicate, letting others know about the problem and, if required, requesting assistance from our wingmen or other assets. 

This simple phrase helps pilots prioritize under pressure and maintain focus on the most important aspects first.

These concepts work outside of the cockpit as well and I’ve used them to help me lead my team (and my family) when things get busy and I’m feeling overwhelmed. 

We must aviate by keeping our team on course and maintaining focus on our critical priorities. There are the things that we have to keep doing, that we can’t stop doing or we will fail. Then we navigate. We need to have awareness of the goals we are trying to achieve, leading a clear path for our team by knowing where there are threats or risks to the team and mission. 

And finally, we must communicate clearly, concisely, and correctly . . .  communicating to our team to ensure they know the way forward, communicating with leadership if we need help. Aviate, navigate, and communicate. Focus on your priorities. Focus on what is most important first. 

Leaders at all levels need to know and be able to communicate priorities to team members so they know where to focus their time and efforts. This means saying no to things that don’t align with priorities. Assess where duties, tasks, or responsibilities can be subtracted, not added in a time of increased stress.

Be calm in the chaos

Deploying to combat multiple times as a young fighter pilot demonstrated to me the significant role leaders play in keeping their teams calm in chaotic situations.

I watched many of my leaders set the example with their ability to remain calm under pressure. They were always cool and collected on the radio, even when friendly ground troops were screaming for close air support. They recognized how important it was for them to be calm in the chaos to reassure our ground troops in some of the most chaotic and stressful situations.

Although the military environment presents unique circumstances, leaders at all levels in any organization can serve their team well by remaining calm during chaos.

Teams want leaders who are consistent and remain calm and composed, even under stress. Sometimes in all the chaos, our best immediate reaction as a leader is to do nothing. Not every situation requires an immediate reaction. Most of the time we can stop, breathe, and take the time to think about how we will respond.

Leaders play a pivotal role in demonstrating that we understand the intensity of a situation while also helping the team remain calm and composed under pressure. Prioritize clear, concise, and correct communication, especially during a crisis when people are eager for information. 

Communicate what you know and be honest about the situation. Instill confidence. Reassure the team that they are well prepared to endure hard times, even when the outcome remains uncertain. Empathize with team member stress levels and act/adjust accordingly.

Consistency creates trust. Our team wants to know they can count on us during tough times. They will be watching to see how we respond.

Focus on those things in your control

There are things in life we can control, things we can influence, and things which we can’t control or influence. 

Don’t waste time or mental energy on the things you can’t control because this generally results in increased stress levels. If we focus first on those things we can control, then we can leave the rest for later (or not spend time on them at all).

Make work-life balance a priority

Leaders have a responsibility to set the example and create a culture where work-life balance is a priority. It’s not good enough to just say it’s a priority and then be the first one in and the last one out of the office. If we make the effort to find an overall balance between our personal and professional life, our team will follow our lead.

We know people will perform better at work when their personal lives are taken care of at home, where we ensure our team has time to recharge, and where we encourage people to take care of their families because it’s the right thing to do. Take time off and encourage your team members to do the same.

We need to walk the walk and show our team that we can do it too.

Learn to recognize and support stressed-out workers

Leaders at all levels have a responsibility to recognize and then support stressed-out or burned-out members on their team.

In a fighter squadron, we did this by conducting an operational risk management assessment before each mission we flew. Were we up to the task that day? What external factors were playing a role in our overall well-being? Could we safely accomplish the mission? A commander had the discretion to give team members time off if stress levels were making them non-productive at work (we this emergency leave).

Leaders at all levels can make this assessment by having regular check-ins and simply walking around and talking to our team members. What pain points do they have? Where can we help alleviate stress? What resources are available to help them?

If necessary and appropriate, encourage burned-out team members to take a down day or time away for self-care.

Embracing Stress and Using it to Your Advantage

It’s also important to remember that some level of stress can be a good thing. 

Stress keeps us on our toes. It keeps us preparing, practicing, and planning for contingencies so that we are ready to face unexpected or challenging situations. The goal is not necessarily to eliminate stress completely. Instead, we should embrace some level of stress. 

Stanford University psychologist and author of The Upside of Stress, Kelly McGonigal talks about the impact stress has on our ability to handle difficult moments in this Stanford University article. 

“Stress leaves an imprint on your brain that prepares you to handle similar stress the next time you encounter it. Psychologists call the process of learning and growing from a difficult experience stress inoculation. Going through the experience gives your brain and body a stress vaccine.”

That reasoning is exactly why fighter pilots, elite athletes, emergency responders, and others who are required to perform under stress go through repetitions and practice dealing with stress.

One of the techniques used in the flying community is a pilot’s preparation technique called chair flying. 

Every night before I flew, I would sit in a chair in my room facing a picture of the cockpit on the wall. I would then talk through every part of my mission, practicing radio calls, thinking through maneuver parameters, and analyzing potential areas that could go wrong on the mission. 

Chair flying essentially meant I got a free mission to practice before I ever got into the airplane. I could find my weaknesses and study harder or practice more so when it came time for the actual mission, I was better prepared and also more confident.

I have used the same technique in many situations in my personal and professional life as well. If we ‘chair fly’ a stressful situation we anticipate at work or home, we can prime ourselves for action, effectively cope with stress, and create a positive outcome.

Practice, rehearse, or visualize to find opportunities for improvement. Can you make the time to rehearse critical meetings, conversations, and presentations? Are you able to meet with team members to do a walk-through of new plans or decisions and assess how they might affect the organization?

Practice creates clarity and boosts confidence among your team. Teams that have put in the work to practice will be more productive and are more likely to achieve success when dealing with challenging or stressful situations.

We can find ways to control the stress and adrenaline rush to improve our situation. Learn how to use it. Learn how to harness stress to your advantage.

I would love to hear your thoughts on both reducing stress and embracing stress. Please comment below and let me know what techniques work for you.

Further reading:

• In Too Deep: How To Keep Calm & Carry On When You’re Overwhelmed As A New Manager 
• Clarity, Responsibility, And Accountability (CRA) Model Of Leadership
• Improving Work-Life Balance While WFH: 12 Tips For Teams And Orgs

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